Yesterday, a story about alcohol got a fair bit of attention –
David Beckham (and his manager Simon Fuller) are
to promote a new whisky made by Diageo (when it’s actually launched later
in the year).
Alcohol Concern were so agitated they
put out a press release, and other groups like ‘It’s the drink talking’ complained
about it on Twitter.
Initially, I was at a loss as to why this was an issue of
concern – celebrity endorses alcoholic drink is hardly news (just look on http://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/). My tweets on the issue were even favourited
by Mark Baird from Diageo, though many people reading this won’t consider that
an endorsement worth having.
But then John Holmes
pointed out that this is about the association between alcohol and social and
sporting success. That sort of
objection would make sense, as it’s against the ASA code.
So why was I initially annoyed? Well, the actual objections I saw didn’t talk
about sport or social success: they actually referred to David Beckham being
healthy and appealing to children.
I don’t have the relevant marketing data, but the idea of
David Beckham being used to market alcohol to children seems unlikely, given
that he was at the height of his powers more than ten years ago – as the Diageo
press release observes, he won the Champions’ League in 1999 and was runner-up
for the FIFA player of the year award in 1999 and 2001. Most ‘children’ won’t have any real memories
of those seasons.
As for health promotion, this gets to the heart of the
objection: there’s a belief that you can’t be healthy and drink, or that
promotion of alcohol is necessarily incompatible with health objectives – which
trump all else.
This is where the campaigners are on difficult ground. Regardless of the ‘sick quitter’
hypothesis, it’s not generally felt that low
levels of alcohol consumption make much difference to an individual’s health
one way or the other (though they might have noticeable effects at a
population level).
I’m also not convinced that David Beckham’s going to be
fronting some campaign that promotes specifically high levels of alcohol
consumption that would be incompatible with ‘a healthy lifestyle’, to use an
awful phrase. It’s more likely that the
campaign will play on the sorts of themes his
others have gone for in recent years: the impression of style, fashion and
sophistication.
Of course we can argue about whether any campaign that makes
alcohol seem sophisticated and respectable is a good thing, and whether the
industry is sincerely promoting moderate consumption.
And that’s where the debate should be. The objections aren’t to David Beckham
promoting alcohol; they’re to alcohol being promoted.
This is why I was frustrated. There’s nothing wrong with Alcohol Concern
and other organisations objecting to alcohol advertising, particularly as
alcohol is ‘no
ordinary commodity’, and therefore needs special regulation. My objection is that there’s nothing
specifically wrong with David Beckham promoting alcohol. I struggle to see even how he’s associated
with sporting success at the moment.
He’ll be shown drinking the whisky a year after retiring, and more than
15 years after winning the Champions’ League; no-one watching is going to be
thinking he’ll be up the next day winning the World Cup.
The point is that we should be having the argument that
actually matters: should alcohol advertising be allowed, and if so, with what
restrictions? Then we can clearly ‘think
to some purpose’ about the actual issue in hand. Let’s not get distracted into thinking this is
about whether David Beckham should be advertising whisky. Knee-jerk responses just aren’t helpful in
having a sensible debate.
