How the digital world amplifies alcohol harms

[Autogenerated]

One of the speakers, Antonia Lions, in our in our film talks about is this like multiple layer of addiction that you’ve got this this device that’s been um designed to be habitually um used habitually addicted essentially the the smartphone and then inside that you’ve got platforms like maybe I shouldn’t name them but social media platforms that have again designed and like courts have now proven this that they’ve been designed to be addictive and then within that you’ve got that third layer of addiction which is harmful commodities and That’s the the point of our film was to try and highlight one of those harmful um commodities, alcohol. So, there’s so many benefits that could be taken from social media. Um but at the moment, it’s pretty clear that the negatives almost certainly outweigh the positives and probably the positives are juggling slightly outweigh the negatives, whatever those might be. Heineken created this entire brewery that you can walk into um in this sort of metaverse game thing. Um, you can walk into this Heineken brewery and see all of this Heineken advertising everywhere. And the issue with those quite obviously is that people that use metaverses, people that use online gaming really skew towards younger people. This it is alcohol marketing. It’s The Rock talking about his tequila brand. Um, and and obviously it like looks very beautiful because it’s filmed incredibly well and it’s got a lot of budget behind it. It’s got a person that lots of people respect and and is funny and very likable. Um, but they don’t have to say that they’re adverts because it’s their own brand. It’s such a neat way of like giving legit legitimacy and like credibility to that brand. Um, because it’s so integrated within like that person’s persona, they can now pop up with an advert to you saying, “Order this drink that they think you might like.” with the click of a button, it will come to your door within within an hour. Um, so that that’s there something that Nick Cara talks about in the film. Um, about this seamless link between the marketing of alcohol through to the sale and the delivery of it. And yeah, like I said, we’re seeing really worrying stories. There have been loads of stories recently, really heartbreaking stories in UK media about people um dying from from dying and then afterwards their family members um finding out that they’d ordered thousands of pounds worth of alcohol like delivered directly to their door. But one thing that doesn’t apply to online delivery of alcohol is serving to somebody who’s intoxicated. So, so people who are yeah, incredibly intoxicated, drinking really harmful amounts could just have bottles of vodka handed over to them at the door. If people stop gambling or they stop ordering alcohol from these these these apps, they sort of get bomb they they talk about it. They they get bombarded with alcohol ads, with gambling ads saying, “Yeah, do you you can have a free spin. You can have Yeah. 50% off this box of wine or whatever it is to try and bring them back in.” The alcohol industry is heavily reliant on the on these higher risk drinkers because they give them so much money basically. So if those people cut back, there’s a big risk to their their business models if they don’t continue the the the drinking levels of high-risisk drinkers. And so that’s why they like push this marketing out towards them. These are some of the most protocol-driven platforms that we’ve ever had in human history. They’re so much more controllable than the billboard outside my house. So it’s highly regulable and really easy to control. It’s just that what’s lacking is partly probably the knowledge um of politicians often in knowing that that is very very possible but also the the desire. So really the most effective way to protect people to protect children and the vulnerable groups that we’re talking about from being bombarded with all these alcohol adverts and risking their lives ultimately is very clearly is is to ban alcohol marketing across all digital platforms. Hello and welcome everyone to one of Alcohol Review’s occasional short video interviews. You’ll find out more on the web page and YouTube show notes. Please like and subscribe on there and check the link to see the benefits of all service. So, let’s get started. We are well into the transition into a digital world which offers many conveniences but also many new problems. Among them is the marketing of alcohol online. a docu a new documentary film from the Institute of Alcohol Studies has gone deep into the issue to which you will find a link in the description. I’m delighted to welcome Jen Roberts, head of external affairs to tell us more. Welcome Jen. Thank you very much. So I obviously watch watched the video and um what is quite interesting about is you place out this marketing of alcohol into a sort of broader context of what is called limbic capitalism. Could you sort of describe for the uninitiated what you mean by that? Oh, good challenge to start off with. Um, so limbbeic is the part of your brain which uh regulates like emotions um and is like the reward center. Um, and capitalism I think everyone knows what that means. Uh and it was a phrase that um a writer called David Courtright came up with which was about industries that sell addictive products um and that sort of tap into the limbic part of your brain. Um so yeah industries like the alcohol industry or the gambling industry or tobacco industry and how they use like addictive platforms as well to to tap into the limit part of your brain. And it’s something that one of the speakers, Antonio Lions, in our in our film talks about is this like multiple layer of addiction that you’ve got this this device that’s been um designed