Posted on August 18, 2010

Advertising is a great way for companies to ensure their target audience learns about their product or service. When the target audience is an underage youth and the company is known for producing alcoholic beverages, however, the result is a problem that targets the company for targeting the wrong crowd.

As these ads have been shown to be too effective in driving teenage consumption of alcohol, it was important that their use be limited and their audience be strictly those of legal consumption age. According to a recent Science Daily piece, youth exposure to such advertising in magazines has decreased.

This decline has been a strong 48 percent between 2001 and 2008, as captured and reported by the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY). This organization is a division of the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The organization found that 325 alcohol brands advertised in magazines in 2008, yet only 16 of those brands accounted for half of the ad space captured in publications that were more likely to be read or seen by youths than adults when measured on a per capita basis. At the top of the list were brands like Patron Silver Tequila, Jim Beam Bourbon Whiskey and Absolut Vodka.

A voluntary standard was adopted in 2003 by alcohol companies pledging to not place ads for their products in magazines that had a readership of 30 percent or more represented by teens or youths. While the standard is important, it seems to have had little effect on the percentage of youth who are being exposed from advertising that is placed in magazines intended for this crowd.

When it was measured in 2008, CAMY found that 78 percent of exposure for youth was in advertising in magazines intended for the younger population. Alcohol manufacturers were more heavily advertising to individuals not able to legally purchase their product. The good news is there were a relatively small number of brands still taking part in this type of advertising.