A Spirited Debate

American Demographics, April 1, 2002

Byline: Matthew Grimm

Homer Simpson, the weak-willed hero of The Simpsons, celebrating the end of Prohibition in Springfield, hoists a beer and toasts: "To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."

Such ambivalence seems to spin dizzily around the beast of alcohol. It is a vice demonized by the pious, celebrated by poets and consumed by a great mass of Western culture for its intoxicant and palliative properties. In the darker projection, it is a poison, the stuff that corrupts youngsters and ruins earnest men. In the lighter, it is the great social lubricant, quaffed after a hard day's work or hoisted in boisterous company. The debate fades to grays when we broach its role as the key ingredient in a vast array of products, legal yet restricted by terms of use, some marketed to a mass audience through a vast array of clever, dynamic communications, yet some not. On the latter issue, the country is approaching a point where it can no longer have it both ways, and, whether by more stringent regulation of alcohol advertising in toto or opening the doors wide to liquor marketers, the current double standard cannot long hold.

The argument re-emerged in a flurry of media stories late last year following NBC's decision to accept a Smirnoff-branded "responsible drinking" message on Saturday Night Live, a soft-spoken spot showing a row of empty glasses on a bar, then someone dropping keys at the end, followed by the red Smirnoff logo. Comedy Central has since begun airing ads for Baileys liqueur, and according to press reports, Jack Daniels marketer Brown-Forman is contemplating adjusting its marketing plan to give considerably more weight to TV.

The issue is compounded by the concurrent wave of sweet, low-alcohol, so-called "malternative" beverages carrying the names of major liquor brands - Guinness UDV's own Smirnoff Ice, Anheuser-Busch's Bacardi Silver and Miller's Skyy Blue. These have been collectively buoyed by more than $100 million in ad support, and not necessarily subject to network restrictions on liquor advertising, that are mostly still in place - even after the spirits industry rescinded its own voluntary ban in 1996.

The industries' aims are relatively straightforward. Broadcast media obviously want the incremental revenue a new product category promises; the liquor industry wants a sales uptick. From 1980 to 2000, beer's share of the alcoholic beverage market increased to 58 percent from 53 percent, and wine to 12.3 percent from 10.7 percent, while spirits declined to 28.8 percent from 36.6 percent, according to beverage industry tracker Adams Business Research, in Norwalk, Conn.

But both industries have broached the issue at a time when Americans have made a distinct turn to their vices as balm to national trauma and recession. Anecdotal evidence suggests that alcoholic beverage sales have risen disproportionately in the weeks since Sept. 11. Indeed, Columbia University's National Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse (NCASA) found that 13 states have detected a higher demand for treatment of substance abuse since the attacks. An ominous scenario, industry watchdogs admonish, at a time when advertising is bringing new legitimacy and attention to the product category in the eyes of the nation's under-21 population.

According to a sampling of 500 adults conducted this past December by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, based in Washington, D.C., for the public advocacy group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), 68 percent of Americans oppose NBC's decision to abrogate its own role in the ban of liquor ads, while only 20 percent are supportive. Some 72 percent agreed with the long-term ad ban. The CSPI has joined a chorus of strident critics - including the American Medical Association (AMA) and NCASA - all longtime advocates of restrictions on beer advertising as well. But there remains a palpable distinction in American perceptions of beer versus liquor.

In 1997, a year after the trade association Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S. (DISCUS) first lifted its ban and liquor ads began trickling onto local TV stations, the University of Missouri's Center for Advanced Social Research (CASR) found in a sample of 818 adults that 52 percent favored a ban of liquor ads on TV, 34 percent were opposed, while only 37 percent favored a ban on beer commercials. The center's 1999 survey (961 adults) found that those favoring the liquor ban had slipped to 49 percent, while those supporting a ban on beer ads had crept up to 41 percent. But a double standard seemed to remain. In response to a new question added in 1999, 47 percent said liquor advertising should be more strictly regulated and only 14 percent said beer should, while 26 percent said rules should be the same for both. And though government guidelines stipulate that a 12-oz. container of beer contains the same amount of alcohol as a 1.5-oz. shot of liquor (or a 5-oz. glass of wine), a plurality, 38 percent, erroneously considered four shots of alcohol the equivalent of five to eight beers, if not more.