Knowing what it means to be Irish : cultural identity and the production of Irish advertising

Abstract

While advertising has long fascinated researchers in the social sciences, the majority of studies undertaken in this field have focused on consumer receptivity and interpretation, while generally ignoring the production of these commercial texts. This work follows a recent shift towards examining the social processes, occupational cultures and work-based identities of practitioners in the 'culture industries'. This dissertation draws a sample from among the winners of the 'Irish Television Series' category of the Irish creative advertising awards, or 'Shark Awards', between 1995 and 2005 i.e. during the period of the 'Celtic Tiger'. From this ten-year sample, I construct three case studies detailing the production of four award-winning advertising campaigns (two for Heineken, one for Today FM and one for Smithwick's ale). In undertaking what I refer to as 'constructivist grounded research' (a derivative of 'grounded theory'), this research employs a variety of qualitative data collection methods of which in-depth, topic-orientated interviews are foremost.