to be habitually um used habitually addicted essentially the the smartphone. And then inside that you’ve got platforms like maybe I shouldn’t name them, but social media platforms that have again designed and like courts have now proven this that they’ve been designed to be addictive. And then within that you’ve got that third layer of addiction which is harmful commodities. And that that’s the the point of our film was to try and highlight one of those harmful um commodities, alcohol. Um because as you say like there’s been so much discussion recently about the addictive nature of social media and and social platforms but less um so about like what the actual content is within them and selling addictive products. Yeah. I think you there’s a phrase in in the documentary where you uh somebody calls a a product designed to keep us hooked talking about mobile phones etc. marketing a pro product designed to keep us hooked um namely alcohol in this this context. So you have like this uh kind of uh double layer of of addiction or or compulsive use of a product. I mean, okay, it’s sort of slightly philosophical, but if you’re trying to sort of distinguish between a product which we just feel like is brilliant, we just want to use it all the time. I want to play table tennis five days a week versus a product which is, you know, makes us want to use it more. How do we how do we say that one is sort of a bad thing and one is a a positive thing? Is there is there a way to sort of neatly say that using our mobile phones is bad but um juggling is is bad. Sorry, juggling is good. Yeah. Is juggling good or bad? Um my juggling is bad. That’s mine’s non-existent. Um it’s a good question. I’ve spoken to people like that in the past. It’s definitely not something I can hugely comment on in terms of like expertise, but um I think the the data around and like research and I mean this is obviously quite a new area because these social platforms are very new areas but the the research around from people like Jonathan height for instance around how negative the consequences have been of these of like the proliferation of these social media platforms. um I think points to them not being wholly positive um parts of our society. I mean, it’s something actually that Antonia did say in one of her her pieces in in the in when I filmed her for the film, but I actually didn’t include it because we didn’t quite have enough space to include it. But she talks about how she talks about the benefits of social media and how it can bring really diverse communities together and have people learn from each other. and it was um quite like widely used during the Arab Springs which obviously didn’t end up particularly well but like there was so much hope during the Arab Spring um that and a lot of that was about people on social media platforms sharing events and protests and things that were going on. So there’s so many benefits that could be taken from social media. Um, but it at the moment it’s pretty clear that the negatives almost certainly outweigh the positives and probably the positives are juggling and slightly outweigh the negatives, whatever those might be. I’m glad to hear it. I’m glad to hear it. Um, and moving sort of the main topic, these social media and and digital media are now used quite heavily to promote alcohol among other things. Could you describe a few of the techniques or name a few of the techniques that are used to bring this uh product to their audience? Yeah, I mean in the film we we list a bunch of them. I think eight or so which I’m not going to be able to rattle off the top of my head. But um I I mean I I guess the sort of starting point is seeing that how different it is from traditional marketing. So traditional marketing being billboards outside that you see um or um adverts on TV for instance um or you know back in the day maybe on the radio. But um with digital marketing there’s so many more like diverse places that they can be. So there are the obvious ones that people have seen all the time and like if you’re reading newspaper article there might be a little banner at the top or a little sidebar advert with alcohol on it. Um, but then there are also, yeah, adverts as we’re talking about on social media and then also in much more of like hidden worlds that lots of people watching this or watching the film won’t have even necessarily heard of. Um, partly maybe because of their what generation they’re in, but also because of what what interest they have. So, there are um alcohol ads in online gaming. There’s also um alcohol um branding and marketing in what are called metaverses. So there’s one there’s a metaverse uh called Decentraland which we talk about in the film and Heineken created this entire brewery that you can walk into um in this sort of metaverse game thing. Um you can walk into this Heineken brewery and see all of this Heineken advertising everywhere. And the issue with those quite obviously is that people that use metaverses, people that use online gaming really skew towards younger people. Most of these games have like you’re not allowed to join the the social media platform or join the game until you’re a certain age, but they’re very easy to get around. You I mean similar to if you go on to um an alcohol website online, it will ask you for your age. You can put in any age. And I actually do put in different ages to my actual age because I don’t want to give them the data of my age which might be a bit silly but you can put in any age and um you can say that you’re 120 and they uh will just believe it. So yeah the whole age gating thing which again we talk about in the film is sort of non-existent in terms of protecting young people from seeing alcohol marketing in all these different places. And another one that I