The problem with alcohol advertising

Given the potential strong impact influencers might have, it is important to understand their portrayal of alcoholposts on social media. In addition, influencers are very popular among children and many influencers have minors as followers . In fact, it has been shown that more than one-third of 14–17 year olds look deliberatively for influencer accounts when they are looking for product information .

Among the top 25 “non-compliant” alcohol brands were Hennessy, Disaronno, Jagermeister and Diageo’s Smirnoff vodka and Captain Morgan rum. Diageo North America has slammed what it calls a “biased and shoddy” report which claims American youths are being increasingly exposed to alcohol advertising. Restrictions and regulations on marketing can reduce impulse purchasing or over-purchasing, as well as protecting those who are vulnerable to harm, such as children and people in recovery.

• So it is perhaps unsurprising that the ASA’s studies report over 99% compliance of advertisements across all media with the BCAP Code.
• Explore youth drinking patterns, norms and risky behaviours including sexual violence.
• CAMY found that in the period, youths were exposed to non-compliant alcohol advertising 3.9bn times, meaning approximately one out of every eight alcohol advertisements were seen by underage viewers.
• Over three-quarters of Brits want laws to limit the exposure of children and young people to alcohol advertising amid record alcohol deaths across the country.
• The drinks company was also rapped for the youth-orientated feel of the creative, with the ASA drawing particular attention to the use of ‘X Factor’ celebrities, because of the show’s particular appeal among teenagers.

The alcohol death toll is highest among older, heavier drinkers whose intake increased under the strain of the covid-19 crisis. Stopping alcohol marketing to under-18s could help curb future problems. “If Jernigan is correct, and underage exposure to advertising is indeed going up, then one might reasonably conclude that increased exposure is then leading to decreased use,” he said.

For instance, both tobacco and alcohol companies have used mascots in advertisements. The drinks company was also rapped for the youth-orientated feel of the creative, with the ASA drawing particular attention to the use of ‘X Factor’ celebrities, because of the show’s particular appeal among teenagers. The paper “Do UK television advertisements abide by the Code of Broadcast Advertising rules regarding the portrayal of alcohol? ” by Rebecca Searle; Daisy Alston and David P. French is published in the Journal Alcohol and Alcoholism.

The problem with alcohol advertising

This is where indirect references to brands through the use of colours, fonts and slogans are used – most noticeably seen sports sponsorship. A study of the 2016 UEFA tournament found that 123 instances of alcohol marketing on average in each match broadcast, with 91% of these being alibi marketing. Neither young people nor media professionals believed that health-related messages about alcohol are newsworthy or of entertainment value. Providing realistic representations of drinking on television is difficult in an industry that primarily aims to entertain.

As such, he suggests CAMY should in fact advocate increasing youth exposure to alcohol ads. Young people’s voices are important in the debate around harmful use of alcohol, and young people can play a role in educating eco sober house rating peers and challenging social norms that can be harmful for their generation. More generally, the harmful use of alcohol is responsible for 6% of all deaths globally and contributes to over 200 diseases.

Overall, 75% of participants rated each of the adverts as breaching at least one rule from the BCAP Code. Television advertising of alcohol products must comply with the BCAP Code – the Advertising Standards Authority’s Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice Code. But, until our survey, there has been no impartial study examining the success of the BCAP Code and whether advertisements abide by it. “Limits on the marketing can help prevent young people’s relationship with alcohol being influenced by advertising,” said Richard McVey of Aquarius, which helps young people with alcohol and other drug problems.

How Many and How Often Do Influencers Post About Alcohol?

For example, alcohol companies will ask supermarkets to stack beers “away from the beer fixture to drive impulse purchase”. Marketing of alcohol, like the marketing of other products, can be regulated. Rules can restrict both the content of marketing ads and materials, and where and when the marketing can be displayed.

In France, the government’s ‘Loi Evin’, introduced in 1991, comprehensively restricts the content and placement of alcohol marketing. It includes a ban on television and cinema adverts, a ban on cultural events sponsorship, and limits the content to factual information only. However, even with this law, there are ways for the alcohol industry to circumvent the rules through ‘alibi marketing’.

‘The association of alcohol and tobacco advertising exposure and adolescent perceptions, knowledge of, and use of these substances are remarkably similar,’ said Lead author Dr Michael Weitzman, a pediatrician at New York University. As ads move increasingly online, marketers are reminded that they should make use of any and all available age-gating tools and technology, along with any available data, to ensure that they’ve targeted an ad appropriately. In 2019, Heineken was able to successfully evidence that their ad was appropriately targeted, because they had data to show the influencer they had used did not have a following of more than 25% under 18s . See our CAP guidance onChildren & Age Restricted Ads Onlinefor more information. Get the latest creative jobs in advertising, media, marketing and digital delivered directly to your inbox each day. Maxxium defended itself by providing photographic ID of the age of the models and acknowledged that one of the models was two weeks short of her 25th birthday at the time of the shoot, but turned 25 before the campaign went live.

Influence of the media and celebrities on young people’s alcohol use

Users of SNS indirectly market alcoholic drinks on behalf of the industry by creating unofficial ‘advertisements’ depicting product images, logos and links to brands’ official websites. Social media are therefore providing young people with the opportunity to transmit social norms around alcohol to their peers. Furthermore, it was coded what type of alcoholic drink was shown (e.g., beer; wine; spirits; cocktails; 0% alcohol) and how many likes and comments a post received. Social media marketing is particularly unregulated, because it is so new.

Our rulings are a transparent record of our policy on what is and isn’t acceptable in ads.

