Past Marketing: Reflections on Two Decades’ Publication of Irish Marketing Review

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. Irish Marketing Review Some Perspectives on the Irish Consumer byDarach 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 byDarach 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

5. Irish Marketing Review Political Opinion Polling: Recent Irish Experience byCharles M. Coyle (1987) Marketing, Marketing Effort and Customer Loyalty in a Restricted Environment: Irish Retail Banking byJohn M. Gwin (1988)) Marquis by Waterford: Creating a New International Brand byRedmond 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 InterfacebyPaul O’Sullivan (1998) Researching the Cybermarket byJohn A. Murray & Eunju Ko (2002) Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007

6. Irish Marketing Review Anatomy of a Supermarket Price War by Jim Bell and Stephen Brown (1986) Postmodern Marketing: Principles, Practice and Panaceas byStephen Brown (1993) Nietzsche Marketing byStephen Brown (1995) A Beginner’s Guide to Book Reviewing byStephen Brown (1993) Coca Kotler: Over-Wrought, Over-Rated and Over Here byStephen Brown (1995) Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007

7. 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

8. Irish Marketing Review The Importance of Being Branded: An Irish Perspectiveby 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. Resolving Contradiction… Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007

13. 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

14. Performance Saxon Celtic Irish Marketing Performance… Aidan O’Driscoll CCS Seminar at DCU 2007

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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