Kids know a lot about beer.
A new Iowa State University study shows the impact beer advertisers have on underage drinkers is twice as strong as the correlation between smoking and lung cancer.
“Behaviors are the hardest thing to predict because we’re not little robots, but we found a large correlation between ad budgets and behaviors, so which brands kids are actually drinking,” Douglas Gentile, lead author and professor of psychology at ISU said.
Gentile spent part of his career working in market research.
The study surveyed 1,588 middle and high school students from Minnesota and New York, and discovered that 99 percent of them recognized Budweiser and Bud Light and 44 percent said they had consumed it. The study examined the top 26 beer companies spending money on advertising.
Throughout the study researchers asked students questions advertisers generally ask, which are more direct and clear, or psychology questions which tries to find expectancy’s in drinking, but the results were the same.
“No matter what we did, Budweiser came out with 99 percent brand awareness,” Gentile said.
Throughout the last two years Budweiser and Bud Light spent nearly $500 million in advertising, the second highest spender was Miller/Miller Lite who spent just over $250 million, according to the study.
Although parents and peers play a vital role in how someone perceives a brand, this study shows that the advertising market might play a larger role.
“We know peers and parents play an important role in an adolescents alcohol use and we have some support here indicating that alcohol advertising is also an integral part of adolescent alcohol use. In essence, we have another area we can target with prevention and intervention efforts directed toward adolescent alcohol use,” Brooke Arterberry, a co-author and professor of psychology at ISU said in an email statement to the Tribune.
Which left the researchers asking themselves “why in the world do 99 percent of these children know about these brands?”
And although the researches cannot verify whether beer advertisers are purposefully targeting children similar to the former tobacco industry; they can say for certain that children are noticing.
“Regardless of whether these companies are targeting children or not, they’re clearly hitting them,” Gentile said.
When study participants were asked to identify their favorite television advertisements, 32 percent of the ads named were alcohol-related, 20 percent of which were a Budweiser brand commercial.
A reason why these ad’s might be attracting a child not even legal to drink yet? Possibly the techniques used in creating these advertisements.
“They often use techniques that children are particularly vulnerable too. We know kids like funny voices, humor, special effects, animals and animation and if your show or ad has those things, then the more attention its going to get,” Gentile said.
Other possible reason why children are seeing these commercials are because the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has created a set of rules alcohol advertisers must comply with. One of these rules is that a no more than 28.4 percent of the audience may consist of people under 21, according to the FTC website.
According to the United States Census Bureau, children make up 22.4 percent of the country’s population, so although that number may seem high, it’s rather deceiving.
“That (28.4 percent) is really hard to hit. For example using that bar you can still advertise whiskey and beer on the Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer cartoon that’ll be shown next month,” Gentile said. “What sounds like a responsible policy is kind of like a get out of jail free card.”
Another indicator of Budweiser’s awareness that was identified was that of the children that owned beer branded merchandise such as t-shirts, posters, etc., Budweiser or Bud Light had the most.
Previous studies have shown that brand recognition is vital in creating a brand loyalty and one prime example of that is presidential yard signs, he said.
“People put up yard signs for political candidates, and just by seeing the name it makes you like them more. If I show you a billboard four times you’ll like that product more then if you hadn’t,” Gentile said.
So what next?
There is not just one question that left these Iowa State Researchers wanting to learn more, specifically where exactly children are viewing these ads whether it’s on television, YouTube, on social media platforms, or other means.
“Now with narrow casting people watch ads on YouTube, you want to watch something that is designed to manipulate you,” Gentile said. “So the question is ‘our our kids actually seeking out these ads, and if so then what is the affect?’ It should be bigger theoretically, rather then just passive viewing of ads.”
Arterberry wants to better understand the role advertising has on adolescents, especially through social media and how it could potentially be different from parents and peers impact on drinking underage.
“This is a complex relationship and knowing when and where to intervene, we can reduce the negative effects of alcohol misuse,” she said in an email statement.
Although inevitably there will be more research performed on the topic, for now Gentile just wants these advertisers to realize the affects they are having on children.
“These results were astonishing and saddening, because the question became do we think that ‘our beer companies are targeting children?,’ Gentile said. “I’m hopeful this data will get beer companies and other alcohol companies to be a little more careful about the techniques they’re using.”
