Alcohol Marketing: Explained
Summary
TLDRThe script discusses the pervasive nature of alcohol marketing and its detrimental effects, particularly on young people and vulnerable groups. It highlights the World Health Organization's recommendation for comprehensive bans on alcohol marketing due to its role in normalizing alcohol consumption and contributing to health issues. The script also addresses the industry's tactics, such as targeting women and the LGBTQ+ community, and the need for international regulation to curb the impact of digital marketing.
Takeaways
- 🚫 Alcohol marketing is pervasive and can influence drinking habits, particularly among young people and vulnerable groups.
- 🔗 There is a clear link between alcohol marketing and increased drinking among youth, as evidenced by longitudinal studies.
- 🧠 Alcohol affects the developing brain, and marketing can encourage early initiation of drinking habits.
- 📉 Despite advertising codes, the ubiquity of alcohol ads makes it hard for minors to avoid exposure.
- 📈 The growth of social media and digital marketing has complicated regulation and increased public health concerns.
- 🌐 The World Health Organization recommends comprehensive bans on alcohol marketing due to its impact on health.
- 🚭 Alcohol marketing can trigger relapses in individuals recovering from alcohol use disorders.
- 👥 Marketing often intersects with gender norms, targeting women and reinforcing stereotypes through various strategies.
- 🏃♀️ Alcohol brands use sports sponsorship to associate their products with high achievement and healthy lifestyles.
- 💰 Alcohol companies are among the largest marketers globally, spending billions on marketing to maintain their market position.
- 🏛 The current self-regulatory system for alcohol marketing is complex and often ineffective, failing to protect public health.
Q & A
What is the annual global death toll attributed to alcohol consumption?
-Alcohol consumption is responsible for approximately three million deaths worldwide each year.
How does alcohol marketing influence societal norms and behavior?
-Alcohol marketing influences societal norms by creating an environment that normalizes alcohol consumption, making it seem normal, desirable, and even part of a healthy lifestyle.
What is the World Health Organization's stance on alcohol marketing?
-The World Health Organization recommends comprehensive bans on alcohol marketing due to its impact on public health.
How does alcohol marketing affect children and young people?
-Alcohol marketing can lead to earlier initiation of drinking among young people and increase the likelihood of them becoming higher risk drinkers.
What is the Bradford Hill criteria, and how does it relate to alcohol marketing and young people's drinking?
-The Bradford Hill criteria are used in epidemiology to determine causality. Public health colleagues have applied these criteria to conclude that exposure to alcohol marketing has a causal role in young people's drinking.
How prevalent is alcohol marketing, and where can it be commonly found?
-Alcohol marketing is ubiquitous, appearing at sports matches, on TV screens, online, at bus stops, and on billboards.
What concerns do health groups have about the impact of alcohol marketing on vulnerable groups?
-Health groups are concerned that alcohol marketing targets children and reinforces harmful gender stereotypes, which can contribute to normalized alcohol consumption and related health issues.
How does the growth of social media and digital marketing affect alcohol advertising?
-The growth of social media and digital marketing has led to a significant shift in how alcohol companies advertise, with concerns about the blurring lines between advertising and content, as well as the use of algorithmic marketing and retargeting.
What is the role of alcohol marketing in reinforcing gender norms and stereotypes?
-Alcohol marketing often uses gender stereotypes to target women, promoting the idea that alcohol consumption is essential to social roles, relaxation, and empowerment.
How does alcohol marketing intersect with sports sponsorship?
-Alcohol brands sponsor many high-profile sporting events, which exposes a large number of children to alcohol marketing and can associate alcohol with high achievement and healthy lifestyles.
What are some recommendations for improving the regulation of alcohol marketing to reduce harm?
-Recommendations include enacting and enforcing bans or comprehensive restrictions on exposure to alcohol advertising across multiple media types and developing an international framework for alcohol control.
