Although “Standard English” in terms of accent was never an exonormative model for speakers in Ireland (Hickey 2012), nevertheless Ireland’s history of colonization by Britain, together with the geographical proximity and close socio-political and sociocultural connections of the two countries makes the Irish context an interesting one in which to explore this phenomenon. This inquiri explores how and to what extent standard British Received Pronunciation (RP), now termed Standard Southern British English (SSBE) (see Hughes et al. 2012) as opposed to Irish English varieties is employed in radio advertising in Ireland. The inquiry draws from a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a corpus of ads broadcast on an Irish radio station in the years 1977, 1987, 1997 and 2007. The use of SSBE in the ads is explored in terms of referee design (Bell 1984) which has been found to be a helpful concept in clarifying variety choice in the advertising context and in “taking the ideological temperature” of society (Vestergaard and Schroder 1985).