Rachel Ekman and Dr. Gordon Lindsay, Health and Human Performance

In the United States, the alcohol industry is made up of three major trade associations: The Beer Institute, The Wine Institute, and Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS). These three associations are responsible for governing their own product advertisements. To do this, each has developed a set of standards or voluntary codes, which they are to follow and regulate.

These established voluntary codes include guidelines on responsible alcohol advertising and responsible advertisement placement. Alcohol advertisements are not to use any symbols, language, music, entertainment figure or character that is intended to appeal to an audience under the legal purchasing age. Models and actors employed for these advertisements much be at least 25 years of age and reasonably appear to be at least 21 years of age. Alcohol advertisements should not portray, condone or encourage drunk driving, excessive consumption, sexual passion or promiscuity, intoxicated persons, illegal activity, or drinking before and during activities which require a lot of coordination. Alcohol should not be advertised in any media or at any venue where most of the audience is expected to be under the legal purchasing age. There are many other specific alcohol advertising guidelines, which can be found in the Beer Institute Advertising and Marketing Code Book and the Code of Good Practice for Distilled Spirits Advertising and Marketing.

These codes have been the topic of much debate over the years. The media has become bombarded with alcohol advertisements. We see them in magazines, newspapers, on billboards, on television, in store windows, and hear them on the radio. These advertisements are funny, clever, catchy, hip, and sexy. But are they responsible? The largest concern with alcohol advertisements is their appeal to those under the legal purchasing and drinking age. Although advertisers for the industries claim differently, underage consumers seem to be the target of their advertising strategies. Or, to say the least, they have been shown to be affected by the industries’ advertising schemes.

My main objectives for this project were to research and evaluate the self-regulated codes for the three industries and to look for examples in the media of non-compliance to these codes. I also examined the effects of the industries’ “drink responsibly” campaigns, which they claim are more effective in promoting responsible alcohol consumption than would be any codes to regulate advertisements. Lastly, I conducted a survey to see how college age students (18-25) perceive the ages of alcohol advertisement models. My hypothesis in approaching this project was that there is great need for either third party review or government regulation of alcohol advertising if we hope to have any real protection for the underage audience.

After thoroughly researching the advertising codes for these three industries and reviewing the voluntary efforts by alcohol companies and trade associations to engage is self-regulation, I am convinced that my hypothesis is correct. While the wine industry seems to abide by it’s own advertising codes, the Beer Institute and DISCUS have shown that they cannot regulate their own codes. The Federal Trade Commission agrees. In a 1999 report, the FTC stated that alcohol industry self-regulatory efforts should be improved. The FTC recommended that the industries’ enforcement could be improved by adopting “third-party review of compliance.” The FTC wants to enforce that ads with substantial underage appeal be prohibited, and to reduce the standard for underage audience percentage. The codes currently allow up to 50% of the audience to be under the age of 21. In the United States, only 30% of the entire population is under the age of 21, therefore “permitting placement of ads on programs where the underage population far exceeds it’s representation in the population.”

Voluntary advertising codes have not prevented companies from using cartoon characters to promote alcohol beverages. A 1996 study showed that children ages 9 to 11 are more familiar with the Budweiser Frogs than with Tony the Tiger. These voluntary codes have not stopped the industry from attacking Halloween, a children’s holiday, and turning it into the number three beer consumption day of the year. Print ads flood magazines like Rolling Stone, In Style, Spin and Allure, all of which have nearly half of their readers under age 21. Alcohol Advertising codes say that their ads are not to portray promiscuity or lewd images, yet viewers are often confused as to whether these ads are advertising sex or alcohol. Ads have become more and more suggestive and raunchy. In 1996 DISCUS ended its decades-long code of prohibiting television ads by simply re-writing its codes, showing that there are no real limitations in the industries’ voluntary codes.

After reviewing the public service “drink responsibly” campaigns, I found them to be nothing more than thinly disguised drinking promotions. One such ad featured the popular teenage appealing boy-band NSYNC. Below the large picture was a small paragraph encouraging parents to talk to their kids about drinking and below that was a very large Budweiser logo. The only two things that catch your eye in this add are the picture and the logo. Anheuser-Bush’s “know when to say when” campaign never actually defines “when.” Even designated driving ads are simply telling us that we can binge drink all was want just so long as we don’t drive home.

In the survey that I conducted, students were asked to identify the ages of models in alcohol advertisements according to their own perception. Only the models faces were shown, as if not to bias perception with the product. 300 Students viewed a set of 30 slides selected at random. My findings were also supportive of my hypothesis. Most of the models were perceived by the majority of the students to be at least 21 years of age, but of the 30 slides, 8 of the models were perceived to be under the age of 21 by the majority of the students. This shows that the advertisers are just not doing a good enough job of sticking to their own codes.

There is much research still to be done on the topic of enforcing the alcohol industries’ advertising codes. In order to improve the public’s confidence in the industries’ efforts to advertise responsibly, an independent and external review board needs to be established.