Outlines
🍻 Alcohol Marketing's Impact on Society
This paragraph discusses the pervasive nature of alcohol marketing and its negative effects on public health. It highlights the need for extensive marketing due to alcohol's harmful health impacts, including carcinogenic properties and links to over 200 diseases and injuries. The World Health Organization's recommendation for a comprehensive ban on alcohol marketing is mentioned, emphasizing the failure of current regulatory structures. The paragraph also addresses concerns from health groups about the influence of marketing on children and vulnerable groups, and how it creates social norms that normalize and encourage alcohol consumption. Evidence of a link between alcohol marketing and young people's drinking habits is presented, with longitudinal studies showing increased exposure leads to higher likelihood of drinking. The paragraph concludes with the assertion that alcohol marketing plays a causal role in young people's drinking and can negatively affect brain development.
🚫 The Ubiquity of Alcohol Advertising
Paragraph 2 delves into the omnipresence of alcohol advertising and its unintended consequences on minors and young adults. It points out that despite advertising codes aiming to prevent targeting of minors, the sheer volume of alcohol ads makes it impossible for children to avoid exposure. The paragraph discusses the relationship between underage drinking and the likelihood of future alcohol problems, which are linked to positive expectations of alcohol use—expectations that marketing aims to foster. It also raises concerns about product placement, especially in media consumed by younger audiences, and the rise of social media and digital marketing, which have blurred the lines between advertising and content. The paragraph highlights the World Health Organization's call for more effective regulation due to the increasing targeting of young people and heavy drinkers by alcohol advertising. It also touches on how alcohol marketing can trigger relapses in individuals recovering from alcohol problems and the influence of marketing on gender norms and stereotypes.
🏆 Sports Sponsorship and Alcohol Marketing
Paragraph 3 focuses on the intersection of alcohol marketing and sports sponsorship, examining how marketers leverage the emotional connection fans have with sports to promote alcohol products. It criticizes the inappropriateness of associating alcohol brands with elite sports and healthy lifestyles, given the health risks associated with alcohol consumption. The paragraph discusses the significant marketing expenditures by alcohol companies, their role in creating and maintaining market monopolies, and the barriers to entry they create for competitors. It also addresses the argument that alcohol advertising is justified because alcohol is a legal product, and the industry's reliance on marketing to replace customers lost to alcohol-related deaths. The paragraph concludes with a critique of self-regulation within the alcohol marketing industry, suggesting that it is a conflict of interest and calling for stronger, external regulation to protect public health.
📢 The Failures of Self-Regulation in Alcohol Marketing
This paragraph scrutinizes the self-regulation of alcohol marketing, particularly in the UK, and finds it lacking in effectiveness. It points out that self-regulation often results in superficial changes without addressing the root causes of public health harm caused by alcohol marketing. The paragraph discusses the role of the Advertising Standards Authority and the Portman Group in maintaining a status quo that is deemed inadequate by public health standards. It provides specific examples of how self-regulation fails, such as the Portman Group's decision regarding the Captain Morgan brand, which was deemed not to appeal to children despite clear associations with piracy. The paragraph also highlights the inadequacy of current regulations, which allow for significant exposure of children to alcohol marketing during sporting events. It concludes with recommendations from the World Health Organization for comprehensive restrictions on alcohol advertising and calls for an international framework to regulate digital alcohol marketing.
🌐 The Need for International Regulation of Alcohol Marketing
Paragraph 5 emphasizes the global nature of the problem posed by alcohol marketing and the need for international regulation. It discusses how alcohol marketing normalizes and encourages consumption, creating an environment that views alcohol use as positive and normal, despite the significant health risks. The paragraph counters industry arguments against marketing restrictions by asserting that constant exposure to alcohol marketing influences decision-making and can restrict consumer choice. It also addresses how marketing targets specific groups, such as women and sexual and gender minorities, potentially reinforcing harmful stereotypes. The paragraph concludes by stating that governments have a responsibility under international law to protect and promote health by reducing alcohol consumption and harm, and it encourages viewers to seek more information on the topic from provided resources.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Alcohol Marketing
💡World Health Organization
💡Longitudinal Studies
💡Bradford Hill Criteria
💡Product Placement
💡Algorithmic Marketing
💡Gender Norms
💡Sexualisation
💡Sports Sponsorship
💡Self-Regulation
💡Human Rights
Highlights
Alcohol marketing is pervasive and influences drinking habits.
Alcohol is linked to over 200 diseases and injury conditions.
