You can use this plan to start your outline. It will help you to .docx

You can use this plan to start your outline. It will help you
to make sure that your essay contains all of the usual pieces that
an argumentative research essay would contain:
· Part 1: Give a general introduction to the problem, including
the thesis statement. The thesis statement should present a
clearly defined position on a debatable topic.
· Part 2: Present the history of the problem, including, perhaps,
past attempts at a solution.
· Part 3: Discuss the extent of the problem. Who is affected by
it? How bad is it?
· Part 4: Indicate what will happen if the problem is not solved.
· Part 5: Connect the argument with facts that prove your
points. Note the areas of objections and offer concessions if
needed.
· Part 6: Provide a conclusion, including a restatement of the
thesis and summary of the main ideas.
Here are the articles that can be used
Jernigan, D. H., Ostroff, J., & Ross, C. (2005). Alcohol
advertising and youth: A measured approach. Journal of Public
Health Policy, 26(3), 312-25. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/233374598?accountid=8731
4
http://search.proquest.com.southuniversity.libproxy.edmc.edu/d
ocview/233374598?accountid=87314
INTRODUCTION
Youth alcohol consumption represents an international public
health crisis (1). Hastings et al, (this issue) have analyzed and
summarized the growing international body of research
literature showing that exposure to alcohol advertising predicts
awareness of that advertising (2), which leads in turn to positive
beliefs about alcohol, increased intentions to drink (3), and
higher likelihood of consuming alcohol (4). National as well as
state-level longitudinal studies in the United States have found

that exposure to alcohol advertising in various venues -
including broadcast, print, outdoor, point-of-purchase and
sporting events - can predict onset of drinking, increased
drinking and heavier drinking among young people (5-7).
This literature is augmented by brain imaging research, which
has found that teens with alcohol use disorders show greater
activity in areas of the brain previously linked to reward, desire,
positive affect and episodic recall in response to alcoholic
beverage advertisements, with the highest degree of brain
response in youth who consume more drinks per month and
report greater desires to drink (8). This suggests that alcohol
advertising has a particular effect on youth who are already
heavy drinkers.
Measuring Youth Exposure to Alcohol Advertising
While exposure to alcohol advertising is thus a risk factor for
young people, there have been few concrete benchmarks by
which to assess the level of risk or the progress in reducing
risk. Worldwide, the most common means of limiting youth
exposure to alcohol advertising is through alcohol industry self-
regulation. As discussed more fully by Casswell and Maxwell
(this issue), the World Health Organization reports that between
13% and 16% of countries rely on some form of industry self-
regulation in this area, while an additional 28%~57% have no
restrictions on alcohol advertising, whether statutory or
voluntary (9).
Prior to 2002, there was little systematic, independent
monitoring of alcohol industry self-regulation. In that year, the
Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Georgetown
University (CAMY) was created to monitor alcohol company
marketing practices in the United States in order to provide an
independent review of the industry's practices and to offer a
factual basis to debates over youth exposure to alcohol
advertising occurring in that country. From 2001 to 2003,
alcohol companies spent nearly US$5.5 billion to advertise in
the measured media of television, radio and print (10,11).
CAMY has focused on these so-called "measured" media,

although the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has estimated
that companies spend two to three times this amount on
unmeasured promotions such as sponsorships, point-of-purchase
promotions, giveaways and clothing bearing alcohol brand
logos, and special events (12).
Since its founding, CAMY has published 13 reports on youth
exposure to alcohol advertising on television and radio, in
magazines and on the Internet between 2001 and 2003.This
article summarizes CAMY's methods and findings, and shows
how these data are being used to inform policy debates over
youth exposure to alcohol advertising in the United States.
METHODS
CAMY's analyses rely on statistical sources and measurement
concepts standard to the advertising media planning and
research field, but to our knowledge rarely accessed by public
health researchers. They are based on the merging of two sets of
commercially available databases: occurrence tracking (for
brand advertising) and audience estimates (for various
demographic groups). In all, more than 28 different commercial
databases are employed. Audience estimates are developed
using various survey methodologies. While media audience
measurement is by no means an exact science, these are the
databases used by media buyers to place billions of dollars in
advertising every year, and as such represent the best
information available on media exposure. By combining
occurrence and audience data, it is possible to measure and
compare the exposure of youth and adults to alcohol advertising
in the measured media of magazines, television and radio.
The data are calculated at the local market and national levels
and are reported using the advertising industry standard
measures of audience composition, gross impressions, and gross
rating points. Audience composition refers to the percentage of
the audience that meets different demographic criteria. For
instance, young people aged 12-20 are approximately 15% of
the US population aged 12 and above. A magazine audience
composition of more than 15% 12-20-year-olds will be likely to

create the situation where youth are more likely per capita to
see the magazine than adults over 21 years, the legal drinking
age in the United States. Gross impressions represent the total
number of times all the members of a given audience are
exposed to advertising. Gross rating points (GRPs) are gross
impressions divided by the relevant population and then
multiplied by 100. Because they are population-weighted, GRPs
provide advertisers with a measure of the total gross delivery of
an audience segment that is comparable across different
populations (13). GRPs are the most useful measure for
retrospectively comparing the amount of media weight received
by a population relative to other segments of the population,
and are the measurement used most frequently in CAMY's
analyses.
CAMY has defined the youth population at risk as 12-20-year-
olds reflecting that 13 is the average age of initiation into
alcohol use for 12-17-year-olds in the United States (personal
communication from J. Gfroerer, Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration, US Department of Health and
Human Services, 14 September 2004), that there are very few
current drinkers (those who drank in the past 30 days) at age 12
(the age at which national surveys of youth drinking begin data
collection), and that the nation's minimum age for purchasing
alcohol is 21 years old. Commercial sources measuring
magazine and radio audiences only measure the exposure of
persons aged 12 and above. Some exposure of young people to
alcohol advertising is inevitable, but it defies common sense for
an advertiser to expose the underage (illegal) population more
effectively to its advertising than the legal-age (21 and above)
population. This youth "overexposure" occurs when young
people under age 21i are over-represented in the audience of the
advertising relative to their presence in the general population,
with the result that they are more likely per capita to see the
advertising than adults 21 and over.
Drawing on commercial databases such as Nielsen Media
Research for television audiences, Arbitron Ratings for radio

audiences, Mediamark Research Inc. for magazine audiences,
and TNS Media Intelligence (formerly known as Competitive
Media Reporting) for occurrence data, CAMY has calculated
youth and adult exposure to alcohol advertising for the years
2001 to 2003. CAMY has also been able to use these databases
to calculate the comparative exposure of underage females and
males in some media, and to compare the exposure of Hispanic
and African-American youth to the exposure of other youth.
CAMY has also been able to calculate youth exposure to alcohol
advertising on a sample of alcohol company websites, using
data from comScore Media Metrix, which has a representative
sample of approximately one million persons in the United
States who have agreed to place proprietary software on their
computers that permits comScore to track the Internet traffic of
all the members of their household (14).
RESULTS
In analyzing magazine advertising for alcoholic beverages in
2003, CAMY found that young people aged 12-20 were exposed
per capita to 48% more beer ads, 20% more distilled spirits ads,
92% more ads for "alcopops" and alcoholic lemonades such as
Bacardi Silver and Smirnoff Ice, and 66% fewer wine ads than
adults 21 and above (most likely because wine marketers tend to
appeal more to older adults) (15). CAMY also analyzed
magazine advertising exposure data for 2002 by gender. This
analysis revealed that girls were far more overexposed
compared to women of legal drinking age than boys were when
compared to men of legal drinking age. Girls saw 68% more
beer ads and 95% more ads for alcopops per capita than women,
while boys saw 29% more beer ads and 37% more alcopops ads
than men (16). Alcohol industry spokespersons have often
referred to the 21-34 age group as their actual target, as
opposed to the entire legal-age population (17,18). Girls also
saw more alcopop and beer advertising per capita in magazines
than women aged 21-34; the per capita exposure of boys did not
outstrip the exposure of male readers aged 21-34. Although
CAMY's study did not attempt to establish a correlation

between exposure to alcohol advertising in magazines and
drinking among girls, this finding was of concern in part
because recent federal surveys of youth drinking in the United
States had found that girls' prevalence of drinking and of binge
drinking had begun to outstrip that of boys (19,20).
Television - particularly national broadcast - offers advertisers
less precision with which to reach their desired audiences than
either magazines or radio. Between 2001 and 2003, alcohol
companies broadcast 761,347 product ads on US national and
local broadcast and national cable television. Underage youth
aged 12-20 were more likely per capita than legal-age adults to
have seen 181,932, or nearly 24%, of those ads. The 15
television shows in 2003 with the largest audiences of teens
aged 12-17 all had alcohol ads, including Survivor, Fear Factor,
CSI: Miami and According to Jim (21). During the period from
2001 to 2003, alcohol companies also aired 24,164
responsibility ads warning against driving after drinking,
encouraging use of a designated driver, advising viewers to
drink responsibly, or informing them about the legal drinking
age of 21. The result of the imbalance between responsibility
and product advertising was that young people aged 12-20 were
96 times more likely to see a TV commercial promoting alcohol
from 2001 to 2003 than an industry-funded responsibility ad
regarding underage drinking (22).
Besides television, radio is the medium most popular among
teens aged 12-17 - more popular than surfing the Internet or
reading magazines for pleasure (23). Because there are no truly
comprehensive data sources for radio, CAMY employed a
sampling strategy, analyzing 51,883 airings of radio ads for 25
leading alcohol brands in 104 markets in the summer of 2003,
the season of heaviest alcohol advertising (24). In 14 of the 15
largest markets, underage youth aged 12-20 heard more alcohol
advertising per capita than adults age 21 and over, and in five of
the top 15 markets, youth also heard more advertising than
young adults aged 21-34. Furthermore, 28% of the airings of
alcohol advertisements were at times when youth were more

