Past Marketing: Reflections on Two Decades’ Publication of
Irish Marketing Review
Aidan O’Driscoll
Dublin Institute of Technology
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Irish Marketing Review
Launched in 1986
Brought to market 300 articles
All island journal with 25% overseas contribution
Broad inclusive editorial policy
Strong communication and design values
Practitioner appeal
Unique relationship with professional marketing
body – The Marketing Institute of Ireland
(Print run of 4000)
Particular problems of a national journal
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Irish Marketing Review
Launched in 1986…
Perspective of two eras…
Put simply, Irish marketing has evolved from been viewed as
something of an oxymoron to being a first league player.
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Irish Marketing Review
Some Perspectives on the Irish Consumer by Darach Turley (1986)
‘Overall, the data under consideration point to the validity of viewing the
Irish as a distinct group of consumers with identifiable national traits.’
The Irish Consumer Through Irish Eyes: European Values Survey 1990
by Darach Turley (2005)
‘Results show that Ireland, although changing, is doing so very much on
its own terms. In the European value context this nation emerges as
exceptional and idiosyncratic.’
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Irish Marketing Review
Political Opinion Polling: Recent Irish Experience
by Charles M. Coyle (1987)
Marketing, Marketing Effort and Customer Loyalty in a Restricted
Environment: Irish Retail Banking by John M. Gwin (1988))
Marquis by Waterford: Creating a New International Brand
by Redmond O’Donoghue (1994)
IMR Case Study: Riverdance by Barra Cinneide (1996)
It’s Not What You Make, It’s the Way That You Say It:
Reflections
on the Design−Marketing Interface by Paul O’Sullivan (1998)
Researching the Cybermarket by John A. Murray & Eunju Ko (2002)
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Irish Marketing Review
Anatomy of a Supermarket Price War
by Jim Bell and Stephen Brown (1986)
Postmodern Marketing: Principles, Practice and Panaceas
by Stephen Brown (1993)
Nietzsche Marketing by Stephen Brown (1995)
A Beginner’s Guide to Book Reviewing by Stephen Brown (1993)
Coca Kotler: Over-Wrought, Over-Rated and Over Here
by Stephen Brown (1995)
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Irish Marketing Review
Perspectives on the New Advertising by John Fanning (1987)
European and National Identity – Whither the Marketing Services
Industry? by John Fanning (1994)
Branding: Regaining the Initiative by John Fanning (1995)
Is the End of Advertising Really All That Nigh? by John Fanning (1997)
Tell Me a Story: The Future of Branding by John Fanning (1999)
Workers of the World Unite: You Have Nothing to Lose But
Your Brands by John Fanning (2000)
Celtic Tiger, Hidden Dragons by John Fanning (2001)
Irish Advertising − Bhfuil Sé or Won’t Sé? by John Fanning (2003)
Branding and Third World Development: Does Anholt’s
Brand New Justice Make Sense? by John Fanning (2004)
What Business Can Learn from the Poetry of Thomas Kinsella
by John Fanning (2007)
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Irish Marketing Review
The Importance of Being Branded: An Irish Perspective
by John Fanning (2006), Liffey Press, Dublin.
‘Transposing Holt’s thinking on cultural branding to Ireland, land of
the eponymous Celtic Tiger, Fanning (2006) analyses six cultural
contradictions: freedom/restraint, individualism/community,
globalization/dinnseanchas,[1] affluence/affluenza, control/chaos and
conformity/creativity. He knowledgeably and imaginatively considers
how these apparently contradictory tensions may sunder Irish society
in the 21st century – and speculates on how far-seeing marketers
might advantageously ‘cultivate this schismatic core’, to use Shakar’s
(2001) phrase.’ O’Driscoll (2008)
[1] Dinnseanchas is a Gaelic language word that celebrates an intense attachment to the lore of the local; a place’s
significance is communicated and sustained through the Gaelic place name and the myth, folklore and history
associated with the place.
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Does a distinctive Irish marketing practice and voice exist?
The material published in IMR over two decades bears witness to
a changing, maturing and innovative marketing practice that has
yielded a competitive edge internationally, and also to an adaptive
consumer and workforce that have coped with significant
economic and societal change.
The story of this material reveals ambiguity, conflicting
tensions and apparent contradiction, or paradox, in its
narratives and thinking, whether between science and the arts,
local and global, Boston and Berlin, Celtic and Saxon,
mechanistic and magical, or indeed, theory and practice.
Resolving these apparent opposites in a selectively inclusive,
win-win manner seems a characteristic of the Irish psyche,
manager and consumer.
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Tyranny of ‘Either-or’…
Derrida argues that ‘logocentrism’ permeates every aspect of
Western thought, making different ways of organising or
understanding the world difficult to conceive.
He claims that Western thought is obsessed with creating reality by
organising the world into polar realms. The first of these is always
privileged in our culture, while its opposite is nullified, degraded, negated
(nature/culture, male/female, organisation/disorganisation, mental
labour/physical labour, production/consumption and so on.
Thinking in such binary, polar, opposing terms occurs, not because it
is natural or intuitive for humankind, but because it is culturally
ingrained.
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Embracing the ‘Other’…
One of Derrida’s fundamental strands of thought is that all versions of
Western thinking have tried to marginalise and suppress this sense of
the Other that exists (paradoxically) at the very heart of whatever is
seen as being the privileged, correct, rational option.
The Other, or ‘l’autre’, is a key word in Derrida’s work The Other
becomes a useful way to begin to think about the opposing pulls (such
as globalisation versus localisation) that exert their force on business
and the organisation, to consider how they interpenetrate, and how it
is impossible to separate them, even though they are given opposite
spaces in our minds.
Derrida famously remarked in his 1992 essay on Europe that: ‘What
is proper to a culture is not be identified to itself… There is no
culture or cultural identity without this difference with itself.’
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Resolving Contradiction…
Tension towards Y
Synthesis
?
Antithesis
Domain of
maximal win-win
resolutions
Tr
ad
?
e-o
f
fl
in
?
e
Thesis
Tension towards X
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Managing Ambiguity into Synthesis…
A characteristic of Irish culture ?
‘For too long and too often we speak of the others
or the other side − and what we need to do is to
get to a place of through-otherness.’
Seamus Heaney
It is noteworthy that the oft-used Irish language
expression, trí na chéile, suggests ‘trying to cope with
confusion’, yet its literal translation means ‘through
its other’, implying that a comprehension comes from
a through-otherness
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Performance
Irish Marketing Performance…
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Resolving Contradiction…
Relationship marketing
Services marketing
Brand development
Arts/entertainment marketing
E-business
Political marketing
Stephen Brown, University of Ulster
‘Many products exhibit a paradoxical essence, or
paradessence, in promising to satisfy simultaneously two
opposing consumer/buyer desires.’
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Managing Ambiguity into Synthesis…
That a resolution, particular to Ireland and the Irish,
of these tensions and paradoxes shields business and
marketing with a competitive edge internationally –
and the country’s consumers and workforce with the
necessary coping strategies – leads to the conclusion
that a distinctive Irish marketing practice and voice
exist.
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007
Past Marketing: Reflections on Two Decades’ Publication of
Irish Marketing Review
Critical marketing… recentering of the consumer
Sustainable consumption
Eco-behaviour
Citizen consumer
Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007