Please Enjoy in Moderation

Posted on 2004/07/28 13:42:54 (July 2004) by john.

The hipocrisy of alcohol advertising.

Has anyone else noticed how recently TV adverts, bilboards and even packaging for alcohol are accompanied by a slogan along the lines of "please enjoy Jimmy Beer in moderation" or "please drink sensibly". I don't know exactly why, but I am beginning to find this quite irritating.

As far as I know, this is still a voluntary step on behalf of the advertiser / manufacturer, and presumably it is done at least in part as a counter measure against the calls for a complete ban on alcohol advertising.

Tobacco advertising on the telly is of course already banned, and they are / have been subject to plenty of restrictions, particularly on bilboards and in magazines, where they can/could advertise so long as they bear a big government warning. I can't imagine the advertisers having particularly enjoyed this - it's not exactly ideal when the overall message of your poster is "Jimmy's Cigarettes, they're really nice, but they'll kill you!". Perhaps the drinks industry, having seen the way the tobacco industry has gone, have tried to make a pre-emptive strike by putting the warnings (albeit less severe than those for tobacco) in themselves, hoping that this will head off any government imposed warnings, which are less likely to fit so well with the image they are trying to get across.

I think part of what irks me is the nature of the adverts. Look at Bacardi for example. Typically they show you some wild and exciting looking party, with everyone dressed up, and having a good time and dancing and being generally wild and hedonistic and all that. Then you're told to "enjoy Bacardi in moderation". Errrr.... hello?!? We're English for christ's sake - we won't even talk to other people until we're already half trousered! Let alone put on funny costumes and dance about on tables. I simply can't believe that such "zany" antics can be achieved by a group of people enjoying Bacardi in moderation. Sober people are, in general, simply not that much fun, it has been scientifically proven and everything, honest.

Typically the fun of alcohol lies in consuming quite a lot of it. Nobody has a wild time on half a shandy. Some, if not all, of the most fun times I can remember (and others that I can't remember) have had alcohol involved in some way or other, and the bulk of those would probably have been less fun if I'd been drinking "in moderation".

The thing is, the manufacturers / advertisers want you to drink until you pass out, you want to drink until you pass out, and I imagine most members of the government want to drink until they pass out, not to mention the fact if there was a sudden national decline in drinking there'd be a massive shortfall in taxes.

So it just seems like a rediculous sham in the end. The government have to be seen to take a responsbile stand because of pressure from the public. So they have to put pressure on the advertisers to be seen to take a responsible stand, in order to make you, the public, responsible enough to be able to keep standing up on a Friday night. Which, deep down, you don't really want to do in the first place, as you, like any normal being, quite enjoy getting blind drunk once in a while.

Either we have three groups here all propping up each other's fake stance on "responsible drinking" in which none of them really believe, just so as not to lose face, or perhaps the whole vicious circle originates from a tiny minority of teetotalers who are making lots of noise about the big drink problem we apparently have.

Yes, I know alcohol is bad for me, but don't patronise me with your responsible drinking nonsense when we all know that you (that's the manufacturers and the government) only stand to gain from me and others like me drinking more.

John- you are dead right. They agressively target kiddies with alcopops, and then think they can absolve themselves from all responsibility by adding a miniscule mesaages, such as "Enjoy vodka in moderation". Bollockts to them.

Posted by Jimmy at 2004/07/28 16:44:22.

Glad you agree!

Posted by John at 2004/07/28 17:09:46.

Yes, it's just that it would be nice if I could type. Of course, I meant "Aggressively", not "Agressively", "Messages", not "Mesaages", "Bollocks", not "Bollockts" ... and I think that they might try to absolve themselves of responsibility, not from it. In fact, it's amazing how much I managed to fuck-up such a short paragraph. (I imagine this comment also contains errors)

Posted by Jimmy at 2004/07/29 08:36:25.

... not least the missing, final full-stop.

Posted by Jimmy at 2004/07/29 08:37:11.

Have you been drinking Jimmy?

Posted by Mad Mumsie at 2004/07/29 11:57:53.

Awww.... c'mon, Mumsie! I posted those at 8:30 in the morning! Of course, it's after lunch that I'm posting *this* ...

Posted by Jimmy at 2004/07/29 14:03:38.

You may have missed some of the point. I don't think it's the "alcohol is bad for your health" message - all politicians are lushes, and generally there's no such thing as "passive drinking" as we have with smoking - it's that a lot of yer "common man" gets very violent when drunk. Violence related to alcohol is a statistic (sorry!) that is growing massively.

You and I might just be jolly chaps when we get trousered, but some people go all nasty and bottle you (from experience on the receiving end). If someone can stop *that* then great.

Posted by Alwyn at 2004/08/02 16:34:11.

I am with you there Alwyn. How about "Please enjoy XYZ without starting a fight...?"

Posted by John at 2004/08/02 17:17:03.

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