What's the point of banning ads for alcohol after everybody has watched them for months? And are other ways of targeting young drinkers moreinsidious, asks Kathryn Holmquist.
This week's banning of alcohol advertisements may appease the politically correct, but the process is close to becoming a disingenuous charade. We can rake over the lava of Guinness's banned Volcano ad, with its motto "Believe", but the harm seen in it by the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland has already been done.
In breaching the ASAI's code of conduct by associating alcohol with bravery and daring, Guinness has already started to programme the minds of young viewers. The very young may not drink Guinness, but they still associate alcohol with heroism if they "believe" the ad.
By the time television and poster ads for Budweiser, Carlsberg, Coors Lite, Guinness, Heineken, Miller and WKD were banned in the Republic in the past year, they had already saturated their target audiences. And the ads that seemed to appeal most to children, a series for Bacardi featuring a cat, could not be banned for viewing by Irish children because they were not shown on Irish channels.
And the alcohol brainwashing goes beyond TV. Any Irish child or teenager can log on to Bacardi's website, which invites visitors to "listen, drink, learn, play, shop, connect and party". While learning about Bacardi cocktails, useful for those cramming for their bartender's licences, people of any age can enter the "play" category, which is a menu of free computer games. One game is called Prohibition. Its premise: "Alcohol is forbidden, Cola cannot be served without Bacardi - this cannot go on!" The ASAI's standards are that an alcohol ad should neither encourage excessive drinking nor present abstinence or moderation in a negative way.
However, websites don't come under the ASAI's remit.
In the TV ads for Bacardi, children are attracted by the antics of former Wimbledon footballer and hard man Vinnie Jones (who acted in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). He is seen on the street walking to a date, when he is waylaid by women in a club who are anybody's as long as the body knows how to mix a cocktail.
Ads banned in Ireland aren't any better or worse than those our children can see on Sky and Channel 4. But because Irish standards are stricter than those in the UK, the Irish drinks industry finds itself testing the waters by spending fortunes on campaigns that ultimately have to be pulled.
This ridiculous situation has been noted by the industry. It realises that it doesn't make sense to spend millions of euro on a mini-cinema event such as the Guinness Volcano ad or Coors Lite's "Alternative Pastimes" campaign, only to garner bad publicity when the ad is pulled by the ASAI.
Pat Barry, of Guinness (which has seen several of its ads banned), has announced a new voluntary "copy clearance" scheme, to be introduced later this year, in which alcohol companies will present their advertising concepts to a self-regulatory body before the ads are made. This is good PR for the drinks industry. Although it could also be interpreted as more pragmatic than idealistic, with the advertising suits choosing to see how much they can get away with before they invest in million-euro campaigns.
Make no mistake about it: alcohol advertising is self-regulated by the advertising industry. The Government invests not a penny in the process, although guidelines offered by Micheál Martin when he was minister for health were written into the ASAI's code in June 2002. When a consumer makes a complaint, the complaint is judged by a panel of 12 volunteers, four of them appointed by the Director of Consumer Affairs and the other eight by the advertising industry. The board does not include psychologists, alcohol counsellors or young people.
The ASAI has been tough on Coors Lite's "Alternative Pastimes" campaign, banning an ad in which young men stay awake into the early hours playing home-made Jenga, with the loser having to lick a dirty sock. It also upheld complaints against a Coors Lite ad in which a young man runs into the snow in his underpants to knock over empty beer cans like skittles. But, be honest, you've seen the ad a dozen times, haven't you? So why ban it now?
The ASAI also banned a Heineken ad, called "The First Time", in which a group of men encourage a friend to overcome his apprehensions about taking a first drink. The ASAI then upheld a complaint against Carlsberg, for an ad in which three young men go on holiday for the purpose of drinking and discover that their holiday apartment overlooks a building site dominated by scantily clad female construction workers. The ad wasn't banned on the basis of sexism, but because the young holiday-makers were seen drinking three times while travelling to, and arriving at, their destination.
Another Carlsberg ad was rejected by the ASAI because it featured footage of Ireland games and associated Robbie Keane with beer, which is illegal because people under the age of 25 cannot appear in alcohol advertisements. This is probably news to anyone that's seen an alcohol ad lately.
The drinks industry gives the impression that it is always skirting the line, trying to get away with as much as it can without breaching the regulations. The ASAI states that an ad may refer to the "social dimension or refreshing attributes of a drink", but should not imply that drinking will enhance physical attributes, sexual success or contribute to social or business success or distinction. Ads should not imply that those who do not drink are less likely to be acceptable or successful than those who do.
It is obvious, reading these guidelines, that the drinks companies that flouted them would have to have been blind not to know what they were doing.
Which leads us to the question of why drinks advertising is allowed at all, and why it isn't banned as it is in France. TV ads for hard liquor, such as whiskey and vodka, are illegal in Ireland. So why do we allow ads for beer, alcopops and wine? Booze is booze. Children get the message that drinking is fun and don't recall what the drink was exactly. Add this to the reality that certain ads may be banned long after being viewed by millions, and you can see that the alcohol industry is laughing as long as the glass is half-empty.