Following months of negotiations, Belfast Zoological Gardens (BZG) has welcomed a critically endangered dragon to Belfast Zoo. (Don’t be alarmed . . . it’s the finale of a campaign to showcase Northern Ireland to millions of ‘Game of Thrones’ TV programme fans worldwide.)
Considered all but extinct, the animal (pictured) is now being housed in a specially designed enclosure and, where possible, his prey will be sourced from outside the zoo’s own collection. The infant male currently has a wing-span of 10ft, but when fully grown his skull alone will measure up to 23ft.
Belfast Zoo manager Mark Challis said: “We’re thrilled to have such an exceptionally rare creature here at Belfast Zoo. This dragon is an important addition not only for us, but for Northern Ireland as a whole. Despite their fearsome reputation and fabled ability to burn entire cities to ashes, we’d like to reassure the residents of Belfast that our keepers have received expert training, and we’re looking forward to seeing him thrive in his new environment.”
The animatronic dragon, which is operated by two controllers, marks the culmination of a campaign by Tourism Ireland in partnership with HBO to promote Northern Ireland as the home of ‘Game of Thrones’, and capitalise on the rise of screen tourism.
Last Tuesday, June 9, was arrival day and visitors to the zoo could witness ‘dragon feeding time’ and watch the chief vet give him a check-up. Other events in the series have captured the imagination of Game of Thrones fans, with some tracking down the stunts within hours of them going live. Video clips have attracted millions of views online.
Other stunts in the campaign include:
Three-eyed ravens (pictured), replicas of those used in Game of Thrones, were seen perched on top of old-fashioned wooden signs, specially erected to point the way to some of the iconic locations around Northern Ireland where the series is filmed. And replica dragon eggs were placed among fruit and vegetables in a market stall in St George’s Market in Belfast. The eggs were ‘for sale’ to people visiting the market for the price of 125 Gold Dragons – the currency used in Game of Thrones. What customers didn’t know was that one of the eggs was controlled by remote control and proceeded to rattle and wobble around, much to their surprise!
Tourism Ireland once again joined forces with HBO and its smash hit TV series Game of Thrones, to promote Northern Ireland around the world in 2015. The campaign has run for 14 weeks in total and built on the hugely successful campaign of 2014 – which generated almost one million clicks, comments and shares and reached about 100 million fans across the world.
Timed to coincide with the return of the long-awaited fifth season of Game of Thrones, the campaign was rolled out by Tourism Ireland through Facebook and Twitter in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. It aimed to again leverage the incredible success of the HBO brand and the huge global popularity of Game of Thrones and its strong associations with Northern Ireland – the physical home of the production for the series and where much of the filming takes place.
Photos and videos were taken of the props in the various locations – and have been promoted by Tourism Ireland to some 100 million Game of Thrones fans around the world, as ‘real news’ items in the new campaign.
As well as extensive advertising on the two social media sites, Tourism Ireland has also been targeting its own active fanbase – posting and tweeting to almost three million of its Facebook fans and 270k followers on Twitter, globally. The ads direct fans to a specially-created section on Tourism Ireland’s international website, Ireland.com.
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