IDA Ireland will be competing for social network users' attention on St Patrick's Day this year via a digital tool called "Click Me I'm Irish", which invites LinkedIn members who work for US-owned multinationals and other overseas corporations to calculate how connected they are to Ireland.

Created by the IDA's communications agency, Publicis Dublin, the tool assesses the person's LinkedIn connections and comes up with a rating for the Irishness of their contacts, encouraging them to share the results on social media. "It's a light-touch way for people to see how linked they are to Ireland on St Patrick's Day," says Ed Melvin, digital strategy director at Publicis.

The company won the IDA Ireland account in 2010 and launched its first television campaign for the inward investment agency last year, using the slogan “what makes Ireland great, makes Ireland great for business”.