Alcohol marketing affects societal norms, making alcohol consumption seem normal and desirable.
There's a clear link between alcohol marketing and young people's drinking habits.
Alcohol marketing can have a causal role in young people's drinking.
Alcohol affects the developing brain, and marketing can encourage early initiation.
Despite advertising codes, children are frequently exposed to alcohol marketing.
Underage drinking is related to positive expectations of alcohol use, which marketing encourages.
Product placement in media can increase the risk of alcohol use among young people.
Social media and digital marketing present new challenges for regulating alcohol advertising.
Alcohol marketing can trigger relapse in people recovering from alcohol use disorders.
Alcohol marketing intersects with gender norms and stereotypes.
Alcohol brands target women with messages that reinforce gender stereotypes.
Alcohol marketing is increasingly targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
Sexualized marketing in nightlife venues can impact women's safety and societal attitudes towards women.
Alcohol sponsorship of sports events exposes children to alcohol marketing.
Alcohol companies are among the largest marketers globally, spending billions on marketing.
Alcohol marketing not only sells products but also maintains oligopoly power in the market.
Self-regulation of alcohol marketing is fraught with conflict of interest.
Alcohol marketing restrictions are seen as a human rights issue.
The World Health Organization recommends bans on alcohol marketing.
Alcohol marketing normalizes and reinforces positive expectations of alcohol use.
Governments have a responsibility to regulate alcohol marketing to protect public health.
Transcripts
When you have a product that kills three million people a year worldwide,
is carcinogenic, and is associated with more than 200 disease and
injury conditions in the human body, you need to do a lot of marketing.
Alcohol marketing is all around us.
At our favourite sports matches, on our TV screens, online, at
bus stops and on billboards.
It affects what we think and how we drink, nudging us to drink
more and during more occasions.
But how does it reach us?
Why are current regulatory structures failing to deal with a growing problem?
Why does the World Health Organization recommend comprehensive bans on alcohol
marketing, and what can be done to protect the most vulnerable in society
from being bombarded by alcohol ads?
Behind alcohol marketing's glamorous promotions lie a number of major
concerns from health groups about the impact of alcohol marketing on
children and vulnerable groups, as well as how marketing creates and
sustains social norms that alcohol consumption is normal and desirable.
For decades, evidence has demonstrated a link between alcohol marketing
and young people's drinking.
Well, we have the most research on what the effects are on young people,
and here the evidence is clear.
We have numerous, uh, at least 26 at last count, longitudinal studies.
That have followed groups of young people over time, looked at their drinking and
their marketing exposure at baseline and at various points along the way.
What these studies have all tended to find is that the more exposed kids
are, the more likely they are to drink, or if already drinking to drink more.
And some of my public health colleagues applied what in public health in
epidemiology is known as The Bradford Hill criteria for determining
causality to this body of evidence.
They concluded that this alco this exposure to alcohol marketing actually has
a causal role in young people's drinking.
The other important thing that's happening is alcohol affects the brain.
And it affects it most in certain ways when it is under development.
So, the general finding from the public health literature has been, in terms
of young people and alcohol, we want to delay initiation as long as possible.
Alcohol marketing has the opposite effect.
The more exposed kids are, the more likely they are to initiate.
Although advertising codes prohibit targeting of minors, the ubiquity
of alcohol advertising means that children can hardly miss it.
A recent study found over 80 percent of 11 to 19 year olds in the UK recalled
exposure to alcohol marketing in the previous month and those with more
awareness of alcohol marketing were more likely to be higher risk drinkers.
There is also evidence that underage drinking and the likelihood of alcohol
problems in later life are closely related to positive expectations
of benefits from alcohol use.
Precisely the expectations that marketing is designed to encourage.
Product placement is particularly worrying with regards to targeting children, as
exposure to alcohol use in films and TV is linked to higher risk of alcohol
use and alcohol related problems.
Many reality TV shows, which are frequently watched by younger
audiences, contain alcohol imagery.
The growth in social media and digital marketing has led to a sea
change in recent decades regarding how alcohol companies advertise, with
growing concerns for public health.
Alcohol companies have formed alliances with social media giants, blurring the
lines between advertising and content.