than 30% of the listening audience - twice their percentage in
the general population (24).
On the Internet, traffic to 55 alcohol company websites was
tracked for CAMY. Many of these sites feature content such as
video games, free music downloads or music videos, alcohol-
themed sexy screensavers, and viral marketing. In the last six
months of 2003, underage youth made almost 700,000 in-depth
visits to those sites (i.e., visits of more than two pages, showing
that the user had penetrated the site past the age verification
screens often placed at the site's front end). Two distilled spirits
sites led in the percentage of underage in-depth site visits:
www.bacardi.com, with almost 60%, and www.skyy.com, with
almost half of its in-depth site visits from underage persons.
Two beer websites led in the absolute number of underage in-
depth site visits: www.budlight.com and www.budweiser.com
each received more than 90,000 visits from underage persons.
Alcohol industry voluntary codes promise that companies will
supply their web addresses to the makers of software packages
designed to permit parents to control their children's access to
Internet content. With the help of parent volunteers in seven
states and the District of Columbia, CAMY tested eight leading
parental control software packages and found that 76% of
alcohol brands eluded the parental controls half the time or
more (14).
In a United States cultural context, where Hispanic and African-
American youth are increasingly viewed as trendsetters for all
youth in matters of music, fashion and lifestyle (25,26), CAMY
studied the alcohol advertising exposure of Hispanic and
African-American youth compared to non-Hispanic and non-
African-American youth. CAMY found that, compared to non-
Hispanic and non-African-American youth, the minority youth
populations had substantially higher exposure to alcohol
advertising. In 2002, Hispanic youth aged 12-20 saw 24% more
distilled spirits and beer advertising and 32% more ads for
alcopops per capita in English-language magazines (data for
Spanish-language magazines were not available), and heard 11%

more distilled spirits advertising and 14% more ads for alcopops
per capita on English-language radio (27). Also in 2002,
African-American youth aged 12-20 saw 66% more beer ads,
81% more distilled spirits ads, and 45% more ads for alcopops
per capita in magazines than other youth. They were exposed to
12% more beer ads and 56% more ads for distilled spirits per
capita on radio (28).
CAMY's independent monitoring has fueled extensive
newspaper coverage and editorial comment regarding underage
youth exposure to alcoholic beverage advertising. It has been
termed a "helpful contribution" by the principal federal
regulatory body with jurisdiction over alcohol advertising, the
Federal Trade Commission (29), it has been cited in the US's
National Research Council and Institute of Medicine's
Congressionally mandated report on reducing underage drinking
(30), and it may have contributed to the revision of the
voluntary standards for placement of advertising by trade
associations for US distillers and brewers in September of 2003
(31,32). It has also prompted legislation pending in the US
Congress for CAMY's monitoring activities to be taken over by
the federal government and reported to the Congress on an
annual basis.
DISCUSSION: REDUCING EXPOSURE THROUGH YOUTH
AUDIENCE THRESHOLDS
The trade associations' revised standards for alcohol ad
placements brought the maximum youth audiences for beer and
distilled spirits advertising from a near-meaningless 50%
(applicable to approximately 1% of television programming
(33)) to 30%, matching the threshold in place in the Wine
Institute's code since 2000. The problem with the new threshold,
however, is that it still virtually guarantees the overexposure of
young people aged 12-20, since 30% is roughly twice the
percentage of youth aged 12-20 in the general population, and
since young people aged 2-11 are neither at substantial risk for
initiating alcohol use nor substantially exposed to alcohol
advertising. The president of the Beer Institute recently

explained to the United States Congress that the new threshold
is intended to be proportional: "...our members have revised the
standard for advertising placements in television, radio, and
magazines to require placements only where the proportion of
the audience above age 21 is reasonably expected to be 70% or
higher. This standard reflects the demographics of the US
population, in which approximately 70% of the public is age 21
or older" (34). However, applying proportionality to the entire
2-20 population, the industry can easily overexpose, or even
double-expose, 12-20-year-olds while still remaining within the
bounds of the new threshold.
Movement toward this threshold in 2003 was discernible in
magazine but not in television advertising, according to CAMY
data (15,21). In the first seven months of 2004 (the most recent
data available at this writing), while most brands had moved
into compliance with the new threshold in their magazine
advertising, one beer brand and 11 spirits brands placed more
than 20% of their advertisements in publications where the
measured audiences under age 21 exceeded 30%. On television
in the first 10 months of 2004 (the most recent data available at
this writing), virtually the same percentage of alcohol ads
(11.9%) appeared on programs where the audiences under 21
exceeded 30%, as in 2001, 2002, and 2003 (12.0%, 12.2%, and
12.2%, respectively) (21).
However, this movement toward the 30% threshold led to only
slight progress in eliminating the overexposure of youth aged
12-20. In magazines during the first seven months of 2004, the
advertising of 73 brands exposed more 12-20-year-old youth
than adults age 21 and over on a per capita basis. On national
broadcast and cable television during the first 10 months of
2004, six brands exposed more youth aged 12-20 to their
advertising than adults on a per capita basis, and for at least 27
more brands, more than half of their youth exposure came from
placements where young people aged 12-20 were more likely
per capita to see the ads than adults.
Preventing the problem of "overexposure" requires finding a

threshold that permits advertisers to reach their legitimate
audience of legal-aged persons age 21 and over, while reducing
exposure to young people under age 21. Virtual Media
Resources (VMR), a media research and planning firm working
with CAMY, analyzed the impact of youth audience thresholds
from 30% to 0% through hypothetical reallocations of alcohol
industry advertising dollars on television. Because the industry
has stated that its actual target may be 21-34-year-olds and not
the entire legal-age audience, for each brand advertising on
television in 2004, VMR endeavored in its reallocations to
match the brand's original schedule of 21-34 impressions by
program type (e.g., sports, drama, sitcom). Only programs that
contained alcohol advertising in the first 10 months of 2004
were used for the reallocation exercise.
Figure 1 shows that on television, youth exposure, measured in
gross impressions (the total number of times persons in a given
audience had the opportunity to see a given advertisement),
declined steadily with audience thresholds lower than 30%,
while impressions for young adults aged 21-34 remained steady
until roughly 15%. Although CAMY analyses normally rely on
...rating points, Figure1 cites gross impressions, which are usual
when gauging the audience composition of one or more ads in
relation to a given threshold, such as 15% or 30%.
On television, a 15% threshold would leave 79% of US
television programming accessible to alcohol advertisers. To
measure whether such a threshold is economically feasible,
VMR used another reallocation exercise to compare how much
it cost alcohol advertisers to reach the 21-34-years-old
population per impression with how much it would cost them to
reach the same demographic group using a 15% threshold for
audiences of youth aged 12-20. This exercise produced
measures of the average change in cost of advertising and in
youth and young adult impressions achieved per brand,
weighted for the size of the brand's expenditures. Shifting the
advertising for each of the 76 alcohol brands advertising on
television led to an 8% drop in the cost of advertising, but only

a 0.2% reduction in young adult impressions (likely an artifact
of limiting reallocations only to those programs that already had
alcohol advertising). At the same time, youth exposure to
alcohol advertising declined: overall youth impressions fell by
20%. And all but one of the 76 brands reduced its cost of
advertising per thousand young adult impressions achieved.
VMR repeated this analysis for the even narrower target of 21-
24-year-olds. Again, the 15% cap left ample alternatives for
advertisers. Youth impressions declined by 17%, the cost per
impression in the target audience of 21-24-year-olds fell by 6%,
and 21-24-year~old impressions only dropped by 0.5%, a drop
that would easily be remedied by buying ads on programs above
the new threshold that did not previously have alcohol
advertising.
These analyses indicate that alcohol companies could do more
to limit youth exposure to their advertising, and that a 15%
audience threshold for youth aged 12-20 is the appropriate
ceiling for the youth audience composition of programming
containing alcohol advertising. An analogous situation
regarding tobacco advertising placements in magazines led to a
court case brought by the State of California against the R.J.
Reynolds Tobacco Company under the Master Settlement
Agreement signed by state attorneys general and the US tobacco
companies in 1998. In that case in 2004, a California state
appeals court held that: "If Reynolds intended its print
advertising to target young adults but knew to a substantial
certainty it would be exposed to youth to the same extent as
young adults, then as a matter of law, Reynolds is deemed to
have intended to expose, and thus targeted, youth as well as
young adults" (35).
CAMY's work, based on commercially available databases that
are accessible to private companies as they make their decisions
about advertising placements, shows that alcohol companies
have repeatedly placed their advertising in programming and
publications where it is possible to determine with substantial
certainty that the advertising would expose youth to the same or

greater extent as young adults. Further analyses have shown that
shifting the advertising to more adult-oriented vehicles is not
only feasible but also more cost-effective for the advertisers.
CONCLUSION
Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the evidence
pointing to both the public health importance of delaying onset
of drinking until after adolescence, and the role of alcohol
marketing as a risk factor in youthful drinking. CAMY's reports
have shown that, in policy environments that employ alcohol
industry self-regulation as a means of preventing youth
exposure to alcohol advertising, independent public health
research that monitors that advertising and provides a factual
basis to the debate can be a useful contribution. Such research
can enhance the effectiveness of industry self-regulation as well
as offer statistical support for the adoption of more stringent
codes of practice by the industry's self-regulatory bodies.
While CAMY has pioneered the establishment of methods for
assessing youth exposure in measured media, further work is
needed to provide a factual basis for other promotional methods
such as sponsorships, product placements, clothing with logos,
point-of-purchase promotions, and other forms of unmeasured
marketing. CAMY's research has also occurred within the
context of a legal drinking age that is among the highest in the
world (9). In countries where the drinking age is lower, similar
research is needed to assess the levels of exposure to alcohol
marketing received by narrower age groups, such as 12-17-year-
olds if the legal drinking age is 18, as compared to the legal-
aged population.
In the context of the United States, CAMY's work has
demonstrated that alcohol companies can do a better job of
placing their advertisements to avoid youth exposure to them.
Doing so will actually assist the companies in more efficiently
reaching their stated target audiences, and it will reduce the
exposure of underage youth to alcohol advertising and the
public health risks arising from that exposure.

