Alcoholic beverage advertising seeks to promote excessive consumption of alcohol. Alcoholic beverage advertisers do not inform consumers of the adverse impacts of their product in the daily bombardment of billboards, magazine, television and radio advertisements. This essay will establish a link between alcoholic beverage advertising and excessive alcoholic consumption which is a recognised factor in the onset of alcohol related disease.
Exposure to alcohol messages is an everyday occurrence. Most of these messages are encountered in the mass media as part of non-commercial programming. Alcohol advertising appears roughly one tenth as often as alcohol use in programming and yet it appears in the media with ten times the frequency of public service announcements that caution against the adverse effects of excessive consumption and alcohol abuse (Fisher, 1993, p.55). Non-commercial advertising (e.g. product placement) is used by advertising agencies to advertise to the consumer when they are not aware of being advertised to. When a program breaks for an ad the viewer is automatically aware that they are viewing ads and will usually switch over or turn their attention away from the television. To overcome this advertising failure and also to add another dimension to the generic form of advertising, agencies are now placing their products in programs where consumers have a pre-disposition of such situational characteristics like lighting, music, settings and characters. Channel Ten's The Secret Life of Us is a portrayal of the lives of young Australians living in Sydney. Channel Ten has signed a lucrative contract with Carlton United Breweries (CUB) for the characters of the show to be visibly seen drinking Crown Larger a flagship beer for the CUB. This beer is frequently portrayed in the program and is clearly visible when the characters are having fun and enjoying themselves. This affiliation with fun and euphoria depicted in the series is an unrealistic view of alcohol use and is a dangerous ploy undertaken by CUB to increase drinking amongst young Australians.