A soap opera plot is wooing South Africans to come to Ireland, writes Joe Humphreys in Pretoria
If a flood of South Africans shortly washes up on Irish shores looking to be plied with drink and have poetry recited to them, blame Tourism Ireland. More precisely, blame the agency's sponsorship of an Irish-based plot line in one of South Africa's top TV soap operas.
For six days this summer, Isidingo upped sticks from its Johannesburg home and relocated to Co Wicklow, "the Girdin of Oirland", as viewers were helpfully informed by the soap's new-found cast: Liam (Sam Corry, who played the gay nurse in The Clinic), and Flan (Peter Byrne).
As somewhat hammed-up Irish bachelors, the two were matched with a pair of Isidingo's principal female characters, offering a guided tour of the Emerald Isle along with a whirlwind holiday romance.
Sweet-talking Flan and Liam extolled the virtues of the countryside, explained the difference between Scotch and uisce beatha, and quoted from the works of Irish writers such as WB Yeats and JM Synge. Dublin was casually described as the best city in the world, and an overall impression was created of an island of céad míle fáiltes, flowing stout and smouldering Farrell-Brosnans in abundance.
For Irish tourism, it was the kind of publicity money couldn't buy - only money did buy it! Tourism Ireland stumped up €65,000 to cover Irish film set production costs, while flights were sponsored by Gulf Air which last year launched a Dublin-Bahrain-Johannesburg route.
Fiona Walsh, product manager for Tourism Ireland in South Africa, describes it as "very good value for money", considering €2,600 would buy just 10 seconds of air-time during an Isidingo ad break.
"The location scenes alone add up to almost 80 minutes," she says, adding that further publicity was generated by a free-holiday competition tagged to the end of the show.
Tourism Ireland funded a similar project in Germany last year, getting the country's state television company to film a pre-planned tele-drama in Ireland rather than in Cornwall.
Fiona Scott, Tourism Ireland's media manager, says it is seeking to develop the strategy further and to "apply a more structured approach to using TV/films to market Ireland in overseas markets". She adds, "Don't forget that we are marketing the island to overseas visitors. What might seem overly stereotypical to the critical Irish eye, might fulfil the dreams and tick all the boxes for an overseas visitor."