Alcohol in Advertising
Why Advertise Alcohol?
The Alcohol Industry Spends
$3 BILLION Per Year on Advertising
To try to open up new markets – to get groups
that don’t drink much to drink more.
Not only to get us to drink but to get us to
develop certain attitudes about drinking.
To increase market share
Instead of increasing total consumption they want users to
switch brands.
To “normalize” drinking in the minds of young
viewers???
Alcohol and Youth
People who start drinking before the age of 15
are four times more likely to become addicted
than those who wait until they are older
Underage drinks account for 12% of all alcohol
sales
College alcohol market is over $5 billion a year.
On an average day, 4 college students die in
alcohol related accidents while 1,370 are
injured.
*Of course not all college students have drinking
problems or even drink. In any environment a
few people are doing most of the drinking. 10%
of the drinking population consumes over 60%
of all the alcohol sold.
Does Advertising Lead to
Addiction?
If everyone were to “drink responsibly” like they’re told to
do in alcohol advertisements, alcohol sales would be
down 80%
FTC estimated that the alcohol industry spend
approximately $6 billion or more on advertising and
promotion in 2005. Why?
USA Today found that teens say ads have a greater
influence on their desire to drink in general than on their
desire to buy a particular brand of alcohol
Four college students die daily from alcohol-related
causes.
Between 2001 and 2005 youth exposure to alcohol
advertising on t.v. increased by 41% from 1,973 ads to
46,854 ads.
FTC Recommendations
Cant advertise in venues where more than 50%
of the audience is under the legal drinking age.
Prohibit ads with substantial underage appeal,
even if they also appeal to adults, or target ads
to persons 25 and older
Restrict alcohol product placement to “R” and
“NC-17” rated films, and apply ad placement
standards to product placement on TV programs
Curb on-campus and spring break sponsorships
and advertising.
What makes young people drawn
to Alcohol Advertising?
Music
Animal and people characters
Humor
Risky behavior – that provides in their view
immediate gratification, thrills and/or social
status.
Propaganda Techniques
Bandwagon (everyone is doing it)
Testimonial (celebrity endorsement)
Transfer (transforming the product into
something else)
Glittering generalities (associating the
product with a generalized value)
Bandwagon
Testimonial
Transfer
Glittering Generalities
Maxim 2003
How is alcohol portrayed?
Advertising & Nicotine
Nicotine kills more people than all other drugs
combined. It kills more Americans each year
than alcohol, cocaine, heroin, car crashes,
homicides, suicides, and Aids combined.
The tobacco industry in the US spends over $9
BILLION per year on advertising and promotion
– 26 Million per day!
The tobacco industry needs 3000 new smokers
a day to replace those who quit or die. – 2000
smokers quit every day and 1000 smokers die.
Advertising Cigs to Youth
Almost 90% of smokers start before they’re 18.
60% start before high school. If you don’t start
smoking young, you’re not likely to start. The
peak years for beginning to smoke are in grades
6 and 7.
It takes only a few weeks for most people to
become addicted to nicotine.
While most teens would say they are not
influenced by advertising, 88% of teenage
smokers smoke one of 3 brands – Camel,
Marlboro and Newport (the 3 most heavily
advertised brands of cigarette.
What do you gather
from this ad?
Colors used?
Words?
Font?
Meaning?
Anti-smoking campaigns
Assignment
Find an alcohol/tobacco ad
Think of 5 adjectives to describe the ad
How does the ad work to make alcohol/tobacco
attractive
Who is the target audience for the ad? In other
words who does it appeal to.
What feelings or emotions is the ad trying to
associate with the product?
How do gender, race and class feature in this
ad?
Is this ad socially responsible? What does it
mean for an ad or company to be socially
responsible?
Information taken from the
following sites
www.jeankilbourne.com
www.adbusters.org
www.badvertising.org
www.camy.org
www.tobaccofree.org
www.cdc.gov/tobacco