Hastings, G., Anderson, S., Cooke, E., & Ross, G. (2005).
Alcohol marketing and young people's drinking: A review of the
research. Journal of Public Health Policy, 26(3), 296-311.
Retrieved from
4
INTRODUCTION
After more than 30 years of research, the influence of alcohol
marketing on young people is still a matter of heated debate.
The alcohol and advertising industries quote data, especially
from econometric studies, showing that advertising has little or
no effect on consumption; public health academics use the
broader evidence base to argue the reverse conclusion. The
issue becomes even more contentious and complex when other
elements of marketing, such as pricing, distribution, point of
sale activity, and new product development, are brought into the
frame. This paper addresses these contradictions by reviewing
the literature and setting it in the context of broader marketing
thought.
THE INFLUENCE OF ALCOHOL ADVERTISING ON YOUNG
PEOPLE
Research into the influence of alcohol advertising on
consumption has taken two principal forms: econometric
studies., which involve a statistical examination of the
relationship between overall levels of alcohol consumption
(typically in terms of sales) and overall levels of advertising
(typically in terms of expenditure), and consumer studies, which
examine how people's drinking knowledge, attitudes and
behaviour vary with their exposure to alcohol advertising.
Econometric Studies
The majority of the work in this area suggests that alcohol
advertising has no effect (or a minimal effect, when compared

to other variables) on aggregate alcohol consumption. For
example, Duffy used an estimated econometric model of
alcoholic drink demand to examine the factors that had
contributed to the growth in the market (i). He found the effect
of advertising to be "barely measurable" and insignificant when
compared to the influence of income. A follow-up study came to
the same conclusion (2.). Other studies also found advertising to
be of limited significance in terms of total consumption or
demand (3,4). The advertising and alcohol industries rely on
this body of research to support their case that advertising does
not affect demand for alcohol (5-7).
However, several studies by Saffer have shown a link between
advertising and consumption. For example, his time-series study
of advertising bans in 17 member nations of the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (8) suggests that
countries with advertising bans have lower levels of alcohol
consumption and lower levels of motor vehicle fatalities. An
update of the study (9) using time-series data from 20 countries
over 26 years obtained similar results, leading him to conclude
that alcohol advertising bans do decrease alcohol consumption.
Saffer (10) has also argued that one problem with some
econometric studies is that they use data sets with insufficient
variation to find effects. Studying the effects of advertising
cross-sectionally at the market level in 75 metropolitan areas in
the United States to maximize variance, Saffer found a
significant relationship between alcohol advertising and motor
vehicle fatalities (10). More recently, Saffer used panel data
from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997)
combined with alcohol advertising data at the market level for
five media to estimate individual fixed effects models. He found
that a complete ban on alcohol advertising could reduce
monthly drinking by adolescents by roughly 2.4%, and monthly
binge drinking by 42% (n).
In addition to the problems of variation noted by Saffer,
econometric studies have a number of other weaknesses that
stem from the fact that they are dependent on the construction

of complex equations to model an extremely sophisticated social
phenomenon. In reality, these models have a number of major
flaws (12-18):
* Data on key variables, most notably advertising expenditure,
are missing.
* Advertising spending is assumed to be an accurate marker of
advertising effectiveness; in fact the work of Strickland (19)
suggests that both the medium and the creative theme of
advertising are important variables.
* Models of advertising effect are naïve, ignoring recent
research which shows that consumers are actively involved in
the communication process (20,21) and indeed that alcohol
advertising, which is built on this premise, is more effective
(22,23).
* Complications such as feedback - the potential reciprocity of
advertising and consumption levels - and advertising wear-out
are frequently ignored.
* Beyond crude consumption levels, little insight is provided
into consumers' drinking knowledge, attitudes and behaviour.
* They focus on advertising and ignore the integrated nature of
marketing.
Even more seriously for this article, which focuses on young
people, aside from some of Saffer's work, the econometric
studies tell us nothing about the behaviour of sub-groups within
the total alcohol market. This market contains a vast array of
product offerings targeted at distinct groups of consumers,
including young people, with greatly varying levels of
advertising support. Arguably, the slight and inconsistent
influence of alcohol advertising on population level
consumption reported in many econometric studies actually
reflects an averaging of minimal influences on older established
drinkers and larger effects on immature, younger drinkers (16).
This argument becomes more convincing when it is remembered
that youth brands, such as Bacardi Breezer, receive a
disproportionate amount of advertising support.
Until disaggregated data become available, the best option is to

use the sort of methods the industry employs to evaluate the
effectiveness of its own advertising: consumer studies. These
studies ''use the individual as the unit of analysis''' (24, p. 1400)
and attempt to examine or predict the responses of young people
to alcohol advertising.
Consumer Studies
A study by Strickland (z5) involving American teenagers
revealed a relatively complex picture. He did not find any direct
linkage between exposure to advertising and consumption
levels. However, his work did suggest that "orientation towards
advertising," (the extent of identification with models portrayed
in advertisements and how advertisements shape normative
expectations about drinking and its associated behaviours) may
facilitate advertising influence. Strickland stresses, however,
that while statistically significant results were found for these
two advertising orientations, the magnitude of the effect was
very small.
Later work by Strickland (26) involved a correlational survey of
772 12-i6-year-old drinkers in the United States. He based his
measure of advertising exposure on data taken from self-
reported television programme viewing, weighted for the
number of alcohol advertisements occurring during the
programmes. Data were also collected on a variety of drinking
variables. Strickland found that exposure to advertising had
"meagre" effects on his participants' levels of consumption.
Adlaf and Kohn (27) reanalysed Strickland's (21) work, after
testing several alternative statistical models, to find one which
fitted his data. Like Strickland, they found alcohol advertising
exposure to have an extremely small impact on alcohol
consumption, particularly when compared to the effects of peer
drinking.
Atkin (12,28) levelled several criticisms at Strickland's original
study (2.1), which also have implications for Adlaf and Kohn's
(27) work. Most importantly, he questioned the validity of the
use of exposure as the advertising variable, because it ignores
the effect of audience volition in the communication process. In

essence, the fact that an individual is exposed to an
advertisement does not mean that they will pay attention to - or
even notice - it.
Atkin et al. (29) undertook a study to examine potential
relationships between 'naturalistic exposure' to alcohol
advertising and the consumption of alcohol among a sample of
American teenagers. They used a correlational survey design
and collected data on a range of alcohol advertising exposure
and attention variables, along with additional factors that may
impact on drinking behaviour (such as parental and peer
influence and church attendance) and alcohol consumption.
Using regression analyses they demonstrated that there were
significant positive relationships between young people's
exposure and attention to alcohol advertisements (on television
and in magazines) and their drinking behaviour. They also
found that young participants who reported high levels of
exposure to alcohol advertisements, but did not yet drink, were
more likely to do so in the future. While suggesting a need for
caution before drawing causal inferences from their findings,
they nonetheless concluded that advertising and drinking are
significantly associated, and that this reflects advertising
influence rather than either contaminating antecedent variables
or reverse causation.
A qualitative study carried out in the UK by Aitken et al. (30)
looked in detail at 10-16-year-olds' perceptions of, and
responses to, alcohol advertisements. The researchers found that
familiarity with, and appreciation of, alcohol advertisements
increased rapidly between 10 and 14, and 15-16-year-olds
enjoyed and were very adept at deducing complex symbolism
and imagery (such as masculinity, sociability and working class
values) from them. Similar results were reported in a
quantitative study by Austin and Knaus (31). Aitken et al. (30)
concluded that many of the characteristics of alcohol
advertisements that are designed to attract young adults are also
highly appealing to young teenagers.
The same research team conducted a cross-sectional survey of

433 10-17-year-olds (24,32). This confirmed that children are
very aware of television alcohol advertising, that they find it
appealing, and that as they get older, are increasingly adept at
deducing complex symbolism and imagery from it. The study
also revealed distinct differences between underage drinkers
and non-drinkers: the former enjoy alcohol advertising more and
are significantly better at recognizing the brand imagery
contained within it. Furthermore, these differences are
independent of other variables known to be associated with
underage drinking (such as age, and peer and parental alcohol
consumption) and variables that might explain an attraction to
television advertising.
This still leaves the issue of causality: does drinking encourage
attention to advertising or advertising encourage a desire to
drink? Aitken et al. (30) argue that their data show that young
drinkers pay more attention to alcohol advertising and,
according to advertising theory, this means they get some
reward or benefit from it. In particular, they derive greater
benefits from it than their nondrinking peers and, as all other
variables are being held constant, the only possible explanation
is that these benefits relate to their alcohol consumption. In
short, the advertising is rewarding and reinforcing their
drinking. The researchers add two codicils: first, that the
reinforcing effects of advertising, while significant, are smaller
than for peer or parental drinking; and second, that their data
tell us nothing about the role of advertising in the onset of
drinking.
Wyllie et al. (33,34) conducted a similar cross-sectional survey
with both 10-17-year-olds and iS-zp-year-olds, collecting data
on awareness and liking of alcohol advertising and drinking
behavior and expectations. In both cases, structural equation
models were used to interpret the data, with the findings
suggesting "...tentative support for the theory-based hypothesis
that positive responses to beer advertisements increased the
frequency of current drinking and expected future drinking" (33,
abstract). Neither study provided any support for the reciprocal

