The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, also known as CAMY, is located at Georgetown University. CAMY was developed to track the marketing practices of the alcohol industries. Researchers have found that alcohol companies spent almost 5.5 billion in advertising through television, print and radio ads. “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,”(Journal of Public Health Policy Vol.26 NO.3 Para 10).
The research was based on secondary sources; “statistical sources and measurement concepts standard to advertising media planning and research field,” (Journal of Public Health Policy Vol.26 NO. 3 Para 6). This data is focused on two databases, occurrence tracking and audience estimates, that are combined. Occurrence tracking is used to track certain brands and audience’s estimates are to track various demographic groups. By combining these two types of data CAMY was able to figure out the statistics of youth exposure compared to adult exposure to alcohol advertising.
The results of the research done by CAMY in 2003 were that “CAMY found that young people aged 12-20 were exposed per capital 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,” (Journal of Public Health Policy Vol.26 NO.3 Para 12). The data on magazine advertising also showed that young girls were exposed to similar ads far more than woman and young boys were also targeted more than men. The television analysis showed that out of the 761,347 alcohol ads broadcasted between ’01 and ’03, the youth, aged 12-20, were more likely per capita to have seen 181,932 or nearly 24% of the ads. They also discovered that the alcohol industry also targeted the 15 most popular teen shows in 2003 in which all aired alcohol advertisements. The data collected on radio advertising showed that youth, aged 12-20 heard more alcohol advertisements from 14 of the 15 largest markets. They also found that 2% of the alcohol advertisements were aired when the listening audience was made up of 30% young people.
After reading this article I realized just how big the problem is today. Though I don’t feel that we will ever be able to fully get rid of the problem, I believe that there are things we could do to help the problem. Society should start by putting better restrictions on alcohol advertising and enforce the restrictions better. They should try to play alcohol advertisements after 9p.m. or 10p.m. to ensure that less of our youth are viewing and listening to the advertisements. They should also try to change the types of magazines that have alcohol advertisements in them. The should focus putting them in magazines that are targeting adults.
References
Jernigan, D. H., Ostroff, J., & Ross, C. (2005). Alcohol advertising and youth: A measured approach. Journal of Public Health Policy, 26(3), 312-312-25. Retrieved from