Alcohol industry "responsible drinking" messages in 2011: New problems and policy recommendations

Alcohol industry messages promoting an undefined concept of responsible drinking have proliferated since the 1980's. Researchers have criticized these campaigns for vagueness, pro-drinking sentiment, and increasing the industry's favor with the general public rather than reducing underage consumption or related harm. Studies have found that beer companies spend significantly less money on these campaigns than on product promotion; place fewer responsible drinking advertisements than ones promoting their brands; and overall, the amount of responsibility advertising has decreased in previous years. Despite the lack of findings to demonstrate the effectiveness of responsible drinking messaging in achieving public health outcomes, the industry has made these messages a tentpole for their corporate public relations plans. Previous studies focused on television campaigns, and entire campaigns associated with beer. Yet in 2011, spirits and alcopops brands are well known to youth audiences, many of whom access these messages in magazine and online formats. Marin Institute decided to examine the frequency, location, size and content of responsible drinking messages from beer, spirits and alcopops brands found in magazines, product web sites and social media such as Facebook. We compared the size of the responsible drinking messages to the size of the entire product advertisements. We also reviewed advertisements containing these messages in light of the respective beer or spirits self-regulatory codes. We will discuss policy implications of these findings for both the alcohol industry and the media, including recommendations for size, content, and context of these messages.