Drinks industry needs to tighten up on social media marketing, report

The agency’s recent report New media, new problem?​ claims there are inadequacies in online drinks marketing that give under 18s access to inappropriate material.

Alcohol Concern chief executive, Don Shenker said the alcohol industry had effectively taken advantage of internet technology as a means of promoting its products, with most leading drinks companies have a presence on Facebook or Twitter.

In addition, many brands have their own websites, which often contain content likely to be attractive to young people, such as games and videos, competitions and prize, he said.

“This is especially worrying given that research shows that alcohol advertising and marketing have a significant impact on young people’s decisions about alcohol,”​ said Shenker.

“Many Facebook groups about drinks also mirror official drinks industry advertising and make use of official drinks logos,” ​he added.

“The sharing of pro-drinking messages in this way fuels the normalisation of alcohol – the more people who are regularly exposed to images and descriptions of excessive consumption, the more normal and acceptable this behaviour appears.”​

Recommended steps​

The report made four recommendations to try and steer control of alcohol marketing on social media platforms.

Firstly, Alcohol Concern suggested that official alcohol advertising should not be permitted on social networking sites.

“Steps should also be taken by alcohol producers and the administrators of social networking ​sites to end the unauthorised use of registered drinks trademarks, logos and advertising ​images on such websites, where they may be mistaken for official marketing,” ​said Alcohol Concern.

Secondly, administrators of social networking sites should issue clearer guidelines about users posting content that may endorse or encourage irresponsible drinking, said the agency.

Alcohol Concern also said further investigation was also required into finding better ways of restricting access to alcohol-related content intended for adults.

Alcohol brand websites in particular should restrict content to factual information about products, it said.

Finally, the agency said health bodies needed to counter official alcohol marketing and pro-drinking messages on the internet by fully embracing and utilising new media themselves to promote alcohol-related health messages.

Industry response​

But industry bodies rejected claims that they were to blame for exposure of branding to under age children.

“EU spirits producers apply the same strict rules of self-regulation to their marketing activities on-line as they did off-line,”​ Jamie Fortescue, director general of the European Spirits Organisation told BeverageDaily.com in response to the report.

These include rules to ensure that marketing does not target underage people, both in terms of advertising content and where advertising can and cannot be placed, he said.

“As made clear by Alcohol Concern in their report, the underage drinkers interviewed do not visit alcohol brand websites or brand Facebook pages. Fighting fan pages or fake brand pages, as companies do regularly, is a constant challenge,” ​said Fortescue.

It is more important to work with underage consumers, their parents and their peers to question the wisdom of exchanging on-line images of “drink-fuelled exploits​”, he said.

Pierre-Olivier Bergeron, secretary general of The Brewers of Europe agreed that the main issue with regard to alcohol misuse and social networking sites in the report was not official marketing for alcoholic beverages, but users posting pictures of themselves and others drinking irresponsibly.

Brewing companies worked closely with social media sites such as Facebook to ensure that their marketing codes, and indeed those of the social media websites themselves, are respected in their advertising with regard to responsible consumption, he told this publication.