• For example, alcohol companies will ask supermarkets to stack beers “away from the beer fixture to drive impulse purchase”.
• Research shows underage drinkers are more than five times more likely to buy alcohol after seeing it advertised on TV.
• Four main results were found in a first study among students (18–25 years).
• In the UK, the total annual expenditure on alcohol advertising is around £200 million, of which about £100 million is spent on television advertisements.

Television advertising of alcohol is subject to what should be strong content controls. Regulations ban advertisements from implying that alcohol can contribute to popularity or confidence, or that it is capable or changing mood, physical condition or behaviour. The industry is supposed to use television advertising to promote brands, not to enlarge the size of the market. CAMY found that in the period, youths were exposed to non-compliant alcohol advertising 3.9bn times, meaning approximately one out of every eight alcohol advertisements were seen by underage viewers. STRIVE partners conducted a multi-country study better understand young people’s use of alcohol and examine the structural factors that might influence this, including the media, social norms, marketing and the accessibility of alcohol. Currently, the only one of these which is in place in England and Wales are the rules on the content of marketing materials.

Alcohol: Targeting and Appeal to Under 18s

The authors conclude that the media can help to set ‘healthy’ norms for drinking behaviour. However, policies to restrict media representations of alcohol need to be part of wider strategies involving families, friends and media professionals. Promoting better understanding of how and why alcohol messages are presented may help to improve young people’s health literacy and reduce alcohol-related problems. Out of these branded posts, 50 posts showed a clear alcohol brand in the photo, 10 posts only had the brand name in the header or hashtag, and 15 posts had the brand in both the picture and the text. ‘Just as tobacco advertising causes teen smoking, exposure to alcohol ads causes teens to drink. In terms of targeting, the Code prohibits alcohol ads from being directed at under-18s through the selection of media, style of presentation, content or context in which they appear.

• “If Jernigan is correct, and underage exposure to advertising is indeed going up, then one might reasonably conclude that increased exposure is then leading to decreased use,” he said.
• There is a clear need to strengthen the rules, argues Professor David French.
• Where negative consequences of drinking are shown, these are often extreme, and thus young people may easily reject them as not being relevant to their lives.
• Research has found that alcohol companies are often reliant on heavy drinkers for their profits and will target their advertising towards younger drinkers to encourage them to become the “heavy-using loyalists of tomorrow”.

These positive and social posts are likely to enhance the perception that drinking alcohol is normal and “fun,” and consequently may encourage alcohol use. This is in line with classical theories, such as the two-step flow theory and the diffusion of innovations theory (Lazarsfeld et al., 1944; Katz, 1957; Rogers, 1983), suggesting that messages are spread through processes of interpersonal communication. Furthermore, this is in line with both social norms theory and social learning theory (Bandura and Walters, 1977; Perkins and Berkowitz, 1986; Berkowitz, 2004).

Rather than emulating celebrities depicted drinking to excess, young people tended to dislike them. The alcohol industry is targeting kids on social media and during soaps and other popular TV shows, according to the study. However, the ASA decided to ban the ad after ruling that the campaign breached ad rules that state people in alcohol advertising have to appear to be over the age of 25. These results suggest that the UK alcohol and advertising industries design advertisements that do not appear to comply with the letter or the spirit of the BCAP code. Many adverts allude to themes such as youth culture, immoderation and social and sexual success, albeit indirectly. Our research asked the general public to be arbiters on whether television advertising used any of the concepts banned by the regulations.

Social norms theory describes that behavior is based on people’s perceptions of how others behave and what they approve of, and similarly social learning theory suggests that behavior can be learned from observing others. Both theories would seem to suggest that seeing alcoholposts on social media leads to the perception that others are also doing it (i.e., descriptive norms) and approve of it (i.e., injunctive norms; Cialdini and Trost, 1999). Importantly, studies confirm that not only posting, but also seeing, alcoholposts can increase alcohol use (Geusens et al., 2019). First, our first study was conducted among older adolescents and young adults. Therefore, the influencers we analyzed might differ slightly from those influencers popular among minors. However, as already argued, based on a previous pilot study , we can be quite certain that several of the influencers we studied have a fair share of minors among their followers.

Where negative consequences of drinking are shown, these are often extreme, and thus young people may easily reject them as not being relevant to their lives. As a result of predominantly encountering extremes of drinking, young people may discount the potential consequences of their own drinking. Although their own drinking may appear relatively less harmful than media depictions, it may still have negative health and social impacts.

Four main results were found in a first study among students (18–25 years). First, the majority of influencers (i.e., 63.5%) posted about alcohol recently. Second, these alcoholposts were mostly posted by lifestyle influencers, were positive, and showed a social context.

More than half the advertisements were regarded as implying that drinking alcohol contributes to drinkers’ popularity or confidence and that alcohol is capable of changing mood, physical condition or is nourishment. Researchers surveyed 373 adults, aged 18 to 74 years, and showed each of them one of seven adverts that had been broadcast in the previous month on leading commercial television channels. Most people did not accept that the advertisements met their regulatory obligations.

Alcohol advertising is widespread and aggressively promoted in South Africa and Tanzania, with some messages explicitly targeting youth and others playing on notions of masculinity. In India, alcohol advertising and promotion through sponsorship normalised alcohol as an aspirational eco sober house review lifestyle, which was reinforced by peer and family influences. Youth-targeted output (e.g. magazines and soap operas) was viewed as having a responsibility to convey educational messages to audiences and raise awareness about health and social issues, such as alcohol use.

A descriptive mixed methods study, the research made use innovative use of photovoice and Geographical Information System mappingof alcohol outlets. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be https://sober-house.net/ construed as a potential conflict of interest. In addition, both industries have used movies, television and sporting events as opportunities for advertising and product placement. The same techniques were used by tobacco companies to lure young smokers, warn scientists.