I was mentioned was influencer marketing and you know influencers are one of those sort of actual political forces these days and with enormous reach. Could you just explain how that works and how you know why it’s it’s so such an attractive uh proposition to alcohol marketers? Yeah. Yeah. No, I shouldn’t have missed that one, should I? But I mean that’s a huge one and it’s such a recent thing that you have some of the some of the most well-known people on Earth. So, The Rock, um, who was a a wrestler, Dwayne the Rock Johnson, or Kendall Jenner, part of the the Kardashian, broader Kardashian family, or Beyonce, I think most people have heard of Beyonce, um, have their own alcohol brands and advertise it to hundreds of millions of their followers on across their social media platforms. Um, and most like a huge chunk of these followers will be children or or um older teenagers or young people. Um, and they’re seeing this. It is alcohol marketing. It’s The Rock talking about his tequila brand. Um, and and obviously it like looks very beautiful because it’s filmed incredibly well and it’s got a lot of budget behind it. It’s got a person that lots of people respect and and is funny and very likable. Um, but they don’t have to say that they’re adverts because it’s their own brand. They’re sort of, as we talked about in the the film, it’s like an entrepreneur um, uh, marketing their own product. They don’t have to have any sort of ad label. Not that that would even do anything if they did say that it was an ad, but it’s so clearly an ad, right? So if if the rock were advertising uh insert alcohol brand here let’s say hinek and laga or something then they would have to say this is an advert and they would have to go through all the kind of well what what what reg whatever regulation or or controls there are whereas if he says here is my um the rock lagger then it’s it’s a completely um you know rule-free situation. Yeah exactly that. Yeah. And it I mean because it’s all built within the their account as well. So I mean when I was going through their accounts to find examples of of these um you’re going past other things of films that he’s been in or um photo shoots that Kendall Jenner has done or or whoever else. And it’s all so integrated within their their personality and their their their profile and their brand that it is such a neat way. And it’s something that again Antonio talks about in the film. It’s such a neat way of like giving legit legitimacy and like credibility to that brand. Um because it’s so integrated within like that person’s persona. Uh and yeah, and they don’t have to say it’s an advert. So it doesn’t even look different because they don’t have to say it’s an advert or have any ad hashtags or whatever else you might need. That sounds it’s quite extraordinary uh loophole there which seems to be thoroughly um well uh explored and and utilized. Um Bill also talks about the collapse of the boundary between the online and offline world which maybe we can uh look at a clip. The distinction between on the online and offline world is really collapsed and there’s this real real integration between those two worlds. Um so it’s the quickness of seeing the ad purchasing the product that’s also been intensified. Um, and could you sort of maybe give us some examples of what this might look like in terms of, you know, the the ads we see and what they allow us to do in terms of buying the brand or or or buying into the brand. Yeah, this is a like really concerning trend and again is something that’s like very new to this area. Um, and researchers in Australia and New Zealand in particular have been really great at pointing these out. Um, so some of the examples that we use in the film are from those countries, but it’s definitely something that is a concern here and the government has actually talked about, the UK government has talked about the real concern of rapid online delivery of of alcohol. So the ability to be able to um order alcohol um at a sort of click of a button um and get it delivered to your door within an hour sort of thing. Um and 16 minutesthe ability now and the the sort of techniques that alcohol companies and marketers are using to integrate their marketing into that rapid delivery is really concerning. So um especially in terms of who it often targets. So it can it can target people who look like people who we talk about in the film who order lots of alcohol. So, for instance, say uh I order lots of alcohol or I’m really interested in alcohol adverts that when I’m looking through my social media feed, I hover over it for a lot of time or I click on things or I like them or I share them. The algorithm learns that I’m somebody that is interested in that alcohol advert and then it sees you, Phil, and it says, “Oh, well, he’s male. He lives in this area. He’s kind of similar to Jim in certain ways. Um, let’s target him as well with alcohol adverts.” Um, and so they can be really picky about who they target, where they target people, which town they target in, and they can really be really specific in that. And now that’s linked up with this rapid delivery model. Um, they can now pop up with an advert to you saying, “Order this drink that they think you might like with the click of a button, it will come to your door within within an hour.” Um, so that that’s there’s something that Nick Cara talks about in the film um about this seamless link between the marketing of alcohol through to the sale and the delivery of it. And yeah, like I said, we’re seeing really worrying stories. At the moment, it’s difficult to know how widespread this is because there’s not been much research on it. is is working on some research and there are Australians and um researchers looking at it as well um about how harmful this is. But