EPIC's Fairytale of New York: The Christmas Social Campaign That Sent Website Visits Up Sevenfold

Every December, millions of people sing along to “Fairytale of New York”, including its famous mention of the NYPD choir and the old Irish song “Galway Bay”. Almost nobody knows the story behind it.

EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum told that story, about emigration, New York and the Irish who made the city their own. For Christmas 2024, Vroom ran the paid social campaign that brought it to Ireland and the Irish in the UK. Website visits went up sevenfold, and the campaign won Best Use of Social Media in a Search Campaign at the 2025 European Search Awards.

At a glance

• Client: EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, Dublin
• Campaign: The EPIC Untold Story Behind Fairytale of New York, December 2024, building on a first chapter in 2023
• Vroom’s role: PR and paid social strategy and management on Meta and TikTok, with audience targeting in Ireland and the UK
• Results: 67,854 landing page views, seven times EPIC’s monthly average, plus 145,000+ ThruPlays and 800,000 TikTok views
• Award: Best Use of Social Media in a Search Campaign, European Search Awards 2025

The challenge: getting noticed in December

December is the most crowded month in advertising. Every retailer, airline and charity is competing for attention, and costs rise as they do. EPIC wanted to stand out with a story rather than a sale, and reach two audiences: people in Ireland, and the Irish community in the UK, who have a deep connection to heritage but are hard to reach.

The targets were ambitious: lift landing page views from an average of around 9,100 a month to more than 50,000, at a lower cost per visit than ever, while driving more than 100,000 video views.

The idea: the NYPD choir finally sings Galway Bay

In the song, the NYPD choir sings “Galway Bay”, but in real life they never had. So EPIC made it happen. Members of the NYPD choir sang it, shared their own Irish heritage on camera, and an NYPD squad car took a “Dublin drive”. The teaser played on the song’s most famous moment, promising that the choir would finally sing it.

It turned a song everyone knows into a story about the Irish abroad, which is exactly what EPIC is about.

Watch the film: the NYPD choir sings Galway Bay. In 2024, EPIC donated €1 to the Dublin Simon Community for every view.

See the full story on EPIC’s campaign page.

How we ran it

Staggered content to keep it fresh. The teaser image launched on 4 December, choir interviews followed on 9 December, and the “Dublin Drive” video landed on 12 December. Each drop gave people a new reason to engage, all month.

Two campaigns, two jobs. One campaign was optimised for video views to build attention, the other for traffic to EPIC’s website. We A/B tested video against static images and moved budget to what worked.

Layered audiences. We reached people in Ireland interested in Irish culture, past EPIC visitors and the Irish diaspora in the UK, then retargeted website visitors and people who’d watched or engaged, using lookalike audiences to find more people like them.

The right platform for each job. TikTok delivered huge reach, but Meta drove stronger click-through rates, costs and watch times, so around 85% of the budget went to Meta.

Results

• 67,854 landing page views, seven times EPIC’s monthly average and well past the 50,000 target
• Cost per landing page view almost half the target
• 6.63% click-through rate on Meta traffic campaigns, well above typical December benchmarks
• 145,095 ThruPlays on Meta and 799,472 video views on TikTok
• 617,815 social engagements, including more than 8,100 reactions and 540 shares

The coverage

Vroom also ran the PR for both Christmas chapters. The 2023 launch reached 9.1 million people with €128,000 in advertising value. In 2024, EPIC donated to the Simon Community for every view of the choir’s video, which gave the story a second wave of coverage.

Featured by the Irish Government. The Embassy of Ireland in the USA told the story of the NYPD choir on Ireland.ie, the government’s official website, sharing the film with Irish-Americans across the US.

2023: the NYPD choir sings Galway Bay

• Ad Age (US)
• Irish Independent, with a video feature
• TheJournal.ie, JOE.ie, Hot Press and The Irish News
• Irish Star and IrishCentral (US), and The Irish Post (UK)
• RTÉ One, Nationwide, RTÉ Radio 1, Newstalk and BBC Radio 5 Live
• Decision Marketing, Mobile Marketing Magazine and LBB Online

2024: the NYPD squad car in Dublin

• Dublin Live: a donation to the Simon Community for every view
• The Irish Post and Irish America
• LADbible on Instagram
• Irish Daily Star in print, plus FM104 and Q102
• Marketing.ie, IAPI and LBB Online

Awards

• Winner, Best Use of Social Media in a Search Campaign, European Search Awards 2025
• Finalist, Best Use of Social Media in a Search Campaign, Global Search Awards 2025
• Finalist, Best Collaborative Campaign, Digital Media Awards 2024, for the 2023 chapter

Read about the win: the European Search Awards in Irish Travel Trade News.

What other brands can learn from this

1. Seasonal doesn’t have to mean sales. A great story can cut through December noise better than a discount.

2. Release content in waves. A teaser, then interviews, then the big video kept the campaign alive for a month instead of a day.

3. Go where your audience lives. The Irish in the UK are a valuable, overlooked audience for Irish brands, and precise targeting reached them at low cost.

4. Let results decide the budget. Testing early meant money moved to the platform and formats that worked.

More from our work with EPIC

See our full partnership with EPIC, the Grand Prix-winning Taylor Swift campaign, and This Is Not Us. Planning a seasonal campaign? Talk to our paid social team.