Giant, Medieval-Style Tapestry Celebrates Northern Ireland’s Connection to Game of Thrones

With fans having had to wait longer than usual, Game of Thrones season 7 is finally upon us. And, with the new season comes a brand new Tourism Ireland campaign that will showcase Northern Ireland once again as Game of Thrones Territory to millions of fans worldwide. With fewer episodes this season than ever (season 7 of Game of Thrones will be the shortest yet, with just seven episodes), Tourism Ireland’s latest campaign offers fans the chance to re-live their favourite scenes from the show all year long.

 

The campaign, created by Publicis London, in partnership with HBO, will also be rolled out by Tourism NI in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

 

This year’s campaign is bigger than ever before – featuring a giant, 77-metre long, Bayeux-style tapestry which tells the story so far from season 1 to season 6, bringing to life the trials and tribulations of the show’s characters in its most epic and famous scenes. The tapestry will be woven from one enormous piece of linen supplied by Thomas Ferguson’s in Banbridge, one of the last surviving linen mills in Northern Ireland – giving fans a chance to re-visit all the key events which led to the season 7 premiere.

As season 7 unfolds, new sections of the tapestry will be revealed each week, in the build-up to the next episode, capturing key events from the previous week. Tourism Ireland will share these new sections via social media – using a mix of cinemagraphs (“living” photographs), time-lapse videos of the weaving process, carousels and Instagram Stories – to bring the creation of the tapestry to life.

 

Each element of the campaign will drive people to a special section on Tourism Ireland’s international website, Ireland.com – where an interactive ‘Northern Ireland Game of Thrones Tapestry’ web app will allow fans to zoom in and explore the tapestry in full, reliving some of their favourite scenes from previous episodes. Fans can use the app to share those scenes with their friends, via social media, and can link to pages showing where they were filmed in Northern Ireland. They can also start to build an itinerary for their holiday to Northern Ireland.

A huge range of unforgettable Northern Ireland locations stands in for everything from Winterfell to the Iron Islands in Game of Thrones. These iconic settings ooze mystery, fantasy and the medieval – and you never know when you might stumble across a direwolf!

 

An exciting feature of the tapestry is that it will feature a hidden cameo appearance by a famous face who will appear in the show in S7. The tapestry will be hung in the Ulster Museum.

 

The campaign kicked off on Monday, July 17 and will roll out across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube in ten markets – including Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Tourism Ireland will also target its own social fanbase – posting and tweeting to its 4 million Facebook fans and more than 403,000 followers on Twitter globally.

 

It will build on the success of Tourism Ireland’s previous Game of Thrones campaigns, including the 2016 ‘Doors of Thrones’ campaign which reached an estimated 126 million people around the world, with the campaign’s various short films being viewed 17 million times, generating coverage worth about £11.3 million. The ‘Doors of Thrones’ campaign has racked up over 30 awards and accolades from the marketing and advertising industry across Europe and the United States, including three prestigious Cannes Lions awards.