With the Olympics about to start in London, it's the perfect time for Tourism Ireland to tout its country, just a hop-skip away, as a place to escape from the Olympic crowds. To do so, they created a fun, funny, interactive video to encourage you to do just that.

To prove their premise of how hard it will be to get around in London during the Olympic madness, they set up a race between an "office boy" to go get himself a coffee and "Yer Man" to get to Ireland for a pint of beer. The voice over copy is fun and cheeky, read by Chris O'Dowd - who lobbied for the part. It a series of adventures and misadventures. All to prove the point that you can easily hop over to Ireland and relax rather than fight the madness in London.

At the end of the video, it gives the viewer a choice to "Escape the Madness" or "Embrace the Madness" and serves up an ending that offers a different tourism package, depending on your choice. Well done, Ireland. Way to tie into something hot and now and use it to make your own point.

 Tourism Ireland - Escape the Madness

Hope you enjoyed today's ad of the week. If you have a suggestion for a future ad of the week, just let us know in the comments, or drop us a line, or tweet us or Facebook us, whatever you like.

Mike McClure, yearning for an Irish pint