Pure Cork and Fáilte Ireland

The Challenge

Cork offers some of the best food, adventure, and coastal experiences in Ireland, but they sit across three of Fáilte Ireland's regional brands: the Wild Atlantic Way, Ireland's Ancient East, and Ireland's Hidden Heartlands.

Pure Cork and Fáilte Ireland wanted to show visitors that Cork is a place you do, not just see. That meant creating new content with 16 local tourism businesses, then launching it in a way every partner could own and share.

The brief had two parts. First, produce high-quality video and photography that told each business's story. Second, plan and help deliver a launch that would make the content work hard for the businesses, the county, and the national brands at the same time.

Experience Cork Hero Video

Pure Cork Project - Photography Examples

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The Solution

Bua worked with Pure Cork and Fáilte Ireland's regional teams across both phases of the project.

For the content phase, Bua led the content commissioning and brought in our long-standing creative partners, Islander Productions. We have worked with Islander on destination projects across the west of Ireland, including Fáilte Ireland's Gaeilge & Fáilte programme, and their storytelling instinct was the right fit for a campaign about doing rather than seeing.

Bua wrote the creative brief, managed the 16 participating businesses and coordinated the shoots with Islander, from Cork city and the harbour out to West Cork and the islands. Together we produced a hero campaign film, a film for each business and a full photography library, all shaped around the real people and experiences behind each business.

For the launch phase, Bua wrote the integrated communications strategy and roadmap for the Experience Cork campaign. This set out how the new assets would be launched, shared and measured across Pure Cork, Fáilte Ireland and the businesses themselves.

We designed and delivered a workshop with the participating businesses ahead of launch, giving every partner a clear asset guide, ready-to-use captions and a posting plan.

We built the Meta advertising strategy, supported the PR and digital activity with the Pure Cork team and the local PR agency, developed the content calendar and set up the measurement framework used to report results.

The campaign launched on 24 March 2026 with the tagline “Don't just visit Cork. Experience it”.

Pure Cork Campaign - Wild Atlantic Way West Cork Edit

Gaillimh | Galway New Visual Identity

Results

Over the campaign's six weeks, from 24 March to 7 May 2026:

  • Close to 450,000 views of the campaign films across Pure Cork's channels, the 16 businesses and partner organisations

  • 170,618 paid video views at around €0.01 per view

  • All 16 businesses posted campaign content, generating 202,775 views of their own

  • 24 pieces of press coverage across broadcast, print and online, reaching an estimated 532,000 people (AVE €13,747)

  • More than 40,000 in reach from partner shares

  • 1,514 new followers across Pure Cork's social channels, and a launch email with a 22.3% open rate and 7.5% click-through rate, both above the tourism average

Businesses reported a real lift. Wild Atlantic Glamping's own film reached 70,000 views, and the business saw website traffic rise by 165% along with seven direct bookings. Cape Clear Ferries had its afternoon sailings fully booked for the first time.

"The quality of content in our media bank off the back of this campaign is invaluable to us." Ballyhass Adventure Centre

"The high-quality imagery made a significant impact on my website, adding a strong sense of professionalism and a real premium feel throughout." Wild Atlantic Glamping

Each business now has its own library of film and photography to use in future seasons, and the content is available to Fáilte Ireland for national campaigns.

A project like this only works with the right clients. We want to thank the Fáilte Ireland Cork team and the Pure Cork team for their imagination and courage. Bringing 16 businesses and three regional brands together under one county story was ambitious, and they backed it fully from the first workshop to launch day. It was a privilege to be part of it.