Dublin Irish Festival at the Social Media Workshop

A couple of weeks ago I talked about my attendance at the fourth annual Social Media Workshop here at Ohio Northern University. Today I want to take the time to talk about one of my favorite presentations of the workshop. The presentation was delivered by Mary Jo DiSalvo and Sara O’Malley who talked about the Dublin Irish Festival and the various activities they do to promote the event every year. The Dublin Irish Festival is held right here in Dublin, Ohio the first weekend of August every year since 1988. When the festival was first established it only took up a singular tennis court, the festival now spreads across 38 acres of Dublin’s Coffman Park and is home to seven stages, 75 acts and 700 performers. The Dublin Irish Festival has become a great financial resource for the city of Dublin, creating an $8.5 million economic impact for the central Ohio region.

Last year’s festival marked the highest attendance ever with over 94,000 guests and over 1,200 volunteers at the festival. Next year the festival is expecting over 100,000 guests and even more volunteers to assist with the festival. Aside from the $8.5 million economic impact to the central Ohio region, the festival also generated over $2 million in gross revenue for the city of Dublin. Beverage sales were the highest earner for the festival with $908,000 in revenue, admissions were a close second with $627,000 in revenue and sponsorships created $288,000 in revenue. All of this money is used to throw other celebrations throughout the year as well as kickstart the next year’s Dublin Irish Festival. The Dublin Irish Festival is the single largest three-day Irish celebration in the world and is also the single greatest earning event for the city of Dublin. It has become a staple not only for the people of Dublin but for Irishman all around the country and even the world.

Part of the reason the Dublin Irish Festival has become so successful over the years is the implementation of social media into their marketing campaigns for the event. Dublin Irish Festival has over 55,000 followers on Twitter, a 365% increase of Instagram mentions since 2018 and over 42,000 Facebook fans. The festival uses these social media channels to create unique social media marketing campaigns that have earned them awareness all over the world and even a few awards for their creativity. In 2015 the festival started a social media campaign using the hashtag #JimmysJig targeted at the popular late-night TV host. The goal of this campaign was to inspire the Irish TV host to perform an Irish Jig on TV the day of St. Patrick’s Day while also build awareness for the festival and drive engagement with their social media followers. The campaign proved to be a huge success and Jimmy Fallon did end up performing an Irish jig on St. Patty’s Day and led to an increase in the festival’s social media fan base. Dublin Irish Festival was awarded the GOLD IFEA Award for “Most Creative News Stunt” which is a big deal for anyone in the advertising world. The success of #JimmysJig has led the Dublin Irish Festival to remain innovative in their social media marketing efforts and every year they are looking for ways to creatively promote the festival across various social media platforms.