Alcohol marketing: protecting children
Alcohol is one of the most heavily marketed products with the annual spend on alcohol marketing in Ireland conservatively estimated at €115m. The purpose of marketing is to create a need or desire for a product. Alcohol is not a staple, it is not a necessary purchase, therefore a market must be created for it – and new drinkers must be recruited to create and expand that market.[i] Young people are an important market for the alcohol industry in this regard.
Comprehensive research now clearly tells us that alcohol marketing including advertising, sponsorship and other forms of promotion, increases the likelihood that adolescents will start to use alcohol, and to drink more if they are already using alcohol. In short, children, and younger people, navigate a tsunami of alcohol promotion every day that ensures messages about drinking are increasingly normalised.
Ireland’s Public Health Alcohol Act (PHAA) contains provisions to restrict alcohol advertising to young people. While these recently enacted measures are helpful, they also fail to protect children and adolescents in the main space inhabit – online. Therefore, it is little wonder that research revealed Diageo, the multinational alcoholic beverage company, to be the number four advertiser to children in Ireland.[ii]
Furthermore, a lacuna in the law has allowed alcohol companies to use zero-alcohol products, with identical branding to the master brand, to circumvent the advertising restrictions in the PHAA. This is exactly what the PHAA was supposed to protect against, especially in terms of alcohol advertising being seen by children, because evidence shows that exposure to alcohol marketing encourages children to drink at an earlier age and in greater quantities than they otherwise would.[iii]
Areas such as alcohol sponsorship of sport and culture or adequate controls on exposure to digital promotion have not been developed. Alcohol product sponsorship especially within sport and culture, which are so attractive to young people, must be seen as a particularly insidious form of marketing as it enables a product to cultivate a ‘brand’ relationship via the cherished experiences and emotions that sports, music, and art arouse in us.
An array of marketing activities are used to build links between alcohol, sports and elite athletes, music and artists, and other events and people, which ultimately drives consumption of alcohol. Indeed, a systematic review of the ‘Association Between Alcohol Sports Sponsorship and Consumption’ reported a positive association between exposure to alcohol marketing and alcohol consumption.[iv] In particular, the research revealed a positive association between exposure to alcohol sports sponsorship and increased alcohol consumption amongst schoolchildren.[v] Essentially, advertising “activates” sponsorship to increase sales.[vi]
Social, digital, ubiquitous – the changing landscape of marketing to young people
As young people’s lives are now entwined with the digital world, this is where marketers target them. Advertising is no longer just about billboards and TV or newspaper ads, but is a highly sophisticated integrated marketing communications mix of placement, celebrity endorsements, product sponsorship of sports and culture – messages targeted and delivered through a variety of media channels at any time of the day or night.
Academic research has demonstrated that as social media became more popular and pervasive with young people, the online space became an important aspect of the alcohol industry’s multi-platform marketing strategies, thus creating ‘intoxigenic digital spaces’ in which young people learn about alcohol and where underage drinking is normalised.
The rapid growth in the use of social media has raised new issues regarding alcohol marketing, as well as potential impacts on alcohol cultures more generally. Additionally, the changed nature of this marketing means young people are often exposed to intensive and novel forms of alcohol advertising. Part of these new marketing strategies aim to make young people the messenger whereby they use their social media accounts to routinely tell and re-tell drinking stories and share images and videos depicting drinking.
Adolescent psychological and neurobiological researchers have pointed out that digital marketing purposefully evokes emotional arousal knowing that this will spur young people on to make poor decisions.
Zero-alcohol products and the circumventing of the Public Health (Alcohol) Act
Alcohol is advertised to us in a variety of ways. Sponsorship at sports and music events, products promoted in our favourite movies and TV shows, and displays in shops to celebrate Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day, weddings, and birthdays. It is everywhere we look. Big alcohol companies spend millions linking alcohol with the things we love – watching football, GAA, or rugby, going to a gig, sharing a romantic meal.
The purpose of this is to normalise alcohol and influence when we start to drink, how much we drink, and how often we drink.[vii] It was for this reason that the Public Health (Alcohol) Act 2018 (PHAA) aimed to reduce the direct or indirect promotion of alcohol products, especially towards children. However, it is clear that the alcohol industry is using zero-alcohol products to circumvent the advertising restrictions contained in the PHAA.
