The past year gave us plenty of brand news. There was the not-so-quiet launch of the Esat Digifone business and brand. A lot of money was spent on advertising the new brand, but there is a lot more to a brand than billboards, brochures and umbrellas. Customer service and pricing shape the brand too. As a brand, Esat Digifone is only in its infancy.

There was also the controversy over Brand Ireland and the shamrock. By any standards in the business of branding, this was a disaster, no matter which shamrock you prefer.

Though politics proved lethal to that branding strategy, politics embraced branding itself. The description of government as a Rainbow was branding, but the loss of the election has damaged the Rainbow brand as surely as the recall of a faulty car does to a marque.

In 1998, I hope that another Irish brand on the scale of a Baileys is born. I don't really mind if not too many people notice the very birth, so long as it grows big, healthy and strong.

Why a brand? A well-managed and developed brand offers a strategic advantage to a business. An indigenous Irish brand which is built up internationally is, I think, the most likely of all businesses to be rooted in this country and to provide the levels of employment we need from more Irish enterprises. And, let it be said, the volume of profits we should see.

Profits arising from a strong Irish brand are more likely, I would think, than those arising from back office processing, to be reinvested in higher value business activities such as research and development and marketing.

Brands are powerful communicators. They deliver higher margins and profits. When strong they can be very powerful; when mistreated, they can wither and die. Great Irish businesses will build great brands.

But brands don't please everyone. Recently in this paper, Fintan O'Toole wrote about the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York putting on an exhibition of Versace branded items, as if they were works of art. I agree, art they ain't.

But just because the museum lost its sense to crass fashion, doesn't mean that branding and the earning of higher margin and profits is always a rip-off, a form of psychological deceit and blackmail. That idea is often behind examples like Mr O'Toole's accurate instancing of children demanding their Nike trainers over Dunnes runners.

But such examples miss the point about brands. Everything about a product is included in the brand shorthand quality, price, service, delivery and, yes, image.

A newspaper like this one preciously guards its own brand. It pervades all aspects of the product. Even a columnist's picture is a form of branding within a brand. I have no doubt that some of the buyers of this newspaper are willing to pay 85p and more for it because of its brand. The very title has a value, but the brand is more than the title. A well-managed brand is shorthand for the entire business strategy in the product.

Image is only a secondary aspect of most product strategies. Pure image products which have no other differentiation from their competitors are rare. I believe that Nike tee-shirts have thicker cotton than cheap imitations. Kelloggs cornflakes are discernibly different to own-brand equivalents.

Yellow Pack beer was never probably the best anything. What troubles some people seems to be that others are prepared to pay high prices for products which give them the means to project a superior or exclusive image.

The desire to assert superiority is distasteful and morally questionable. It is not, of course, confined to the buyers of pricey fashion items, nor to artists, journalists, politicians or business people. It is part of the human condition. Permitting people to make buying decisions on such an attitude is the price of wider commercial and social freedom. By the way, no brand is guaranteed commercial success just because it seeks to trade, partially or wholly, on baser human motives.

Brands do highlight this aspect of life, but their central role is as drivers of profitability, of commercial viability and of sustainable competitive advantage.

And so I wish Ireland every branding success in the New Year and the birth of some new indigenous, international brands.

Oliver O'Connor is an investment funds specialist