Terry King: Drink problems no fault of ads

We mark 15 years of alcohol brand advertising on television in New Zealand with all too predictable calls for its abolition on the grounds that this will help heavy drinking Kiwis cut down.

I have to declare that as an ad man and a recovering alcoholic I do not believe that such restrictions would speed a shift to more moderate drinking among New Zealanders.

It's an article of faith for me that advertising does not increase alcohol consumption and neither does it lead to an increase in alcohol abuse.

But it's more than my own experience. There is no solid evidence from scientific research that advertising in any medium increases consumption.

Research in the US, where broadcast advertising of alcohol has a much longer history than in New Zealand, regularly reports a lack of correlation between advertising and overall consumption.

A study by the US Federal Trade Commission found there is "no reliable basis to conclude that alcohol advertising significantly affects consumption, let alone abuse".

And a US Senate subcommittee reported that it could not find evidence to conclude that advertising influences non-drinkers to begin drinking or to increase consumption.

The US Department of Health and Human Services in a report to Congress concluded that there is no significant relationship between alcohol advertising and alcohol consumption. It did not recommend banning or imposing additional restrictions on advertising.

A two-year study by researchers at the University of Connecticut of just under 2000 young people aged between 15 and 26 found that youths who watched more alcohol adverts on TV tended to drink marginally more alcohol too, but the researchers did not look for any links between other forms of alcohol advertising and alcohol consumption in youths.

It is contradicted by a University of Texas study of alcohol advertising over a 21-year period, which found that the amount of money spent on alcohol ads had little relationship to total consumption in the population.

A definitive review of research from around the world showed that advertising has virtually no influence on consumption and no impact whatsoever on either experimentation with alcohol or its abuse.

And we know from our own experience that this is true. Alcohol brand advertising was introduced in New Zealand in 1992, and I don't believe that one extra bottle of booze has been sold as a result. While advertising in New Zealand continues to increase, consumption continues to fall.

It really is quite simple. Alcohol is what us advertising folk call a mature product category. Consumers know it is there and what it does. Advertising it does not alter that.

Our aim as advertising specialists is to encourage consumers to switch to our client's brand and create brand loyalty. We do this very well, and the best advertisers gain market share at the expense of others who do not advertise or do it badly and lose market share.

More than that, advertising 101 principles mean there is no incentive to try to increase the total market for the product in a mature market.

The total retail value of alcoholic drinks sold annually in New Zealand is about $1.6 billion. If I produce an advertising campaign which increases a client's market share by one per cent, its sales would increase by $16 million.

However, if the total market for alcohol increased by 1 per cent, a brand with a 10 per cent share of the market would experience a sales increase of only $1.6 million.

So it is clear that our client has a significant incentive to increase its market share, but little to increase the total market.

This is why most of our campaigns for advertisers in mature markets focus on existing consumers by strengthening their loyalty to our brands and trying to persuade consumers of other brands to try our client's products.

In Britain, which has some similar drinking patterns to New Zealand, new rules came into force in September 2005 which ban adverts from having a strong appeal to under-18s. In particular, TV adverts cannot have a strong link between alcohol and youth culture.

However, some British studies point out that while television partly shapes children's attitude to alcohol, films may have more influence.

And health workers are adamant that social conditions and price are likely to have the strongest influence.

In fact viewers are much more likely to see alcohol (as they do smoking) portrayed during TV programmes and films than during advertisements.

An analysis of US prime time TV found that alcohol advertisements appeared at the rate of 0.2 an hour while drinking portrayals during programmes occur more frequently at five times an hour.

While it is easy to blame alcohol advertisements with emotive rhetoric there is no escaping from the fact that the greatest influence on our beliefs, attitudes and behaviour are our parents.

Another US study, the Roper Report, asked young Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 for the six most influential things that might affect their decisions about drinking.

Sixty two per cent identified their parents as the leading influence, way above friends (28 per cent), teachers (9 per cent), what they see on television (7 per cent) and what they see in ads (4 per cent).

It is parents, rather than alcohol ads, that have the great influence over young people.

* Terry King is the chairman of the BKA communications group. He has been involved in advertising campaigns for Steinlager, Heineken, Lion Red, Export Gold and Speights.