hypothesis - that drinking might generate positive attitudes to
alcohol advertising.
Examining the impact, if any, of alcohol advertising on the
onset of drinking really requires longitudinal research. Grube
and Wallack (35) carried out a study in the United States, which
used structured interviews and a self-administered questionnaire
to collect data, which were examined using a structural equation
model. Their findings suggest that level of awareness of beer
advertising is linked to greater knowledge of beer brands and
slogans, increasingly positive beliefs about drinking and higher
intentions to drink as an adult. However, their study did not
follow up the young people for long enough to measure the
impact on drinking behaviour. Connolly et al. (36) examined the
relationship between recall of alcohol-related mass-media
communications at ages 13 and 15, and alcohol consumption at
the age of 18. They found that young men who had a higher
recall of alcohol advertising at the age of 15 consumed larger
volumes of beer at the age of 18, but no effects linking
advertising with wine or distilled spirits consumption, and
negative relationships between women's recall of alcohol
portrayed in the media and their beer consumption. These
inconsistencies may reflect the fact that advertising measures
were limited to recall, whereas previous studies had looked at
more complex processing.
Casswell and Zhang (22) carried out a further longitudinal study
to examine the relationship, if any, between liking for alcohol
advertising and beer brand allegiance on the one hand and beer
consumption and self-reports of drinking-related aggression on
the other. Their sample of young adults was surveyed at the age
of 18 and again at 21 using a computer-based questionnaire and
a one-toone supplementary interview. The findings indicate a
significant relationship between beer brand allegiance and
liking of alcohol advertisements at age 18 with beer
consumption at the age of 21. Liking for advertising at age 18
did not appear to influence consumption at age 18, but brand
allegiance did. The researchers also found their predicted

relationship between beer consumption and participants'
experiences of drinking-related aggression to be significant.
In 1998 the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism funded three longitudinal studies. Ellickson et al.
(37) followed 3,111 students in middle schools in South Dakota
(roughly 13-15-year-olds) over 3 years. Comparing drinkers and
non-drinkers at baseline, and using regression models with
multiple control variables to examine the relationship between
exposure to alcohol advertising after 1 year and drinking
behaviour after 2 years, they found that exposure to in-store
beer displays predicted drinking onset for non-drinkers after 2
years, and exposure to advertising in magazines and beer
concession stands at sports or music events predicted frequency
of drinking after two years. They found no significant
predictive effect of exposure to television advertising for either
drinkers or non-drinkers.
However, Stacy et al. (38) did find effects for television
advertising. They began with a cohort of 2,250 seventh graders
(12-13-year-olds) and, using a combination of exposure and
recall variables, found that an increase in viewing television
programmes containing alcohol commercials was associated
with a 44% increased risk of beer use, a 34% increased risk of
wine or liquor use and a 26% increased risk of engaging in
three-drink episodes a year later.
Snyder et al. (39) conducted telephone surveys with 1,872,
youth ages 15 to 26 in 24 media markets up to four times over a
21-month period. Multi-level analyses demonstrated a
significant link between both self-reported ad exposure and the
prevalence of advertising (in a variety of media) in a particular
domain and increased drinking, when a wide range of
confounding variables were controlled. Furthermore, both
advertising variables were also positively associated with
increased drinking over time.
Overall, consumer studies - especially the more sophisticated
recent ones - do suggest a link between advertising and young
people's drinking. In essence, the more aware, familiar and

appreciative young people are of alcohol advertising, the more
likely they are to drink both now and in the future. This
conclusion is supported by a key informants study (40) carried
out in New Zealand. The participants included advertising
agency creative directors, market researchers and
communication/education experts, and 69% of them believed
that alcohol advertising on television and radio would
encourage i3-i7-year-olds to drink.
MARKETING, NOT ADVERTISING
Consumer studies also begin to reveal the complexity of the
issue, with the interaction of consumer choice, advertising
effect and marketing opportunism creating powerful dynamics.
For example, in Connolly et al.'s (36) 1994 study, it seemed that
young men who liked beer and consumed it with enthusiasm
were particularly aware and appreciative of beer advertising and
were most likely to be targeted by beer advertisers. It is
plausible to assume that the link between young men's
awareness of alcohol advertising and their beer consumption is
causally related in both directions: their liking for beer will
draw them to beer advertising and beer advertising will
reinforce their liking for beer. Furthermore, the latter effect will
be enhanced by the creative abilities and media buying skills
and resources of the alcohol advertiser. The reverse is true for
young women. They do not want to drink beer and advertising is
unlikely to persuade them to do so; as a result alcohol producers
are much less inclined to use their skills to target them with
clever media campaigns for beer (although they do use these
skills to promote other products to girls - see Mosher, this
issue).
Consumer studies also begin to force the agenda beyond
advertising by introducing the issue of branding (12,30,32.).
Branding is an enormously important construct in commercial
marketing that adds powerful emotional associations to the
physical product. In many markets, especially those comprising
young people, it is a key dimension of the marketer's offering.
As a result brand names like Budweiser and Bacardi have

acquired enormous value.
Furthermore, advertising is only one of the marketing tools that
are used to develop and manage brands. The WHO Global Status
Report on Alcohol and Young People (41) emphasises the
growing trend for marketing expenditure to shift away from
traditional forms of direct advertising in the print and broadcast
media (known as "above-the-line" activity), to "below-the-line"
activity, such as sponsorship, competitions and special
promotions. The report estimates that in 1993 in the United
States, around 75% of marketing expenditure went below-the-
line. Furthermore, these communications activities are in turn
just part of the overall marketing effort, which links
promotional activity with product development, pricing and
distribution.
The research evidence is incomplete, but it does suggest that
each of these tools has an effect on young people. For product
development, numerous studies have charted how drinks have
been created that directly meet the needs of various segments of
the youth market, and are very popular with them - sometimes
more so than with adult drinkers. Whether these be "wine
coolers," (42) "designer drinks" (fruit-flavoured wines and
strong white ciders (43,44)), or "alcopops," (45,46) studies of
young people's attitudes and behaviour in several countries have
documented that such new products are the drinks of choice of
young people and can contribute both to heavier drinking and to
lowering the age of onset of drinking. In some instances, these
products seem to be competing directly with the youth market
for illegal drugs (47,48).
Price has been found to have an even greater influence on youth
consumption than advertising. Three reviews in this area have
confirmed that overall price levels influence consumption (49-
51). Godfrey concluded that "There is considerable evidence
that prices affect both levels of consumption and problem
rates," (49, p. 40) while Chaloupka found that "studies that look
at drinking by youth generally find even larger effects of taxes
and prices than are found for the overall population, suggesting

that increases in prices are particularly effective in reducing
youth drinking and its consequences." (51, p. 561) Perhaps not
surprisingly then, concerns have been raised by some
researchers about price being used as a marketing tool,
particularly at the point of sale. "Beat the Clock" specials, "buy
one get one free" happy hours, "any coin any drink", "ladies'
night" and "penny beers" (52-54) have all been highlighted.
These activities link in with distribution and point of sale
marketing, which has been shown to influence the young. Kuo
et al. (55) conducted a study of over 10,000 college students in
the United States, and found that alcohol price promotions were
prevalent around college campuses, and were associated with
higher binge drinking rates. Christie et al. (53) found price
promotions resulted in the belief that increased consumption
would take place, while Hughes et al.'s (44) study showed that
young people valued the cheapness of designer drinks, and
Cooke et al. (54) found that "happy hours" and special price
promotions were commonplace in bars and nightclubs they
frequented. More fundamentally, other studies have shown a
strong link between the number of outlets and increased
consumption (56) and problem drinking (57).
CONCLUSIONS
There will never be a categorical answer to the question "does
alcohol marketing influence young people's drinking?" The
relationships are simply too complex and ephemeral to unpick
them with absolute certainty. We are, in any case, in the
territory of social science, where progress is made by assessing
the evidence and using the balance of probabilities to determine
the most plausible explanation for the data. So what are the
balance of probabilities and the most plausible explanations in
this case?
Much of the research has focused on advertising rather than
marketing. Most econometric studies provide little evidence of
an effect; however, methodological weaknesses, and especially
their focus on population level effects, mean they can tell us
little about young people. Consumer studies overcome this

deficiency and do suggest that there is a link between
advertising and young people's drinking knowledge, attitudes
and behaviour. However, they also remind us of the complexity
of the issue we are studying, which is both subjective and
multifactorial. It is subjective in that consumers and marketers
are in a dynamic relationship, with the latter continually trying
to hone and enhance their offering to make it more potent. It is
multifactorial in that advertising is just one element of
marketing that also involves getting the right product at the
right price in the right place. Research suggests that each of
these variables also has an impact on young people.
Furthermore, examining all these variables in isolation is likely
to underestimate the power of modern marketing, where
integration and strategic synchronicity are key. Just as all forms
of advertising are harnessed in an 'integrated marketing
communications mix,' (58) so marketing communications also
form just part of the overall marketing mix. There is now
sufficient research evidence on the constituent elements of this
marketing to say that the balance of probabilities now favours
the conclusion that it is having an effect. The fact that exactly
the same conclusions have been drawn for tobacco (59) and
food marketing (60) suggests that plausibility is moving to
veracity.
Jernigan, D. H., Ostroff, J., Ross, C. S., Naimi, T. S., & Brewer,
R. D. (2006). Youth exposure to alcohol advertising on radio -
united states, june-august 2004. (). Atlanta: U.S. Center for
Disease Control. Retrieved from
4
In the United States, more underage youth drink alcohol than
smoke tobacco or use illicit drugs (7). Excessive alcohol
consumption leads to many adverse health and social

consequences and results in approximately 4,500 deaths among
underage youth each year (1,2). Recent studies have emphasized
the contribution of alcohol marketing to underage drinking and
have demonstrated that a substantial proportion of alcohol
advertising appears in media for which the audience
composition is youth-oriented (i.e., composed
disproportionately of persons aged 12-20 years) (3,4). To
determine the proportion of radio advertisements that occurred
on radio programs with audiences composed disproportionately
of underage youth and the proportion of total youth exposure to
alcohol advertising that occurs as a result of such advertising,
researchers at the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth
(Health Policy Institute, Georgetown University, District of
Columbia) evaluated the placement of individual radio
advertisements for the most advertised U.S. alcohol brands and
the composition of audiences in the largest 104 markets in the
United States. This report summarizes the results of that study,
which indicate that alcohol advertising is common on radio
programs which have disproportionately large youth audiences
and that this advertising accounts for a substantial proportion of
all alcohol radio advertising heard by underage youth. These
results further indicate that 1) the current voluntary standards
limiting alcohol marketing to youth should be enforced and
ultimately strengthened, and 2) ongoing monitoring of youth
exposure to alcohol advertising should continue.
In this study, underage youth were defined as persons aged 12-
20 years. Age 12 years is the youngest age at which exposure to
radio advertising is tracked, and age 21 years is the minimum
legal drinking age in all U.S. states. Radio programs based on
three levels of youth audience composition were assessed. The
first level was based on a market-specific proportionate
standard in which the proportion of the audience aged 12-20
years exceeded its proportion in the general population of a
given local market. The second level was based on a standard in
which the proportion of youth aged 12-20 years exceeded 15%
of the audience; this corresponds to the proportion of the U.S.