By 2011, alcohol producer Diageo had announced that its partnership with
Facebook involved unprecedented levels of interaction and joint business planning.
Concerns aren't limited to social media, with algorithmic marketing and retargeting
presenting a real public health issue.
This marketing technique presents advertising to digital users based
on their interests such as what they interact with, the words they type,
and the content they sign up to.
This is particularly concerning for people in recovery who could be served
alcohol marketing after searching for phrases with the word alcohol in it.
Public health groups and regulators are often many steps behind the
alcohol and marketing industries.
Trying to play catch up with a fast evolving industry hidden behind targeted,
individualized digital marketing.
That is why a World Health Organization report in 2022 on cross border
marketing stated that there is a “need for more effective regulation”,
especially due to “young people and heavy drinkers being increasingly
targeted by alcohol advertising”.
It has also been shown that alcohol marketing can be a trigger for relapse,
with many people in recovery highlighting how it is impossible to avoid it.
So, the cues that we see in alcohol marketing that make all of us feel like we
want a drink or to think, “oh, that looks nice and tasty, nice and cold”,
they are much more vulnerable to that, much more responsive to it.
So, we see that from neuroimaging studies, parts of the brain are stimulated in
a different and more significant way in people who have had a drink problem or are
currently experiencing a drink problem.
But people who are in recovery tell us themselves about how much alcohol
marketing influences them, particularly in the early stages of recovery.
So people talk about the retail environment and how difficult it is even
to get the bare essentials of shopping,
without being confronted with large and attractive displays of alcohol.
Alcohol marketing also has a clear intersection with perceived
gender and gender norms.
Women around the world are targeted through a range of strategies such
as the creation of products aimed at women, using lifestyle messages
that reinforce gender stereotypes, offering feminine accessories,
and using messages of empowerment.
Alcohol brands present alcohol to women as essential to the various
social roles and contexts that they occupy in contemporary society.
So for example, alcohol use is presented as essential to
female friendship and bonding.
As a reward and a way to relax after a hard day parenting
or a hard day in the office.
As well as important to women's independence and sense of empowerment.
Gender stereotypes are also used and brands promote themselves
through connotations of appearance, beauty, as well as slimness.
And brands are increasingly promoted by focusing on the calorie content in
a way that might promote diet culture.
Now in recent years, brands have begun to move beyond the gender
binary of male and female to target a broader range of genders.
And this is important as it's a way for them to stay relevant within a society and
youth culture in which gender is regarded as much more than male and female.
And increasingly they're targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
Whether it be associations between alcohol use, beer and sports such
as football, the pinking of products to appeal to more traditionally
girly women, making associations between the consumption of brands and
relieving the stresses of motherhood, or endorsing events such as Pride.
Brands regularly use gender connotations to try to appeal
to and target the everyday lives and identities of consumers.
Marketing in the nighttime environment is often highly sexualised, using women's
bodies and sexualities, for example, through photographs of female patrons.
There are concerns that such content normalises the objectification
and sexualisation of women, and as a result, may impact on
attitudes towards and treatment of women within society as a whole.
For instance, encouraging unwanted sexual attention, male entitlement to
women's bodies, or even rape culture.
Now, whilst brands have moved away from objectification and sexualisation
due to a fear of alienating female consumers, venues seem to have
become particularly sexualised.
For example, sexualised entertainment is now the norm, such as, you know, the use
of shot girls, the use of podium dancers.
Now, this is all valid work, but it's essential that we ensure that women
working in these roles are safe when at work, and research I've conducted
found that many regard unwanted sexual attention from male customers as the norm.
Speaking to women who frequent and participate in these type of venues,
they suggested that sexualised marketing that objectifies and
sexualises women actually impacts on how safe they feel in nightlife venues.
Sports sponsorship is another area of contention.
Many high profile sporting events broadcast in the UK are
sponsored by alcohol brands.
So in football, the FA Cup, World Cup and Champions League, in rugby,
the World Cup and Six Nations, and in motor racing, Formula One.
There was a major sea change in alcohol, in the mid 20th
century, in Western countries.
Here in the US, the big change came when the tobacco company,
Philip Morris, bought Miller Beer.
