Anyone else notice the increase in TV commercials for hard liquor? Vodka, whiskey, brandy, etc… Over the last 2 months I think I’ve seen more ads for this kind of booze than for beer. Any idea why the increase?
Aw, shit. I misspelled a word in the thread title. Can the mods please fix it.
I vaguely recall something along the lines of a 1st amendment case being decided that blocking hard liquor ads was preemptive censorship, or something like that.
I started noticing the ads, as well, starting with Zima(?) ads pushing it as a ‘beer alternative’ on TV. I don’t know what the alcohol percentage is, but I think it was notably different than beer and there was a bit of commentary on it on Google News and Slate at the time. Prior to that, I think there used to be Harvey’s Bristol Cream ads in the late 1970’s around the holidays and then I only saw beer ads in the 1980’s.
Or maybe there was some kind of FCC moratorium on hard alcohol advertising for a while? I remember the 1980’s included a lot of my friends pointing out to me the subliminal images* in cigarette and alcohol ads, so maybe someone got pissy and got legislators to agree to squelch them on TV.
—G?
*They saw them clearly; I was either too naive or just didn’t care, because a lot of times I just didn’t catch on very quickly.
It wasn’t allowed until a few years ago. Searching, it looks like it was (mostly?) voluntary. I don’t think there was anything different more recently. Certain channels may refuse to air them if they choose to, and many stopped doing that.
I’ve got Tywin Lannister selling me scotch, so I’m for it.
You can can keep Tywin, I buy Dewar’s and I don’t even drink.
But Zima, legally, anyway, actuall was beer. And hard liquor has been able to advertise on TV for a long time.
What I’m wondering is why there is all of a sudden a big commercial campaign.
Does it have something to do with studies about Gen X’s not drinking beer?
Jim Beam, Jeffersons Reserve, Smirnoff. In the last 2 months t\I’ve seen more ads for them than beer.
They had a gentleman’s agreement not to advertise on TV. All it takes for that to fall apart is one dissenter. Couple that with a huge recent expansion of product lines, and you’re bound to see exponential growth in advertising dollars spent.
I appreciate the responses, I truly do.
But, uh, ahem :rolleyes:, some of you are missing the @##$ point.
It’s been legal for a long time for hard liquor to be advertised on TV.
But all of a sudden there is a bunch of ads for hard liquor. They could have done this long ago.
I’m just wondering why it might be that they are doing it now big time. I mean there has been a lot of them. Even more than beer commercials. WTF?
Here’s an article about it in an advertising industry magazine: http://adage.com/article/news/hard-time-liquor-advertising-pours-tv/234733/
The gist of it is that even though it’s always been legal to run liquor ads, the stations and networks voluntarily kept them off the air. Things have only really relaxed on certain cable networks over the last 10 years or so and the broadcast networks only in the last two or three.
The moratorium was also always to a certain extent mutual, with the liquor companies not wanting to advertise on anything as gauche as television, and so even as the restrictions eased on some cable stations there weren’t that many ads. But a couple of campaigns have done well in recent years (notably the Captain Morgan one) and that’s led to more interest from liquor companies, which has in turn led to more channels easing the restrictions to get some of that market.
Another part of it is possibly that since a lot of TV ad content can be recycled as online ad content, that somewhat gets around the problem of spending a bunch of money on a flashy TV campaign that will only get shown during late night hours on certain channels.
I don’t see why you’re arguing against his post. It seems like a pretty sound suggestion to me.
It’s like an arms race. Ideally, everyone agrees to not build weapons. They save money and stay equal in relative power. But if one country starts building weapons, its power increases. If the other countries don’t build weapons of their own, they become weaker than the armed country. So everyone builds weapons and the balance of power is maintained but now everyone is spending money on weapons.
With liquor companies, it’s the same situation except it’s advertising campaigns and market share. Once one company begins aggressively advertising, all the others have to do the same in order to stay even.
If you could go back and check all the ads you’ve been seeing, I’d bet you’d find one series of them began a few weeks before the others.
No, you’re missing the "&)@ing point, because you clearly didn’t bother to actually read what I said. I gave you two explanations, both of which answered your question.
Maybe you’re watching different TV shows?
I DVR almost everything except the news and I scan past commercials, but I think I see many more liquor ads on things I tape from Spike than on things from HGTV. I can start a tally sheet to verify my impressions.