Alcohol and Youth According to the Center

Alcohol and Youth

According to the Center on Marketing and Youth (CAMY), states are not doing very much in terms of keeping adolescents and other youth from being over-exposed to alcohol-related advertisements on television. The liquor and beer companies are clearly interested in getting young people started with their particular brand, and through television commercials those companies make beer and liquor seem very "cool" to impressionable young people. This paper reviews and critiques the literature on youth and alcohol-related advertising on television -- including peer-reviewed scholarship from several sources.

Youth Exposure to Alcohol Advertising

The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth -- a component of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health -- reports that the amount of advertising on television that specifically targets youth rose by 38% between 2001 and 2007. About one in five alcohol advertisements was placed on programs that attracts young people ages 12 to 20 (CAMY). The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth analyzed how 2,033,931 specific alcohol product commercials were placed on television programming between 2001 and 2007 (the cost of those ads was reportedly $6.6 billion).

This is a classic case of an alcohol company marketing products to youth; the suggestion here is that while a kid is playing electronic games, he can also drink Heineken beer. (Swift, 2012). The results showed the following: a) more than 40% of youth exposure to ads featuring alcohol on television came from "youth-oriented programming"; b) two thirds of the ads mentioned in "a" appeared on cable television which accounted for 95% of the overexposure to youth; c) of that overexposure to youth, about 53% was beer ads and 41% promoted liquor; and d) although the alcohol industry ran 73,565 ads that called for "responsible" drinking, young people (ages 12 to 20) were "…22 times more likely to see an alcohol product advertisement" than an ad touting responsible drinking (CAMY).

For parents and loved ones, the most frightening statistic presented by CAMY is that young people, when they begin drinking alcohol before they are fifteen years of age are "…five times more likely" than others who don't start drinking until they are 21 to have "alcohol problems later in life," including alcoholism and alcohol-related violence -- along with the possibility of motor vehicle accidents (p. 2).

Relationship between American advertising and youthful behaviors and attitudes

In the peer-reviewed journal Contemporary Drug Problems (Jernigan, et al., 2010), the author explains that there is a "…growing body of evidence" that in fact the advertising and marketing of alcohol has an influence on the drinking behaviors of young people (Jernigan, 57). The beer and liquor companies know that the presence of a certain brand -- "or even the attitudes held toward it" -- can actually "…define a person with respect to others" (Jernigan, 61). So for example, if a friend only drinks Bud Light, that brand becomes "…an extension or an integral part of the self," Jernigan continues on page 64).

Jernigan references the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth's data to make the point that U.S. television advertising for alcohol reached about 96% of the population considered the "adult population" (21 and over) in 2007 "446 times" (65). Meanwhile, 2007 advertising promoting alcoholic beverages reached young people between the ages of 12 to 20 "…an average of 436 times" (Jernigan, 65). As to magazine advertising, in 2007 alcohol ads reached 94% of the over-21 population an average of 77 times while alcohol advertising in magazines reached the youth market (12-20) an average of 89 times -- clearly more often than those ads reach adults. On radio, the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth reported that by sampling 67,404 advertisements (for the top 25 brands of alcohol), the research confirmed that almost one half of those 67,404 commercials were placed in programs "…with disproportionate numbers of listeners…" below the legal age for consuming alcohol (Jernigan, 65).

Even more than Caucasian youth, African-American youth and Latino youth are targets of alcohol advertising, Jernigan explains. There appears to be more than a casual relationship between minority youth and the companies that market beer and wine and liquor to young people Indeed, the Neilson company reports that from September 1998 to February 2002, youthful African-American males were exposed to 31% more ads on television marketing alcohol than "white youth" (Jernigan, 65). African-American female youth in that same time frame were exposed to 77% "…more television advertising for alcohol than their white peers" (Jernigan, 65).

Another way the alcohol companies advertise their products is through sponsorship of sporting events, a very powerful way to get the message out to young people. Anheuser-Busch sponsors the FIFA World Cup, and many other sporting activities that this beer company knows young people will watch. Anheuser-Busch in fact is the second highest advertiser when it comes to sponsorships, and Pepsi-Co is the number one sponsor (Jernigan, 66). In Nigeria, Heineken sponsors the "National Annual Essay Competition," and they sponsor fashion shows and beauty contests on the campuses of colleges and universities, Jernigan continues.

This next marketing strategy would not likely be allowed on American campuses, but in Nigeria Guinness and Heineken both sponsor "…musical segments of radio programs, radio call-in shows about particular alcohol brands in which correct answers win prizes" as well as tours of musical personalities from foreign countries (Jernigan, 67).

What do magazine advertisements for alcohol tell young people they should value? For many young people, they are being told that drinking is cool, that in order to look like an adult young people should behave like adults and consume beer, wine, and liquor. A peer-reviewed article in the journal Contemporary Economic Policy conducted research that shows the number of alcohol-related advertisements in magazines "…increases significantly with the proportion of youth readers" (Siegel, et al., 2008). Because of the increase in alcohol marketing in magazines that appeal to young people, "…youths are disproportionately exposed to alcohol advertising" which is a very important "public policy concern" (Siegel, 482).