In the mid 1970s, and they brought everything they learned about marketing
tobacco to the marketing of alcohol.
Suddenly, alcohol marketing was everywhere.
Prior to that, we didn't have alcohol being marketed in conjunction with
practically every sporting event.
But the story is that the head of Anheuser Busch, August Busch III,
took the book of 6,000 sporting events that happen in the US
each year, threw it across the table at his marketing people and said: “Buy this”.
High numbers of children will be exposed to alcohol sponsorship
while watching these events.
This has led to major medical and public health institutions in the UK calling
for a ban on alcohol sports sponsorship.
Bans are already in place in France and Norway and in 2018 the Republic of
Ireland introduced a law restricting alcohol advertising at sports events,
and sponsorship of driving or racing events.
Marketers use the connection people have with sports and sports teams
as a way to push their products.
So we're really emotionally invested in it
and that's what the marketers are
taking advantage of, is that heightened emotional state, that kind of,
connection to our teams and our players, but also simply the level of exposure.
I mean, there's barely a second of the match where it isn't visible.
There's something for me that's particularly inappropriate about
associating alcohol brands with elite sports, high
achievement, healthy lifestyles, because implicit in that is the
suggestion that alcohol is compatible with that kind of healthy lifestyle.
In terms of who is responsible for these harmful exposures, alcohol
companies are some of the biggest marketing spenders across the globe.
When we talk about alcohol marketing, we usually go to the basic language of
business and talk about the four P's.
What you're trying to do as a marketer is you're trying to get the right Product,
in the right Place, at the right Price, and then Promote it in the right way for
your target audience or audiences.
According to Advertising Age (Ad Age).
Six alcohol companies are among the 100 largest marketers in the world.
They spent a combined total of over $17 billion on marketing
activities in 2019.
And the function of this marketing is twofold.
First of all, they are selling images, they're selling fantasies.
But the second function of the marketing is these companies are
really large and in many markets, they are monopolies or oligopolies.
That is, there are very few of them and as such, they can control a lot of what
happens in the marketplace and extract oligopoly or monopoly level prices.
This enables them to be more profitable than they would be otherwise and the
estimate is that they're the 8th most profitable industry in the world.
More profitable than soda pop, slightly less profitable than tobacco.
They're highly profitable and that high marketing spend
functions as what economists refer to as a barrier to entry.
That is, it keeps other firms from being able to compete with them.
If you think about it, Anheuser Busch InBev is the largest
beer producer in the world.
Their cost of advertising per barrel of beer sold is going to be so much
lower than every competitor's because they sell so many more barrels of beer.
Some within the alcohol and advertising industries argue that alcohol
is a legal product and therefore it should be legal to advertise.
They argue that bans are not justified, as advertising is concerned with
promoting sales of individual brands.
One of the arguments in defense of alcohol marketing is that
it's just about brand switching.
It's really just educating people who are already drinking and helping
them decide which brand to drink.
Well, the first thing to realise about this industry is, like tobacco, every
year they lose their best customers.
They die from alcohol related causes.
They have to replace that customer base and marketing plays a key role in
the replacement of that customer base.
Alcohol marketing has also been framed as a human rights issue.
A comprehensive report by Alcohol Focus Scotland stated that: “There is an inherent
conflict between the commercial goals of businesses that sell unhealthy products
such as alcohol and the protection of the health of individuals and society.”
Approaching alcohol harm from a human rights perspective means recognising
that not only do people have a need to be protected from harmful alcohol marketing,
but they also have a right, and that these rights are enshrined in international law.
The report also highlights that countries often relinquish their responsibilities
to the detriment of public health.
For example, by delegating the regulation of alcohol marketing
to the alcohol industry.
Putting it bluntly, we've left the fox in charge of the hen house.
Self regulation means that those who make money out of alcohol marketing are the
people who are supposedly regulating it.
This system of co- and self-regulation, which, you know, even as somebody in
this field, I find endlessly complex and difficult to understand, nevermind
the public for whom, you know, it relies on a system of complaints.
So how the public are meant to navigate that, I don't know.
But fundamentally, this conflict of interest is at
the heart of self regulation.
