Does digital marketing really make kids turn to booze?

The Portman Group, an industry body that works with drinks producers to raise standards of alcohol marketing, has published a guide that aims to stop alcohol brands targeting underage consumers or encouraging harmful drinking through their digital marketing. This is interesting to me for a number of reasons:

Firstly, please answer this question: Have you ever been encouraged to drink alcohol based on something you saw on the internet?

While there may be some out there that say yes, I suspect the vast majority would say no.

My second point is that when you are a teenager, or indeed ‘under age’, you drink whatever you can get your hands on. Brands that have enough money in the marketing budgets to advertise are often too expensive for teenagers that live of a wage of pocket money from their parents.

But I don’t want to criticize the good deed the Portman Group is doing. It is challenging companies to be socially responsible after all.  

I think however, that it is interesting how the internet has led to further concerns over underage drinking.

You might recall that several food campaigners, including the FSA and British Heart Foundation, also launched concerns over junk food advertising on the internet encouraging children to eat bad food and therefore wind up obese.

While the internet plays a part in advertising alcohol and junk food, it is not the only source and I fear we often forget the influences outside advertising – peer pressure. I will admit to some drinking when I was a teenager, but I wasn’t doing it based on any amount of advertising. People told me it was cool, and let’s face it, I was a geek in need of some people thinking I was a bad ass.

If we are going to look to the internet for blame of alcohol abuse among teenagers then also blame it for the number of marriages that have broken down due to men looking up and becoming obsessed with the amount of free and advertised porn.

The internet is getting a bad wrap lately isn’t it? I mean Rupert Murdoch has even been blaming it for the demise of the media industry, and while this may have some truth, we must remember the internet represents a revolution of the media industry as well as how we consume media – and that includes advertising.

It has helped the advertising industry just as much as it may have hindered it. More marketing campaigns are launched than ever before. Niche companies that perhaps before didn’t stand a chance at being able to afford to advertise on TV or in newspapers were given a chance.

The internet has allowed us to be closer to companies and brands than ever before and even allows us to voice our concerns directly to the advertiser. But does it really encourage kids to drink? I would like to see some figures that suggest digital advertising has led to an increased number of underage children boozing it up.

Good on the Portman Group for taking a stance about alcohol advertising, but I doubt it will do much to relax the binging culture some have fallen into.