population aged ≥12 years who are aged 12-20 years. This is
also the threshold above which the National Research Council
and Institute of Medicine (NRC/IOM) recommends that alcohol
companies refrain from advertising. The third level was based
on a standard in which the proportion of youth aged 12-20 years
exceeded 30% of the audience; this threshold represents the
level above which major alcohol companies have agreed not to
advertise on radio and other media.
Overall, 238 unique radio advertisements for the 25 most
advertised alcohol brands were catalogued by Video Monitoring
Service (New York, New York). Nonproduct advertisements
(e.g., advertisements promoting responsible drinking) were
excluded from the analysis. Data on the frequency with which
these advertisements appeared on individual radio programs in
the top 104 media markets in the United States, which account
for approximately 50% of the U.S. population (5), were
obtained from Broadcast Verification Services (New York, New
York). Advertising occurrences were identified for 24 of the 25
leading brands. To assess variability in advertising by
metropolitan area, a subset of the advertisements in the sample
from the 15 largest U.S. radio markets, which account for
approximately one third of the U.S. population (5), were
analyzed. Monitoring took place during June 15-August 5, 2004.
This period was selected because this period typically has the
highest spending for alcohol advertising (6), and 2004 was the
most recent year for which data on advertising placement were
available. Data on listener characteristics (e.g., audience
composition by age, race/ethnicity, and sex) for the summer of
2003, the most recent comparable rating period for which data
were available, were obtained from Arbitron Ratings (New
York, New York). Advertisements that aired between midnight
and 6:00 a.m., which accounted for 3% of all alcohol
advertising placements, were excluded because Arbitron does
not collect audience data for these hours.
Of the 67,404 alcohol advertisements assessed in the sample
from all 104 markets, 32,800 (49%) were placed on

programming for which the local audience was composed
disproportionately of underage youth (i.e., the market-specific
proportionate standard) (Table 1). In the 15 largest radio
markets, 11,084 (48%) of 22,884 alcohol advertisements were
placed on programming with disproportionately large youth
audiences, ranging from 24% in Houston to 76% in Atlanta
(Table 1).
Results based on a 15% threshold were similar to those based on
the market-specific proportionate standard. For example, 52%
of alcohol advertisements in all 104 markets and 49% of
advertisements in the 15 largest markets aired on radio
programs for which the youth audience composition was >15%.
Of all advertisements in the 104 markets, 9,158 (14%) aired on
programs for which youth represented >30% of listeners (Table
1). In 13 markets, approximately one half of advertisements
were in programs that exceeded the 30% standard, whereas in
13 other markets, no advertising placements exceeded the 30%
threshold. In the 15 largest radio markets, 2,948 (13%) of the
advertisements aired on programs in which >30% of the
audience was aged 12-20 years, ranging from 5% in Miami to
38% in Washington, D.C.
The proportion of alcohol advertising placed on radio programs
with disproportionately large youth audiences also varied by
brand. For 11 of 24 brands, approximately half of all their youth
exposure resulted from placements that exceeded the 30%
threshold, including five brands for which approximately three
quarters of youth exposure resulted from these placements.*
Overall, 71% of total youth exposure to radio alcohol
advertising was accounted for by advertisements on programs
with disproportionately large youth audiences, and 32% of
advertising exposure was accounted for by advertisements that
aired on programs exceeding the 30% threshold (Table 2). In the
15 largest markets, the percentage of exposure coming from
advertisements on programming with disproportionately large
youth audiences ranged from 44% in San Francisco to 89% in
Dallas, and the percentage of exposure from advertisements on

programs for which >30% of the audience was youth ranged
from 5% in Atlanta to 59% in Detroit.
Brand-specific exposure to radio advertising also varied by the
sex and racial/ethnic composition of the audience. Compared
with boys, underage girls had higher levels of exposure to 11
alcohol brands and in 41 of the 104 markets and less exposure
to 13 brands and in 63 markets. Compared with all youth, black
youth had greater exposure to radio alcohol advertising in 25 of
the 104 markets and less in 79 markets, and Hispanic youth
were exposed to more alcohol advertising in 13 markets and less
in 91 markets.
Editorial Note: The findings in this report indicate that
approximately half of alcohol advertising on radio aired during
programs in which the audience was youth-oriented (i.e.,
composed disproportionately of persons aged 12-20 years).
Furthermore, advertisements on such programs accounted for
nearly three quarters of all youth exposure to alcohol
advertising. Were advertising eliminated from programs that
exceeded the more permissive current voluntary standard used
by the alcoholic beverage industry, which stipulates that a
program's audience be <30% youth aged 12-20 years, total
youth exposure to alcohol advertising would decrease by
approximately one third.
Longitudinal studies have determined that increased exposure to
alcohol advertising is associated with an increase in underage
drinking (3,4). Furthermore, persons aged 12-19 years listen to
the radio more than they use the Internet or read magazines for
pleasure (7), underscoring the importance of radio as a medium
for exposure to advertising. Overexposure of youth to alcohol
marketing in other media (e.g., television and magazines) also
has been well documented (8).
The amount of alcohol advertising placed in programming that
exceeded the 30% threshold has decreased since the summer of
2003, when analysis of a similar sample found that 28% (versus
14% in this report) of advertisements exceeded that threshold
and accounted for 53% (versus 32% in this report) of all youth

advertising exposure (9). This reduction occurred, in part,
because in 2003, the Beer Institute and Distilled Spirits Council
joined the Wine Institute in adopting a 30% youth threshold for
advertising placement; their previous voluntary threshold had
been 50%. The change from 2003 to 2004 suggests that
companies selling alcohol can change their advertising
placement policies and that these changes have an impact on the
exposure of youth to alcohol advertising.
The findings in this report are subject to at least two
limitations. First, the findings are based on youth exposure to
only the most heavily advertised alcohol products and apply
only to media markets and periods for which relevant data were
assessed. second, audience data from the summer of 2003 might
not accurately represent the audience composition in the
summer of 2004. However, marketing professionals rely on data
from the preceding year to plan their upcoming advertising
campaigns; thus, these data were comparable to what was
available to marketing professionals who made decisions about
where to air their alcohol advertisements in the summer of
2004.
NRC/IOM recognizes that reducing exposure to alcohol
marketing among youth is a key strategy to combat the ongoing
problem of underage drinking. Specifically, they have
recommended immediate adoption of a 25% threshold for youth
audience composition for placement of alcohol advertisements,
with an eventual movement toward a 15% threshold. The
findings in this report also support the use of this 15% threshold
to define youth-oriented media for the purpose of conducting
public health surveillance for alcohol advertising, because the
total local market composition of youth aged 12-20 years for the
top 104 media markets was approximately 15% and because the
proportion of alcohol advertising on radio using a market-
specific proportionate standard (49%) was similar to the
proportion using a 15% threshold (52%). NRC/IOM has also
recommended that the federal government monitor the exposure
of youth to alcohol advertising and report the results annually

(7). Ongoing, independent surveillance of advertising practices
in the alcoholic beverage industry will be necessary to ensure
compliance with advertising standards and will be useful for
assessing additional interventions to reduce exposure to alcohol
advertising among underage youth.
Jernigan, D., & Wedekind, J. (2008). Intoxicating brands:
Alcohol advertising and youth. Multinational Monitor, 29(1),
23-27. Retrieved from
4
PEOPLE WERE DRINKING ALCOHOL long before the alcohol
industry hooked up with Madison Avenue, but the beer, wine
and liquor companies clearly believe advertising affects
consumption patterns.
Alcohol companies spend close to $2 billion every year
advertising in the United States alone. From 2001 to 2007, they
aired more than 2 million television ads and published more
than 20,000 magazine advertisements.
Such heavy advertising inevitably leads to heavy youth
exposure. That so much of the industry's advertising is aired on
programming, or published in magazines, with large youth
audiences makes this problem much worse.
From 2001 to 2007, youth exposure to alcohol product
advertising on television rose by 38 percent. The average
number of television advertisements seen in a year by youth
increased from 216 to 301.
In 2007, approximately one out of every five alcohol product
advertisements on television was on programming that youth
ages 12 to 20 were more likely per capita to see than adults of
the legal drinking age. Almost all of them were on cable
television, where distilled spirits companies in particular have
dramatically increased their alcohol advertising in the past
seven years. This large and increasing TV exposure offset
reductions in magazine exposure over the same time period.

