Kissing the Blarney Stone
Ireland is not short of castles.
In the twelfth century, they were built as fortified defensive structures by Gaelic kings or chieftains; in later neogothic or Victorian times, their purpose was more likely to be as status symbols for those with extraordinary affluence.
Estimates suggest that over three hundred castles can be found throughout the Emerald Isle– from awe-inspiring structures on the Bunglass cliffs that have survived the centuries, to those whose derelict ruins barely hint at the glories of their histories.
So, with this much choice, how is Blarney Castle – five miles outside Cork, near the southwest coast in the province of Munster – able to attract excitable tourists from across the globe to pay a visit? Why does this one castle often find it necessary to erect a sign displaying the message, “If the line reaches this point, you have an hour to wait”? For what reason will daytrippers delay their plans to spend Saturday evening in the port town of Kinsale, nursing a cold Guinness while listening to a live folk band, so they can make the detour to the outskirts of Blarney?
On a 24-hour trip to Ireland's south coast last weekend with my wife and son, I was determined to uncover the truth.
And the success of Blarney Castle carries many lessons for entrepreneurs in competitive sectors seeking to establish a unique position.
Being bizarre can be good business. Can you imagine a brainstorming workshop that decided a key element of the proposition should be an invitation to customers to ascend hundreds of uneven spiral steps up, lean backwards over the edge of the parapet (an experience which regularly triggers attacks of acrophobia amongst visitors) and kiss a small block of carboniferous limestone embedded in the outer wall? Yet this quirky, offbeat, ludicrous concept is at the heart of the Blarney Castle message.
A compelling benefit statement. Kissing the Blarney Stone is not a ritual without purpose. On the contrary, it confers life-altering benefits to those who partake. Once the kiss is completed, the kisser is (it is said) immediately imbued with the gift of eloquence. Whatever one’s background or occupation, there are few people for whom greater eloquence would not be a highly-valued capability, and the castle shop even boasts a “Gift of the Gab” collection to further monetise the allure.
Punchy branding. Credit to the marketing gurus who devised the phrase ‘Kissing the Blarney Stone’. Part description, part instruction, and so much more memorable than ‘Kissing the block of carboniferous limestone’. In fact, the Castle has achieved perhaps the ultimate aspiration of marketeers worldwide, as the brand name has evolved into a widely-used generic noun and verb, along the lines of aspirin, cellotape, hoover, teleprompter and thermos. ‘Blarney’ is described as “Talk which aims to charm, flatter, or persuade (often considered typical of Irish people)” and “Amusing and harmless nonsense” by no lesser authority than the Oxford Dictionary itself!
The power of mythology. Since the dawn of time, it's been in our nature to adore stories, and the Irish remain perhaps the world’s greatest storytellers. The origins of the Blarney stone involve goddesses, Robert the Bruce, the Battle of Bannockburn, the Crusades and international smuggling missions. Visitors who cross the castle threshold are entering a place of legends – like Atlantis, El Dorado, or Camelot, leaving behind the humdrum or the unworthy.
Celebrity endorsement. Few products in the modern age can't be made more enticing by positive comments from a World Cup winning footballer, a movie star, a million-follower YouTube, or (for brands with more modest budgets) a D-Lister fresh from Love Island. Blarney Castle was endorsed by one of the titans of the twentieth century, none other than Winston Churchill, who kissed the stone in 1912 and whose oratorical skills enraptured audiences for the next forty years. Even the Washington Post, a few weeks afterwards, had cause to recognise the power granted to the future prime minster by the stone – “Mr. Churchill is a dangerous public man, according to all the traditions, for the learned lexicographers state that he who kisses the Blarney Stone is endowed with the power ‘to blarney,’ and ‘to blarney,’ they say, is to humbug with wheedling talk so as to gain a desired end.” Even better from the perspective of the Castle’s balance sheet, Churchill’s support comes royalty-free.
Certainly, the Blarney Stone’s proposition could not be resisted by yours truly, and at a quarter past three last Saturday, I found myself in the absurd position of being lowered head first over the Castle’s battlements, and puckering up in fevered anticipation of my moment with the Stone.
Perhaps this weekend I should head to Hyde Park’s Speakers Corner, grab a soapbox, pick a topic at random from the weekend press, and – as passersby gather with their Oxford Street shopping bags – being to regale them with a few bon mots and test whether Churchillian eloquence has truly entered my soul.