Editorial: Keep alcohol sponsorship for sports

People fear what they do not understand and many do not understand advertising, especially brand advertising. Public health officials seem endlessly susceptible to the suggestion that limiting liquor advertising will reduce consumption of the product, particularly by young people. There have been several attempts in recent years to legislate against alcohol promotion and another bid seems to be looming.

Brand advertising, the genre that gives so much money to sport and culture, is essentially defensive. It does little more than keep a brand in the public eye so that the name remains familiar and its image strong. Consumers subconsciously trust familiar brands and prefer to buy products that others do. If a brand fades from frequent view people will quietly stop buying the product. Big breweries know this, health bureaucrats apparently do not.

The Government's latest review of advertising regulations is quite likely to result in closer control, according to Associate Minister of Health Damien O'Connor. "It is very ambitions to think the industry can run a self-regulatory regime over something where there is so much money involved and the pressures are so great," he said, referring to sports sponsorship.

Organisations such as Auckland Tennis, New Zealand Golf, the New Zealand Rugby Union and America's Cup syndicates must wince at this sort of talk. It is not very long since they had to stop selling naming rights to Rothmans, Benson and Hedges and the like. Now they could be set to lose the likes of Heineken, Steinlager, DB Draught as well. Tobacco and alcohol have natural associations with leisure and pleasure. If alcohol sponsorship of sport was also to be banned, what would replace it?

That question could cause taxpayers to wince. If the abolition of tobacco advertising called for a public fund of "smokefree" sponsorship, how much greater might the need be if liquor brands were banished?

And to what purpose? Forbidding alcohol advertising and sponsorship would not make much impression on its use overall. Breweries might save some of the expense of brand maintenance, since there would be no need to do it if no one was allowed to do it. Beer, which has been the main alcoholic product promoted through sports sponsorship, might lose some market share to wine and spirits but consumption overall is unlikely to drop.

Advertising prohibitionists are aiming their blunderbuss at a very distant target, that of teenage binge drinking. Breweries sponsoring sport stand accused of promoting an immature attitude to their product.

How fair is that charge really? Beer has a certain bloke appeal that its marketers have a right to invoke, just as wine and spirit sellers will promote the social character of their products.

Health campaigners might not much like the beer culture or the very male and politically incorrect character of much of its advertising, but that is no reason to assume a ban will reduce binge drinking.

All liquor advertising must tread a fine line between promoting the product's social appeal and encouraging excessive use.

Regular official reviews and the threat of regulation probably help to remind the advertisers of the balance they need to strike. They could probably do more to make their messages promote moderation and maturity and perhaps this latest review will spur them to do so.

But sponsorship bans should be ruled out of consideration.

Attitudes to alcohol will never be changed by keeping its labels out of sight, but could be improved through its healthy association with sport. Let sponsorship continue.