Just as restrictions under the PHHA came into force, big alcohol brands began brand sharing– that is advertising zero alcohol beers using the same master branding. These products often carry the same brand names as their alcoholic counterparts, a move which Brand Finance, the world’s leading independent brand valuation and strategy consultancy, says allows brands to subtly promote both products simultaneously.[viii]
It is of note that in the outdoor space where most of the PHAA restrictions are in place, zero alcohol ads made up 25 percent of the spend of alcohol brand advertising in 2022, up 31 percent from 2021, even though these products only make up around 1 percent of the market.[ix]
It is accepted that zero alcohol products are not suitable for children. Even the industry funded body the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland says that zero alcohol product advertising should not be in children’s media or proximate to schools.[x] While researchers and public health bodies including the World Health Organisation have been drawing attention to these concerns in recent years.[xi] So why then are they being advertised in the very areas which are deemed protected for children?
It is clear that zero alcohol advertisements are not being pushed because the alcohol industry wants people to drink less, but to circumvent the restrictions on where they can advertise their products. We know this because these products often maintain the same visual identity, where logos and packaging are nearly identical to that of beer brands’ traditional products – another tool strategically used to preserve brand awareness and recall.[xii]
Brand sharing means alcohol brands are being marketed to the public outside of the legal restrictions, and this is especially problematic in terms of its impact on children. Alcohol brands will do everything they can to get around even the most modest of restrictions, therefore it is imperative that Government, the Minister for Health, the Health Service Executive, and Coimisiún na Meán ensure that the law and broadcasting rules protect against this and that the lacuna in the law which allows brand-sharing is closed.
What more can be done?
The genie is already out of the bottle when it comes digital alcohol marketing and young people. As researchers have noted, young people are the heaviest users of social media, and alcohol marketers are exploiting the resulting opportunities with enormous energy, undermining conventional public health policies, approaches and tools for reducing population-level alcohol consumption.
Given this landscape, it is unsurprising that there are some public health advocates who seek consideration for a total ban on most or all forms of alcohol marketing. The World Health Organisation has also called for a complete ban on alcohol advertising. Some countries are already doing this. For example in countries such as Norway, Sweden and Finland, it is prohibited – to varying degrees – to have any form of mass communication on alcohol across media for example in printed newspapers, films, radio, television, in digital and mobile communications. Sweden, Norway and Finland also have strong government regulatory bodies, imposing sanctions when law and regulations have been violated.
In the absence of a universal approach, it is imperative that control and regulation of alcohol advertising is strong, transparent, accountable and fit for the 21st century.
[i] https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/22134/1/AAI%20Print%20Submission%20Version.pdf
[ii] https://www.bai.ie/en/media/sites/2/2021/02/2020_StatutoryReport_CCCC_vFinal_JC.pdf
[iii] https://www.ias.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Alcohol-and-marketing.pdf
[iv] Brown K. (2016). Association Between Alcohol Sports Sponsorship and Consumption: A Systematic Review. Alcohol and alcoholism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 51(6), 747–755. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26911984/
[v] Brown K. (2016). Association Between Alcohol Sports Sponsorship and Consumption: A Systematic Review. Alcohol and alcoholism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 51(6), 747–755. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26911984/
[vi] Alcohol Action Ireland. (2014). It’s not a game – Submission to the Working Group on Regulating Sponsorship by Alcohol Companies of Major Sporting Events. Dublin: AAI. Available at: https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/22134/1/AAI%20Print%20Submission%20Version.pdf
[vii] Fitzgerald, N., O’Donnell, R., Mitchell, G., Howell, R., Angus, K., Mitchell, H., Morgan, A., Morris. J., Fenton, L., Woodrow, N., Holmes, J., Oldham, M., Garnett, C., Brown J., and Castellina, M. (2024). Changing public perceptions of alcohol, alcohol harms and policies in the UK. Available at:
[viii] https://brandfinance.com/insights/how-nolo-alternatives-are-changing-the-game-in-sports-marketing
[ix] Core. (2023). Outlook 23 – Media Market Forecasts for Ireland. Available at: https://www.onecore.ie/intel/outlook-23-media-market-forecasts
[x] Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland. (2019). Advertising of non-alcohol product variants. Available at: Microsoft Word – Alcohol advertising – non-alcohol variants – DRAFT ASAI Exec.Word export from pdf doc.
[xi] World Health Organization. (2023). A public health perspective on zero- and low-alcohol beverages. Available at: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240072152
[xii] https://brandfinance.com/insights/how-nolo-alternatives-are-changing-the-game-in-sports-marketing
