Corporate America hijacks Irish `sentiment'

St Patrick's Day in the United States is mainly about sentiment, but this year it is more than ever being used as a business opportunity, with Irishness - or at least that version of Irishness as perceived by corporate America - being hijacked by some not-so-Irish companies for marketing and advertising.

Wall Street as usual marked the St Patrick's Day holiday by going green, with brokers and traders wearing bright emerald ties, and financial commentators donning green hats and commenting about the lack of green arrows - this being the symbol used to indicate rising share values.

To mark St Patrick's Day, the New York Stock Exchange yesterday invited Mr Donal Geaney, chairman and CEO of pharmaceuticals group Elan, the biggest Irish public company on the Exchange, to ring the opening bell.

All across America, however, the shamrock and the leprechaun are being used in a battle for market share, as US companies cash in on the popularity of Irish-associated products.

In the run up to St Patrick's Day, Anheuser-Busch has been heavily promoting its new Killarney's Red Lager, a beer introduced in February which it says is "brewed with the finest malts of Ireland", but it is made in Colorado.

A "pub wisdom" advertising campaign financed by the company which makes Budweiser shows pub scenes with invented "Irish-style" sayings, such as "Never fight ugly men. They have nothing to lose."

"We are creating the sayings, they're not sayings that exist," Mr Steve Giuggio, a managing partner at Red, a Boston advertising agency contracted by Anheuser-Busch, told The Irish Times. "The idea is taken from the old Latin saying, in vino ve- ritas; there's some wonderful wise things that happen in bars and that's what we're trying to capture."

The campaign is targeting American people in supermarkets, bars and liquor stores, rather than the clientele of genuine Irish bars. "I've never heard of it," said Mr Ciaran Staunton, proprietor of O'Neill's on New York's 3rd Avenue, where the most popular drinks are Guinness and Harp.

Killarney's Red is also aimed at taking market share from Killian's Irish Red, also made in Colorado and described by its maker, Coors Brewing, as a "traditional lager with an authentic Irish heritage". Coors is promoting Killian's with a $17 million (€19.06 million) sweepstake for St Patrick's Day, according to the New York Times.

Also heavily promoting Irishness is Bennigan's Grill and Tavern, a US chain of more than 270 restaurants which is part of Metromedia, a "multiconcept table-service restaurant group". Bennigans, which offers American food but "Irish-American hospitality", is spending $10 million on a campaign which promotes a "Blarney Blast" on St Patrick's Day.

Its advertisements show diners toasting each other with "a hearty Slainte" surrounded by the "indomitable Irish spirit" as they tuck into "Soup Shenanigans" "St Paddy's Sandwiches" and "Gaelic Grills".