 |
Marketing is all around us – at our favorite sports events, movies, billboards and iPhone ads. This affects how our children think and what they drink, encouraging them to drink more and, on more occasions, but how does it reach them?
The governmental regulatory structure is falling. And why does the government turn a blind eye to this?
Why does the World Health Organization recommend bans on alcohol marketing? What can be done to protect the most vulnerable – our children, from being bombarded with alcohol ads? Alcohol creates social norms that drinking alcohol is normal, cool and desirable. For decades, they’ve known that there’s a link between alcohol ads and children.
Linear studies conducted have proved children will drink due to the influence of commercialism. If the child already drinks, they will drink more. Studies conducted concluded the relationship between exposure to alcohol marketing and underage drinking is causal (referred to as the Bradford Bill criteria).
In addition, alcohol affects the brain especially when the brain is under development (children) these studies show that delaying alcohol intake into our youth will allow the brain to develop in a natural healthy way. Alcohol marketing does the exact opposite – the more exposed they are the more likely they are to drink.
Facts show that exposure to alcohol and expectations that marketing provides causes problems later in life, these are precisely the advertisements that marketing encourages. Particularly disturbing is the exposure children have to films and television, in addition these are linked to higher expectations and the use of many reality shows, watched by young children dramatizing the use of alcohol, marketing has formed alliances with social media giants blurring the lines between advertisement and content, in addition to algorithmic marketing.
Algorithmic marketing is empowering marketing leaders with artificial intelligence and advanced automation techniques to deliver deeper insights, faster execution and streamlined operations). Algorithmic marketing, on the other hand, allows AI to interpret data at scale and make decisions with minimal or no human intervention.
This means no one is supervising the marketing used once it has been launched, AI constantly re-targets kids. This marketing technique is based on children’s interests, such
as what they interact with the words they type and
the content they sign into.
Public health concerns and studies are far behind alcohol’s fast-evolving industry. Anheuser-Busch is the eighth-most profitable market in the world – to watch a football game and not see some type of Budweiser banner, spotted dog or horse would not
be normal. Alcohol marketing creates expectations around the consumption and use of alcohol, normalizing it and even promoting it as part of a healthy lifestyle.
Although many other products advertise in similar ways, they do not or are not responsible for 3 million deaths from alcohol every year. In 2023, 5.6 million youth ages 12-20 reported drinking alcohol beyond “just a few sips” in the past month. About 4,000 young people under 21 die from excessive alcohol use each year.
Why is alcohol marketing continuing to change? It has to reach new customers, considering 3 million people die each year from alcohol, while hundreds develop different forms of internal cancer. Frightening to think that legalizing cannabis is on the horizon. What marketing techniques will they use?
Dr. Herb Clark of Murphy is an expert in the field of addiction with 33 years of experience. He served on the N.C. Professional Practice board, adjunct professor for two universities and was a U.S. Marine serving 25 years, through two wars and three conflicts traveling the world, seeing the effects of addiction firsthand worldwide. Send questions or comments to him at hypno321@hotmail.com.