A Phone and a Cocktail, good combination?

Hello again !

Yesterday I got really impressed by an online advertisement similar to the picture above, which stated that drinking alcohol can open your life and for this reason I decided to read some scientific papers on alcohol advertising and what it can lead to.

First of all, alcohol advertising  is one of the many factors that have the potential to encourage young adults to drink. For young people who have not started to drink, expectancies are influenced  also by assumptions about teenage drinking as well as through the observation of drinking by parents, peers and models in the mass media. However, even if some recent studies support the idea that alcohol advertising can increase the sell of alcohol and drinks and so the consumption by young people, other experts in the field conducted studies which do not establish whether alcohol advertising actually influences young people’s drinking behaviour. In order to answer this question it is necessary to conduct either experimental studies, which are not possible for ethical reasons, or systematic observation of real world effects.

For example, according to a study conducted by Saffer (2002) analysed the correlation between the messages included in alcohol advertising especially on social media and how this can affect and influence youth to drink alcohol when under the legal age. Results from this study support the idea that alcohol advertisements do increase consumption. Moreover, in the present study they highlighted the importance of the low prices in alcoholic drinks adverts that have a very strong impact on the younger generation. Moreover, in these days, young people are even more involved in practices of heavy drinking and role models showing alcohol abusive behaviours.  Recent findings of  Casswell et al (2012) found that younger people are more likely to be heavier drinkers within developed countries which have liberalised alcohol policy environments enhancing young people’s access to alcohol and in which countries the policy about advertisements is less restrictive.

However, under a marketing point of view, alcohol brands do benefit from social media advertising and TV advertising.  For example, celebrity endorsement have been found to be very effective when advertising and promoting alcohol brands and products on social media, especially among teenagers and young adults (Chen et al, 2005).

Furthermore, another theory that support the idea of the effectiveness of celebrities advertising alcohol through social media is the Source Credibility which refers to “a communicator’s positive characteristics that affect the receiver’s acceptance of a message” ( Ohanian, 1990). This theory, emphasise the fact that people are influenced in buying different categories of alcohol products sponsored by a celebrity on social media or TV advertisement due to the fact that the message is been perceived as more reliable and acceptable. 

In conclusion although alcohol advertising can lead to the consumption of alcohol in young people, it has been found to benefit brands and alcohol companies in terms of marketing and communication, especially when the advertising is proposed through social media using celebrities endorsement.