The data comes from researchers with the Center on Alcohol
Marketing and Youth at Georgetown University (CAMY) and
Virtual Media Resources (VMR) of Natick, Massachusetts, who
analyzed the placements of 2,033,931 alcohol product
advertisements that aired on television between 2001 and 2007,
and 19,466 alcohol advertisements placed in national magazines
between 2001 and 2006.
All of this advertising - and other industry marketing strategies
- matters. Heavier youth exposure to advertising leads to more
alcohol consumption, researchers have found. Alcohol use and
abuse takes a serious, direct toll on youth in deaths, injuries,
academic performance and emotional well-being, and earlier
and heavier drinking sets up kids for worse health outcomes
later in life.
FUELING UNDERAGE DRINKING
Alcohol is the leading drug problem among young people.
According to "Monitoring the Future," the federal government's
annual survey of drug use among eighth-, 10th- and 12th-
graders, more young people drink alcohol than smoke cigarettes
or use illegal drugs. The U.S. Surgeon General estimates that
approximately 5,000 people under age 21 die from alcohol-
related injuries involving underage drinking each year.
Despite significant efforts to reduce youth access to alcohol,
binge drinking among youth remains stubbornly high. In 2006,
7.2 million youth under age 21 reported binge drinking
(consuming five or more drinks at a sitting, usually defined as
within two hours) within the past month.
The earlier young people start drinking, the worse the
consequences. People who start drinking before age 15 are four
times more likely to become dependent on alcohol later in life
than those who wait to drink until they are 21. Those who drink
heavily in adolescence and early adulthood are more likely to
develop a metabolic profile that puts them at greater risk of
cardiovascular problems later in life, whether or not they
continue drinking.
"Too many Americans consider underage drinking a rite of

passage to adulthood," says former Acting Surgeon General
Kenneth Moritsugu. "Research shows that young people who
start drinking before the age of 15 are five times more likely to
have alcohol-related problems later in life. New research also
indicates that alcohol may harm the developing adolescent
brain. The availability of this research provides more reasons
than ever before for parents and other adults to protect the
health and safely of our nation's children."
There is compelling evidence that exposure to alcohol
advertising and marketing increases the likelihood of underage
drinking. Since 2001, at least seven peerreviewed, federally
funded, long-term studies have found that young people with
greater exposure to alcohol marketing - including on television,
in magazines, on the radio, on billboards or other outdoor
signage, or via instore beer displays, beer concessions, or
ownership of beer promotional items or branded merchandise -
are more likely to start drinking than their peers.
Econometric analysis based on data from youth drinking surveys
has estimated that a 28 percent reduction in alcohol advertising
would reduce the percentage of adolescents who drank in the
last month by 4 to 16 percent. The percentage engaging in binge
drinking monthly would fall by 8 to 33 percent.
ALCOHOL ADVERTISING TSUNAMI
Between 2001 and 2007, alcohol companies spent $6.6 billion to
place more than 2 million alcohol product advertisements on
television. From 2001 to 2006, they spent $2 billion to place
19,466 alcohol product advertisements in national magazines.
Because the four broadcast networks - NBC, CBS, ABC and
FOX - have a voluntary ban on distilled spirits advertising on
television, beer companies have traditionally dominated
spending on television. However, since 2001, distilled spirits
marketers have driven a dramatic increase in alcohol advertising
on cable television.
Advertising placements, spending and youth exposure have all
grown on television since 2001, while placements and youth
exposure have declined in magazines. The number of magazine

advertisements placed by alcohol companies fell by 22 percent
from 2001 to 2006. Spending in magazines peaked at $361
million in 2004 but fell to $331 million in 2006. Youth, young
adult and adult exposure to this advertising fell by 50 percent,
33 percent and 28 percent respectively over the six-year period.
Overall, the shift from magazines to television means that there
has been little change in overall youth exposure to alcohol
advertising across the two media since 2001.
EXPOSING KIDS
In 2003, trade associations for beer and distilled spirits
companies adopted, as part of their self-regulatory codes of
good marketing practice, a 30 percent maximum for underage
audiences of their advertising (the wine industry had moved to
30 percent in 2000). Under this standard, alcohol companies
should not advertise on programs with an audience that is more
than 30 percent underage.
In the same year that the beer and spirits industries adopted the
30 percent standard, the National Research Council and Institute
of Medicine recommended that alcohol companies move toward
a proportional 15 percent maximum for youth audiences of
alcohol advertising, since 12- to 20-year-olds are roughly 15
percent of the general population. In 2006, 20 state attorneys
general echoed that call, followed by the U.S. Surgeon General
in 2007.
Even a 15 percent standard would leave large numbers of kids
exposed to alcohol ads. A program with high ratings but a
relatively lower proportion of youth viewers may still reach
more kids than a program with a higher proportion of youth
viewers but a smaller overall audience.
Since adopting the 30 percent standard in 2003, alcohol
companies have made steady progress toward compliance, both
in magazines and on television. In 2001, 11 percent of alcohol
product advertisements in magazines were in publications with
youth readership greater than 30 percent. By 2006, only 3
percent of alcohol product advertisements in magazines were in
publications with youth readerships greater than 30 percent.

On television, in 2001, 11 percent of alcohol product
advertisements were on television programming with youth
audiences greater than 30 percent. By 2007, 6 percent of alcohol
product advertisements were on television programming with
youth audiences greater than 30 percent.
However, the decline in placements on television programming
with youth audiences greater than 30 percent has been
accompanied by increases in the percent of youth exposure
coming from overexposing placements - ads on programs with
15 to 30 percent youth viewership. Youth overexposure occurs
when advertising is placed on programming or in publications
with youth audiences that are out of proportion to their presence
in the population. Cable generated 95 percent of youth
overexposure to alcohol advertising on television in 2007.
The result is that the share of youth exposure to alcohol
advertising coming from advertisements on television
programming that youth are more likely per capita to watch than
adults has never been higher since CAMY began its monitoring
in 2001. More than 40 percent of total youth exposure to
alcohol ads on TV comes from programs where 12- to 20-year-
olds are more than 15 percent of the audience.
THE OVEREXPOSERS
Not all alcohol brands advertise equally. A relative handful of
brands are responsible for nearly half of all youth overexposure
to alcohol ads.
In magazines in 2006, 21 alcohol brands (out of a total of 229
alcohol brands advertising in magazines) were responsible for
44 percent of youth exposure and 49 percent of youth
overexposure, but only 33 percent of adult exposure to alcohol
product advertising.
On television in 2006, 22 alcohol brands (out of a total of 142
alcohol brands advertising on television) provided 36 percent of
youth exposure and 48 percent of youth overexposure but only
30 percent of adult exposure to alcohol product advertising.
Clearly some brands do better than others at avoiding youth
overexposure. Using 2007 television data, CAMY developed a

method for identifying which brands did best overall both in
complying with the industry's 30 percent threshold and in
avoiding youth overexposure to alcohol advertising. Eliminating
the smallest brands to avoid skewing the results, 11 brands
stood out as the worst performers and seven brands emerged as
best.
The worst performers were: Miller Lite, Corona Extra Beer,
Coors Light, Hennessy Cognacs, Guinness Beers, Samuel
Adams Beers, Bud Light, Smirnoff Vodkas, Disaronno Originale
Amaretto, Miller Chill and multiple brands from Mike's
Beverages.
The best performers by the CAMY measure were: Michelob
Beer, Santa Margharita Pinot Grigio, Korbel California
Champagnes, Arbor Mist Wines, Rolling Rock Beer, Michelob
Ultra Light Beer and Kahlua Hazelnut.
NOT TOO MUCH RESPONSIBILITY
In addition to placing product advertising on television, some
alcohol companies also place "responsibility" advertisements,
which seek to deliver messages about underage drinking or
about drinking safely (i.e., in moderation, not in combination
with driving, and so on).
From 2001 to 2007, alcohol companies spent 43 times as much
money to place 28 times as many product advertisements as
"responsibility" messages.
Placement of this kind of advertising varies by company.
Diageo, the world's largest distilled spirits company and
marketer of Smirnoff Vodkas and Captain Morgan Rums, spent
nearly 19 percent of its television advertising dollars on
"responsibility" messages from 2001 to 2007. In contrast,
Anheuser-Busch, producer of Budweiser and Bud Light and the
largest alcohol advertiser on television, spent 1 percent of its
budget on these messages (and in total dollars, less than a
quarter of what Diageo spent).
Youth and adult exposure to the alcohol industry's
"responsibility" messages has consistently been overwhelmed
by the amount of alcohol product advertising seen by each

group each year. From 2001 to 2007, youth ages 12 to 20 were
22 times more likely to see a product advertisement for alcohol
than an alcohol-industry-funded "responsibility" message.
Adults were 26 times more likely to see an alcohol product
advertisement than an alcohol industry-funded "responsibility"
message.
THE PATH TO REFORM
Over the last decade, the alcohol industry has tightened and
clarified its self-regulatory standards and review procedures.
However, although alcohol industry compliance with the
voluntary 30 percent maximum for youth audiences of alcohol
advertising has been good, this threshold has not been effective
in reducing youth exposure to alcohol advertising. Youth
exposure to alcohol advertising in magazines has fallen, but this
has been counteracted by the huge increase in alcohol
advertising on television, especially in distilled spirits
advertising on cable television.
During this same period, federally funded surveys have found
that binge-drinking 12th-grade girls (the only grade for which
data are available) have shifted their beverage of choice from
beer to liquor since 2001, and that in four states (the only
places from which data are available), current drinkers in grades
nine through 12 are also now more likely to drink liquor.
Nearly half of youth overexposure to alcohol advertising on
television and in magazines results from placements by a small
number of brands, suggesting that the majority of the industry is
able to advertise its products without overexposing youth. The
U.S. Surgeon General has stated that alcohol companies have a
public responsibility to ensure that the placement of their
advertising does not disproportionately expose youth to
messages about alcohol.
In 2006, Congress passed unanimously - and President George
W. Bush signed into law - legislation authorizing the
Department of Health and Human Services to monitor and
report annually to Congress the "rate of exposure of youth to
advertising and other media messages encouraging and

discouraging alcohol consumption." To date, however, no funds
have been appropriated for this activity, and no such reporting
has occurred.
The prevalence and the toll of underage drinking in the United
States remain high. Evidence that alcohol advertising plays a
role in the problem grows stronger each year. With
approximately 5,000 young lives per year in the United States at
stake, there is an ongoing need not only for independent
monitoring, but also for alcohol companies to adopt a more
meaningful and effective standard for where they place their
advertisements.
On cable television, the industry's 30 percent standard leaves 82
percent of advertising time-slots available for alcohol
advertising. The standard has not succeeded in limiting or
reducing youth exposure to alcohol advertising on television. In
Congressional hearings in 2003, Beer Institute President Jeff
Becker referred to the standard as "proportional" because
approximately 30 percent of the population is under age 21.
Of the population under 21, children under age two are not
counted for television ratings by Nielsen. Of two-to-20-year-
olds' exposure to alcohol product advertising between 2001 and
2007, 68 percent fell on 12-to-20-yearolds, a group that Nielsen
reports only made up 47 percent of the two-to-20 age group.
Federal surveys begin measuring underage drinking at age 12,
and the small amount of drinking among 12-year-olds suggests
that 12-to-20-year-olds are the group at greatest risk of
underage drinking. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that this
group is 13 percent of the population.
Recognizing that 30 percent is not a proportional standard when
viewed in the light of the population at greatest risk, the
National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, as well as
20 state attorneys general, have called on the industry to
consider changing its standard to eliminate advertising on
programming with more than 15 percent youth (ages 12 to 20)
in its audiences. A 15 percent standard would reduce overall
youth exposure to alcohol advertisements by 20 percent,

