Think about the credibility of getting participants to cut up pieces of magazine images in order to get at the personalities of brands such as All Gold and Dairy Box. How does research like this allow the researcher to explore how a brand expresses itself? Has role-play as a means to exploring ways of segmenting markets and developing brand personalities any credibility? Has clay modelling as an exploratory tool any credibility either? These techniques and the use of psychodrawings in terms of innermost properties of the brand and outer properties and the ideal Guinness drinker are at least interesting, but what are the kinds of problems that will arise when it comes to the analysis of findings?

Culture, branding and communication can combine to create potent meaning.

Waterford’s use of Irishness, now that the image of the Irish is positive not negative, is instinctive. Think of Waterford crystal in simple semiotic terms. What is the difference between a literal meaning and a constructed meaning for the Waterford brand? What kind of constructed image is being sent by a (newly)

constructed sender to a newly constructed receiver, in a newly constructed world in Waterford’s case? Think about the added dimension of a new age Irishness (itself constructed from tradition, heritage and modernity) in terms of meaning for the Waterford brand.