For St Patrick’s Day 2019, EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum wanted to do something meaningful, which celebrated real Irishness, in line with their existing brand campaign ‘There’s More To Us Than’.
We looked at all the stereotypes attached with St Patrick’s Day, and the negative connotations. We found that the volume of plastic waste following this one day was huge. With World Recycling Day being on the 18th of March, it felt like a natural fit to tackle the issue of stereotypes through plastic tat, showing that there was more to Ireland than fake green beards, leprechaun hats, and shamrock t-shirts.
We developed an activation in the lead up to St Patrick’s Day, to encourage people to hand over their tat to receive free entry to EPIC. We launched the campaign with OOH bar wrap in the centre of Temple Bar, giving the first glimpse of the idea of St Plastic’s Day. The focus point of our campaign was an 4.5 foot by 4.5 perspex box that we left outside our museum. Passers by could leave their plastic tat in the box in exchange for tickets, allowing everyone else to see exactly how much waste we collected, that otherwise would have ended up on our streets and eventually in landfills.
Results
700,000 online impressions
70% increase in website traffic
432 tat exchanges
Visitor numbers up by 58% YOY for St. Patrick’s Day period
National coverage from:
The Irish Times
The Irish Independent
Newstalk