according to CAMY research estimates, saving lives and even
saving the industry some money in advertising costs.
Sidebar
Above: A Bacardi notice for a DJ contest it held on MySpace.
Page 23: A print advertisement for Skyy vodkas that ran in
publications ranging from Maxim and Cosmopolitan, to Rolling
Stone and In Style.
Sidebar
NEW PRODUCTS FOR NEW DRINKERS
ALCOHOL DISTRIBUTORS in recent years have released new
products aimed toward young drinkers, such as alcopops and
alcoholic energy drinks. The trend has gone to developing
products that are highly youth oriented," says George Hacker,
director of the Alcohol Policies Project at the Center tor
Science in the Public Interest. These new products geared
toward youth make it easy for young people to initiate
drinking."
Alcopops, such as Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Silver and Skyy Blue,
are branded with popular hard-liquor names and often have a
higher alcohol content than beer, although the taste of alcohol is
masked by sugar, fruit flavorings and carbonation. These
products are marketed like beer and advertised on network
televisions, despite the network policies against the advertising
of their hard-liquor namesakes.
Alcopops are especially popular with young girls. About one
third of teenage girls ages 12 to 18 have tried alcopops,
according to the California-based Marin Institute. The Marin
Institute estimates that underage drinkers consumed 47 percent
of all alcopops in California in 2007. Alcopop consumption
leads to approximately 60 deaths a year in California and about
50,000 "incidents of harm" - including traffic accidents,
violence, suicide, alcohol poisoning and fetal alcohol syndrome,
among others - according to the Marin Institute.
Alcoholic energy drinks, such as Tilt, Bud Extra and Sparks,
contain high levels of alcohol along with ingredients like
caffeine, taurine, ginseng and other stimulants. The mixture of

caffeine and alcohol can be dangerous, as it makes drinkers feel
more alert, when in fact their senses and reflexes are impaired
because of the alcohol. In 2007, AnheuserBusch pulled its
alcoholic energy drink Spyke off shelves after the company
received a letter signed by 29 state attorneys general,
expressing their concern about the drink.
"Given the documented health and safety risks of consuming
alcohol in combination with caffeine or other stimulants,
Anheuser-Busch's decision to introduce and promote these
alcoholic energy drinks is extremely troubling," the letter
stated. "Young people are heavy consumers of nonalcoholic
energy drinks, and the manufacturers of those products
explicitly target the teenage market. Promoting alcoholic
beverages through the use of ingredients, packaging features,
logos and marketing messages that mimic those of nonalcoholic
refreshments overtly capitalizes on the youth marketing that
already exists for drinks that may be legally purchased by
underage consumers."
Advocacy groups have been working with state legislatures to
pass measures making products such as alcopops and alcoholic
energy drinks less accessible to underage youth. One of those
measures involves reclassifying alcopops as "distilled spirits,"
thus removing them from many grocery and convenience store
shelves. Other measures include raising taxes on such items to
make them more expensive and therefore less appealing to
youth.
- Jennifer Wedekind
Above: Corona Extra enlisted country music superstar Kenny
Chesney to help promote its beer. The Center on Alcohol
Marketing and Youth lists Corona as one of the companies that
most overexposes youth to alcohol advertising.
Jones, S. C., & Donovan, R. J. (2001). Messages in alcohol
advertising targeted to youth. Australian and New Zealand
Journal of Public Health, 25(2), 126-131. Retrieved from

4
Objective: To assess young people's perceived messages in
three ads for a vodka-based, pre-mixed alcohol beverage, and to
assess the extent to which the ads appeared to be consistent with
the industry's voluntary code.
Method: Members of two convenience samples of young people
(15-16 and 19-21 years) were each exposed to one of three
advertisements. Respondents completed a post exposure
questionnaire based on standard advertising copy testing
procedures.
Results: The most frequently nominated open-ended responses
to 'the main messages) of the acr related to the product
delivering mood effects: both removal of negative emotions
(e.g. 'stress reduction'), as well as inducing positive states such
as feeling 'carefree' and gaining 'increased enjoyment'.
Consumption of the product was perceived to offer 'self-
confidence', `sexual/relationship success' and 'social success'.
Fewer respondents nominated tangible product characteristics,
the main one being 'easy to drink'. One in four of the 15-16 year
olds saw the ads as aimed at 'people my age, while almost half
of the 19-21 year olds saw the ads as aimed at people younger
or much younger than me'.
Discussion: These results appear to contravene the Alcoholic
Beverages Advertising Code (ABAC) by suggesting that the
consumption of alcohol beverages: (i) contributes to social and
sexual success; and (ii) contributes to a significant change in
mood (stress reduction/relaxation).
Implications. Incidental observation of alcohol ads suggests that
contravention of the code is more widespread than the number
of alcohol advertising complaints would indicate. All 11 such
complaints lodged with the Advertising Standards Board
between May 1998 and April 1999 were dismissed. Evidence
such as that gathered in this study might improve the chances of

complaints being upheld.
(Aust NZ J Public Health 2001; 25:126-31)
Alcohol is a major contributor to unintentional injuries and
motor vehicle accidents among young people and has a number
of other major negative consequences, particularly in the mid-
to-late teens, including: depression; suicidal ideation and
behaviour; other substance use and abuse; decreased scholastic,
sporting and work performance; aggression and violence;
disrupted family and other social relationships; high-risk sexual
activity; and delinquent behaviour. 1,2
In Australia, alcohol consumption is very much guided by
cultural forces,3 with advertising in particular often being
singled out as one of the major factors influencing people's
attitudes and values with respect to products, consumption and
lifestyles.4-6 Movies and TV entertainment programs commonly
portray alcohol consumption as a 'normal' part of life, usually
depicting alcohol as a mood-altering substance, as an aid to
socialising and as a stress reducer.7-9
Advertising tells us what products and brands are associated
with what lifestyles, what socio-economic status, what attitudes
to life, and therefore how we can adopt and maintain a
particular self-image.10
It is claimed that advertising has particular influence on the
young, especially as to which brands or product categories are
'in' or 'cool'.
It is therefore important to monitor what messages the media,
and advertising in particular, are sending to young people about
the consumption of alcohol. For example, beer advertising,
which is far more widespread than spirits advertising, especially
on TV, both in Australia and elsewhere, has generally focused
on the conviviality and camaraderie associated with beer
consumption, or on the concept of beer as a 'reward' for hard
work (manual or mental), and hence an accompaniment - not so
much an aid to relaxation.3,11
Although a causal link is difficult to establish, numerous studies
have found a correlation between alcohol advertising and the

alcohol knowledge, beliefs and intentions of people under 18
years of age.12-14 This includes normative beliefs regarding the
social acceptability of alcohol,15 expectations of positive
outcomes of consumption, 16 and perceptions of alcohol
drinkers as attractive and successful.8 Several studies have
concluded that alcohol advertising encourages young people to
drink or reinforces drinking habits. 17,18 Similarly, positive
social and other expectations of alcohol consumption have been
found to be related to consumption.7,19,20,21 Young people, at
the time they are beginning to experiment with alcohol, are in
the process of learning to establish relationships with peers and
with the opposite sex.6 Hence, they could be especially
vulnerable to inferences that consuming alcohol will enhance
their social and sexual attractiveness.
Regulation of alcohol advertising in Australia
Regulation of alcohol advertising in Australia is based on a
comparatively new voluntary system of self-regulation.
Following the demise of the Advertising Standards Council in
1996, the main industry body, the Australian Association of
National Advertisers (AANA), developed the Advertiser Code
of Ethics (which applies to all forms of advertising) and
established the Advertising Standards Board (ASB) and the
Advertising Claims Board (ACB) to deal with complaints and
breaches of the code.
The AANA allowed the alcohol industry to separately develop
its own code, the Alcoholic Beverages Advertising Code
(ABAC), and its own complaints management system, the
Alcoholic Beverages Advertising Code Complaints Adjudication
Panel. This panel reports to the Alcoholic Beverages
Advertising Code Management Committee, which is responsible
for overseeing the ABAC. Both the ABAC and the complaints
management system operate under the structure developed by
the AANA.
Under the ABAC, advertisements for alcohol must:
a) present a mature, balanced and responsible approach to the
consumption of alcohol beverages and, accordingly ...

b) not have a strong or evident appeal to children or adolescents
and accordingly
i) adults appearing in advertisements must be over 25 years of
age and be clearly depleted as adults...
c) not suggest that the consumption or presence of alcohol
beverages may create or contribute to a significant change in
mood or environment and, accordingly
i) must not depict the consumption or presence of alcohol
beverages as a cause for or contributing to the achievement of
personal, business, social, sporting, sexual or other success; and
ii) must not suggest that the consumption of alcohol beverages
offers any therapeutic benefit or is a necessary aid to relaxation;
Individuals who are unhappy with alcohol advertisements are
able to lodge a formal complaint with the Advertising Standards
Board, which passes the complaint on to the ABAC Complaints
Adjudication Panel for determination. Of 11 alcohol advertising
complaints lodged with the ASB between May 1998 and April
1999, all were determined `case dismissed' (personal
communication, Advertising Standards Bureau). It has been
reported that complaints lodged with the ASB are almost always
based on the complainant's opinion and not backed by any
objective evidence. The present study sought to provide
objective evidence for a series of radio advertisements for a
pre-mixed drink brand, which at face value appear to contravene
the ABAC. In particular, the study primarily aimed to answer
these questions:
1. What are the perceived main messages of the advertisements?
2. What is the perceived target age group of the advertisements?
Method
Overall study design
Following standard commercial advertising pre-test
procedures,22 a monadic, independent samples design, with
random assignment to conditions was used to assess a
convenience sample of young people's perceptions of messages
contained in three advertisements for the UDL brand, vodka-
based pre-mixed-drink.

