Almost €50,000 spent on State’s Assassin’s Creed tourism campaign

Tourism Ireland spent almost €50,000 on a marketing campaign to tie in with the release of the new instalment of hit video game Assassin's Creed.

The latest expansion of the Valhalla series, Wrath of the Druids, saw gamers travel virtually to Ireland with the Giant’s Causeway in Co Antrim, Benbulben in Co Sligo, and the Hill of Tara in Co Meath all featuring.

For the first time ever, Tourism Ireland collaborated directly with gaming streamers using influencers on Twitch in France, Germany, Britain, and Scandinavia.

The State agency said the campaign cost a total of €49,405 but declined to release details of how much the individual influencers had been paid, citing commercial sensitivity.

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From that total, €1,599 was paid to Maxmedia for their work on video editing while media agency OMD were hired to arrange the influencer campaign.

In France, Tourism Ireland worked with a streamer called NotaBene who had 5,545 viewers on his two-hour live stream on Twitch.

Views and impressions

Recorded extracts from that livestream on YouTube and other Ireland-related material garnered more than 50,000 views since they were uploaded.

In Germany, a streamer called Kaya Yanar did an advance promotion on Instagram that generated more than 60,000 impressions.

His live stream on Twitch had 4,440 viewers and almost 20,000 views on YouTube, according to Tourism Ireland.

In the Nordic countries, a streamer called Keebabb worked on the campaign with over 4,000 people seeing his posts on Instagram and another 6,000 watching his YouTube video.

Tourism Ireland said the British leg of the campaign was now under way while their own video created for social media had hit more than 60,000 views and helped generated international coverage.

They said the aim of the campaign was to “bring the island of Ireland to the attention of a new audience of gamers”, to spike their curiosity about the locations featured, and “inspire them to come and explore them in real life”.

A campaign brief, also released under Freedom of Information, said Twitch influencers would be briefed on Irish history for their live-stream.

The brief also said it would be reaching a wide audience of young people with disposable income, who love to both travel and play games.

It said it would be designed not to ask viewers to visit Ireland right now, but that it would be on their wish-list for “when the pandemic has subsided and people can go on holiday again”.