Alcohol producers sign pledge for responsible social-media advertising

Along with with prominent social-media platforms, the IARD (International Alliance for Responsible Drinking) has announced an effort to ensure that alcohol marketing only reaches adults and to make it easier for people to opt out of alcohol advertising on social-media platforms.

The 11 beer, wine and spirits companies that make up the IARD (ABInBev, Asahi, Bacardi, Beam Suntory, Brown-Forman, Carlsberg Group, Diageo, Heineken, Kirin, MolsonCoors and Pernod Ricard), along with Facebook, Snap, Twitter and YouTube, have signed a pledge to:

• Ensure the most-up-to-date safeguards are in place to ensure alcohol marketing is directed to adults who can lawfully buy alcohol products
• Explore changes that would further reduce the chances of underage people seeing such advertising
• Explore ways to provide people with greater control over whether they see alcohol advertising, via opt-out mechanisms.

As the latter point implies, the effort is not merely about proper targeting of of-age consumers. "We respect different cultural backgrounds and recognize that there are people who do not wish to see marketing communications from beer, wine and spirits producers on their social media," a statement from the organisation said. 

The signers include 11 companies that collectively spend $20 billion a year on marketing.

"As stewards of some of the world’s most known brands, we are united in our determination to set and live up to high standards of responsibility for our industries," the IARD added.

The organisation also suggested that its work could provide a template for other industries: "We believe our partnership has the potential to go beyond our individual companies and could create change across a range of platforms and advertisers, ultimately benefiting the thousands of businesses who want to advertise responsibly and the billions of people who use digital platforms every day."