We were talking about human rights earlier and the obligation on states
to protect and promote those rights.
It's completely inappropriate for states to rely on the marketing
industry or the producers themselves to design and implement a system
to control alcohol marketing.
Alcohol marketing in the UK is subject to various controls
that seek to prevent advertisers targeting and appealing to children.
The controls are primarily administered by the Advertising Standards Authority and
the alcohol industry funded Portman Group.
It's noticeable that bodies who are involved in this system of self
regulation, notably the Advertising Standards Authority and the Portman
Group, have been really out there trying to persuade decision
makers that the system is fit for purpose and trying to defend the status quo.
Even though the evidence base in terms of public health harm from alcohol
marketing has massively evolved over the last 10 years.
What we see is very much tinkering around the edges and no fundamental
shift to, or attempt to shift to,
a regime that prevents exposure rather than regulating
the content of adverts.
A report from Alcohol Change UK questioned whether the Portman Group's
Independent Complaints Panel process is fit for purpose, highlighting a
lack of consistency and objectivity of decision making, as well as poor
oversight and scrutiny of the panel.
One vivid example was the Portman Group's consideration of the
Diageo rum brand Captain Morgan.
The Portman Group were looking at a complaint to assess whether
the Captain Morgan character was a cartoon of a pirate, and would
therefore appeal to children.
The group's panel concluded that Captain Morgan was not a pirate.
A remarkable decision, considering the brand's own website presented the story
of Welsh pirate Henry Morgan, whose signature appears on some bottles.
The Portman Group panel decided that the rum brand did not breach their
code because of the lack of resemblance between Captain Morgan and an archetypal
pirate with a wooden leg and an eyepatch.
Some have pointed out that even following the Portman Group's code, children are
not protected from alcohol marketing.
In their sponsorship code, the group states that Prior to sponsoring
an event, team or activity, drinks companies must use their reasonable
endeavours to obtain data on the expected participants, audience or spectator
profile to ensure that at least the aggregate of 75 percent are aged over 18.
So even adhering to this standard, popular sporting events with audiences
of 2 million people would be fine to sponsor with alcohol if 500,000
members of the audience were children.
25 percent also over represents under 18s, who only make up around
20 percent of the UK population.
The recommendations to improve the system and reduce harm are clear.
In 2017, the World Health Organization published their Best Buys of the most
cost effective recommended interventions to reduce harmful alcohol use.
This included a recommendation to enact and enforce bans or
comprehensive restrictions on exposure to alcohol advertising
across multiple types of media.
It's really simple and basic in terms of what would be most
effective for mitigating the effects of alcohol marketing.
The answer is get rid of it.
A total ban is clearly the most effective thing.
Short of that, what you're dealing with is the marketing bubble, where if
you push one part of that bubble
with some kind of regulation, the industry will simply shift its
spending to another area and the bubble will, will push out over there.
Alcohol Focus Scotland, which has been at the forefront of assessing
alcohol marketing concerns, calls for the development of an international
framework convention on alcohol control, within which a transnational
approach to regulating digital alcohol marketing should be included.
It transcends national borders.
We need international regulation of digital marketing.
And ideally, we would have something like the Framework Convention on
Tobacco Control that goes broader than marketing, but sets expectations around
how alcohol is sold across the world.
Alcohol marketing promotes and creates an environment that
normalises the consumption of alcohol.
This establishes and reinforces expectations around alcohol use as being
positive, aspirational, normal, and even as part of a healthy lifestyle.
Although many other products are promoted in a similar way, few
others kill over 3 million people across the world every year.
Alcohol industry voices criticise the idea of marketing restrictions as being
disproportionate, and inhibiting consumers ability to make informed choices.
However, being constantly bombarded with alcohol marketing influences
people's decision making, increasing their likelihood of drinking, and
of drinking particular products.
This can therefore work to restrict and remove a person's choice,
rather than helping them choose.
It also targets certain groups such as women and sexual and gender minorities,
and represents these groups in ways that can reinforce stereotypes.
By taking action on alcohol marketing, governments can help
reduce alcohol consumption and harm.
This is in keeping with their obligations under international law to protect
and promote people's right to health.
For more information on this topic, check out the briefings on our website.
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