If advertising doesn't increase consumption, why bother to advertise? The answer is simple: to increase market share.
Alcohol is a "mature" product category in that consumers are already aware of the product and its basic characteristics. Therefore, overall consumption is not affected significantly by advertising specific brands.
Instead of increasing total consumption, the objective of advertisers is to create brand loyalty and to encourage consumers to switch to their brand. Thus, effective advertisers gain market share at the expense of others, who lose market share. They do not try to increase the total market for the product. An example can illustrate why they don't.
The total retail value of beer produced annually in the U.S. is about $50 billion. If a producer's advertising campaign increases its market share by one percent, its sales would increase by $500 million. However, if the total market for beer increased by one percent, a brand with a 10% share of the market would only experience a sales increase of $50 million.
Clearly, a producer has a great incentive to increase market share, but little incentive (or ability) to increase the total market. For this reason, advertisers focus their efforts on established consumers. They seek to strengthen the loyalty of their own consumers and induce other consumers to try their brand.
Much has been made of the fact that many young people have greater recognition of some alcohol beverage brand labels than of former U.S. presidents. These reports make great press but what does it all mean? Probably not much because there is no evidence that such recognition leads to experimentation, consumption, or abuse. Sometimes it even appears to be related to less drinking later.
Similarly, most adults are probably much better at identifying photos of popular entertainers than of William Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce, Chester Arthur, John Tyler, or other former presidents of the U.S. That probably doesn't mean much either
A widely reported "fact" is that by the age of 18, the typical young person will have seen 100,000 beer commercials. However, to see that many such commercials, it appears that a person would have to view television for about 161,290 hours or 18.4 years. Thus, a person would have to begin watching TV 24 hours a day, each and every day, from birth until after age 18.
In reality, viewers are much more likely to see alcohol portrayed during TV programs than during commercials. For example, an analysis of prime time TV found that alcohol commercials appeared at the rate of 0.2 per hour while drinking portrayals during programs occurred 25 times more frequently at five times per hour.
Perhaps those who want to reduce the presence of alcohol on television should propose eliminating the programming and let children watch commercials instead.
You haven't noticed them?! All those swirls, squiggles, and unusual shapes in ice cubes, on bottles, in liquid being poured, and elsewhere in alcohol beverage ads. The Center for Science in the Public Interest insists that "With little imagination, one can see some of these elements as faces, animals, breasts, penises, death masks, and other forms...." This assertion may tell us more about the Center for Science in the Public Interest than about the ads.
Most people can easily imagine or "see" faces, animals, and other objects in clouds and inkblots, but the Center for Science in the Public Interest suggests that the "unidentified printed objects" in alcohol beverage print ads are intentionally placed there by advertisers, apparently to subconsciously seduce people to drink. Astonishingly, it actually calls for an investigation of these sinister objects, including having "corporate executives testify under oath on the witness stand." And while the Center for Science in the Public Interest is at it, perhaps it should call for a Congressional investigation of clouds and inkblots.
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