The UDL radio advertisements
Three advertisements were selected from a series of five radio
advertisements for the UDL brand drink. The selection of ads
was based solely on opportunistic recording when the ads were
broadcast. The ads were played on at least one Perth radio
station (96FM) that has a predominantly younger audience: 41%
of 1017 year old radio listeners and 32% of 18-25 year old radio
listeners.13 The ads were heard during both the breakfast show
(6.00am to I 0.00am) and the evening `kiddie countdown'
(7.Opm to 10.00pm) during the month of April 1999. The actual
media schedule is not known.
Each of the advertisements features a narrative where the 'hero',
a young man or woman, faces a 'problem' situation that causes,
or is likely to cause, some form of emotional distress if not
solved satisfactorily. In each case, a can of UDL is introduced
to the situation, resulting in an 'attitudinal' change (more
assertive/selfconfident) on the part of the 'hero' after consuming
the drink and the situation being resolved by subsequent events.
This is a classic problem-solution advertising format, although
UDL is not presented explicitly as the solution.
Ad 1: (young man's voice): "Last weekend I went to this
barbecue and it's really hot so everyone starts jumping in the
pool and pretty soon I'm the only one on dry land and I'm
getting this `come-on-in' pressure but I remember the only clean
undies I had left this morning were the Mickey Mouse y-fronts
that my Grandma gave me last Christmas, and while I'm
contemplating my embarrassment I take a sip of my UDL vodka
and orange and think `if only the rest of my life was as
uncomplicated as this drink which says vodka and orange and
delivers it without any pretentious posers in tight briefs, and as
I look over the top of that icy UDL can, I notice that cute
brunette has a small tattoo of Minnie Mouse on her back so I
take off my jeans and think `hey, some things are meant to be'."
Ad 2: (young woman's voice): "I'm getting ready to go out and I
ask my flatmate if my capri pants make my bum look too big,
and she says `are you saying that because my arse looks fat?',

and I say 'no' but she starts fretting and that sets me off so I go
get a jumper to tie around my waist and I look in the mirror and
wonder whether people are going to see that jumper and
instantly assume I'm self conscious about the size of my butt,
and while I'm tossing things up I sip on my can of UDL vodka
and cranberry and think ìf only the rest of my life was as
uncomplicated as this drink which says vodka and cranberry and
delivers it without pedal pushing any unrealistic dietary
messages', and as I finish that first UDL can of the night I
decide I'm so over capri pants and change into a little black
dress instead."
Ad 3: (young woman's voice): "I was watching TV and one of
my friends asked me if Rob, the guy I met Saturday night, has
rung and I say 'no' but add ìt's only Tuesday and he probably
doesn't want to look desperate by calling too early in the week',
and Jill says that her boyfriend rang her the very next day after
they first met and that puts me in a panic and I think `maybe I
should call him'. So I open a can of UDL vodka-lemon-limesoda
and think ìf only the rest of my life was as uncomplicated as
this drink which says vodka-lemon-lime-soda and delivers it
without any mindless model with messages of love', and as I sip
on that cold UDL the phone rings and it's Rob who asks me out
tomorrow, and I say 'no' because I don't want him to think I'm
just sitting around waiting for him to call."
While the ads do not expressly state that consumption of the
UDL leads to success or relaxation, the temporal inference is
quite clear. Young people are presented in a social situation
where they feel uncomfortable. They then drink their UDL and
the situation improves. Ads 1 and 3 make direct references to
(perceived or expected) success with the opposite sex
immediately following consumption of UDL, and all three ads,
but particularly ad 2, present a situation where subsequent to
consuming the alcohol, the characters are more relaxed and
confident.
The questionnaire
A self-completion questionnaire was constructed. This was

adapted from a research agency's procedure (ADTEST), which
is based on standard, published advertising pre-test measures.22
The ADTEST procedure has been used extensively in pre-
testing advertising for both commercial products and health and
social issues.24,25
Perceived main messages in the ads
Respondents' perceptions of the ads' messages were measured in
two ways:
Respondents were first asked the open-ended question: "Apart
from telling you to drink UDL, what do you think was the single
main message of the ad? What was the ad trying to tell you
about UDL and the people who drink UDL?" This is called
`unprompted message take-out'. The responses to this open-
ended question were post-coded into major themes (see Table
1). Respondents were then presented with the statements in
Table 2 and asked "can you remember which - if any - of these
messages were in the ad?" This is called `prompted message
take-out'. The statements shown in Table 2 were based on the
authors' decoding of the ads via a theme analysis of the actor's
words, the symbolism of the situation and the overall contextual
meaning in each ad. It should be noted that each statement was
not intended to be applicable to all ads. For example, `help me
not worry about how I look', was far more applicable to ads 1
and 2 than to ad 3.
Perceived target audience for the ads
The perceived target audience for the ads was measured by: "In
your opinion, would you say the ad was aimed at people older
than you, in your age group, or younger than you?"
Respondents
Respondents were recruited from two locations: a local high
school in a high-medium SES area, and a university campus. In
all cases, the survey was conducted in classrooms, with teacher
consent, and respondents were invited to take part in a study on
radio advertising. In both cases there were three concurrent
classes, and classes were randomly allocated to one of the ads.
After listening to the ad twice (after Krugman26), respondents

were asked to complete the questionnaire. The high school
sample consisted only ofYear 11 students (15-16 years old); the
university sample consisted only of third-year students (19-21
years old). These two age groups were chosen to assess
communication effects among youth both under and over the
legal age for purchasing and consuming alcohol on licensed
premises.
Results
A total of 44 high school students and 43 university students
took part in the study. There were equal proportions of male and
female respondents. The results were analysed by age group
across all ads combined.
Unprompted message take-out
Respondents' answers to the open-ended message take-out
question were categorised into six main themes: mood
enhancement via removal of anxieties/problems; positive mood
enhancement per se; social interaction enhancement; self-
confidence enhancement; product characteristics; and user
imagery. Examples of these are shown in Table 1 and elaborated
below.
Mood enhancement via problem removal/solution was the most
frequently mentioned message, and is illustrated in the
following verbatim quotes: "A drink of UDL can remove all
your problems, stresses and anxieties of a situation and let you
enjoy yourself' (female, 20); "By drinking it, all your problems
will go away and you've got nothing to worry about" (female,
16).
This theme also encompasses elements of UDL `making life
easier' ("Drinking alcohol is a way to simply your life. They
don't need anything else to be content" (male, 20+), and
allowing an `escape from (harsh) reality' ("You can be having
the worst day ever, and it doesn't really matter if you drink
UDL" (male, aged 16)).
Positive mood enhancement per se, was illustrated in the
following: "People who drink it have fun" (female, 16); "Their
life is great" (female, 20+); "Good things happen to those who

drink it" (female, 20+).
As for mood enhancement, enhanced self-confidence primarily
related to the boosting of low self-confidence rather than
boosting self confidence per se: "Once you drink UDL, you
won't care about what you look like so you can wear anything
which you feel selfconscious in" (female, 16). "Makes you feel
good about yourself when you're having an anxiety attack"
(female, 20+).
Social interaction enhancement had an opposite
sex/relationships sub theme as well as a general
`popularity/social acceptance' sub theme: "Help you pull guys
or chicks ifyou drink UDLs" (female, 20+); "Drinking UDL will
make you more socially acceptable - will help you fit into a
crowd" (female, 20+).
Product characteristics were relatively infrequently mentioned,
with the most common mention relating to the product being "...
simple and easy to drink" (female, aged 16). This characteristic
is important to young people who find many alcoholic drinks
"not easy" or "difficult" (to drink and to carry).
User imagery (characteristics of UDL drinkers ) appeared to be
influenced by the fast delivery of the monologue, with both
positive (e.g. "energetic") and negative (e.g. "highly strung/
hyper") implications: "people who drink UDL are fast paced,
energetic and fun people" (female, 16); "highly strung and drink
UDL to relax" (female, 20+). Younger students nominated more
negative than positive responses, and vice versa for older
students.
It is apparent from the comments listed above that messages
being taken away from the ads include that drinking UDL (i.e.
alcohol) will result in positive mood enhancement, primarily via
the removal of problems/anxieties, and hence offers a
therapeutic benefit as an aid (although perhaps not a necessary
aid) to relaxation; will boost self-confidence; and will
contribute to the achievement of social and opposite-sex
relationship success.
While the numbers are too small to carry out meaningful

statistical tests on these open-ended responses, the data suggest
that older youth are more likely to perceive mood enhancement/
stress reduction and social/self approval messages than are
younger youth.
There were no meaningful differences by gender.
Prompted message take-out
The results in Table 2 confirm and extend the unprompted
message take-out findings with respect to mood change,
opposite sex interactions, socialising and self-confidence. In
both age groups, the most frequently perceived prompted
messages relate to UDL making the drinker:
feel carefree;
feel self-confident;
feel less anxious in social situations; and
have a good time.
However, the absolute percentages nominating these messages
are vastly different for the two age groups, and statistically
significant for most (see Table 2). With one exception (`make
me the centre of attention), the older age group is far more
likely than the younger age group to agree that each of these
messages is indicated in the ads. The more frequent nomination
of all the remaining messages by the older group may reflect
their greater sophistication in decoding ad messages. This may
be a function of age or differences in cognitive ability.
Nevertheless, substantial proportions of the younger groups
perceive each of these messages in one or more of the ads, and
the rank order of the perceived messages is generally similar for
the two age groups.
The major gender difference of note was that 15-16 year old
young women were far more likely than young men of this age
to perceive the `help me not worry about how I look' message:
64% vs. 16%. However, there was no difference in the older age
group.
As noted above, not all of these messages were relevant to all
ads. It can be noted that the figures in Table 2 under-state the
potential message take-out of the advertising campaign, given

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