there have been loads of stories recently, really heartbreaking stories in UK media about people um dying from from dying and then afterwards their family members um finding out that they’d ordered thousands of pounds worth of alcohol to like deliver directly to their door. And it’s like the opaque nature of this as well is really worrying because people just don’t know that their their family members are drinking like extraordinary amounts of alcohol, really damaging amounts of alcohol. And there have been stories of delivery people leaving alcohol on the doorstep whilst the person inside has been unconscious. Um, and they’ve only sort of found this out after they’ve either been like hospitalized or they or they’ve really sadly died. Um, and yeah, that integration of digital marketing into that model is obviously incredibly concerning. I mean, one one of the things that you and I talk about an awful lot of the levers of price availability and marketing and and the availability and marketing are kind of merged together in in that and and there is there is no alcohol-f free space in the sense that you could if you have a a legally recognized address, you alcohol can be delivered to that address. And so the the ability to control our private spaces and to to uh draw a kind of boundary as to where alcohol is available to us have kind of without any our say so have been collapsed. You know uh the we can all order alcohol and I guess have it probably delivered within an hour if if if that were our goal which is nobody asked us per for permission for for that. Yeah. And and also I mean that points to very clear issues with licensing in the UK. um and the fact that the licensing act covers all alcohol licensing. Um and there’s no differentiation between like the honor and the off trade where there’s very clearly very different harms that are associated with each. Um but one thing that doesn’t apply to online delivery of alcohol is serving to somebody who’s intoxicated. So, in theory, in a in an on trade establishment, so a pub or a restaurant, you uh have a legal responsibility not to serve alcohol to somebody who’s visibly intoxicated. Now, obviously, that’s a a bit of a gray area of like what that actually means, and I’m sure that it’s violated all the time. Um, but with delivery, with rapid delivery, that’s there’s no rule to do that. So, um there isn’t that that even if it’s not particularly effective, there’s not even that that mechanism to um to try and reduce harm. So, people who are yeah, incredibly intoxicated, drinking really harmful amounts could just have bottles of vodka handed over to them at the door. And are there any groups of people who are particularly at risk from these uh types of marketing? Yeah, definitely. I mean um as as we all know the the best evidence around alcohol marketing is how it um leads to young people particularly like teenagers drinking from a much earlier age and drinking more than they otherwise would. Um and it’s pretty clear that some of these brands uh are targeted towards children and or or young people at the very least in terms of the colors and the ways that they’re marketed. Um and so they’re they’ve been highlighted by the World Health Organization as a real ort of target um by lots of alcohol brands and their use of digital uh tools and digital platforms. Um like I was talking about with the metaverse earlier, but also social media, they disproportionately um use those tools compared to um older generations. And so they’re very clearly a risk group or high-risisk group. And then also very obvious vulnerable group is people who drink really heavily. And like I was saying about people sort of alcohol marketers profiling people and then targeting people based on what’s called lookalike logic which is they’ll looks like gem in certain ways in terms of how they use uh digital platforms what um you know what they hover over and so they’ll target people based on that. And what that does, it sort of compounds the issue of um targeting heavy drinkers because if you’re targeting somebody who is interested in alcohol ads and orders lots of alcohol, you target people who look like them, there’s a high risk that you’re targeting other heavy drinkers um or higher risk drinkers. And then there’s also the other sort of very similar issue that if people cut back on their uh cut back on ordering and this has happens a lot in the gambling space as well which is really horrific and really like so immoral. If people stop gambling or they stop ordering alcohol from these these these apps they sort of get bomb they they talk about it. They get they get bombarded with alcohol ads, with gambling ads saying, “Yeah, do you you can have a free spin. You can have Yeah. 50% off this box of wine or whatever it is to try and bring them back in because they, as we know, the alcohol industry is heavily reliant on the on these higher risk drinkers because they give them so much money basically. So if those people cut back, there’s a big risk to their their business models if they don’t continue the the the drinking levels of high-risisk drinkers. And so that’s why they like push this marketing out towards them. And we’ve we’ve heard that 23 minutesloads of times from people who are in recovery and um or very recently in recovery um and yeah say that they’ve they suddenly have all these adverts um piled on them from all different angles, all different digital platforms. So in some s from the point of view of a business somebody in recovery is a kind of lapsed excellent customer. I mean putting pure financial terms and we can actually maybe hear from one one now which you who you interviewed in the film giving her account of uh how marketing has affected her recovery. couldn’t get this advert out me head for this pink gin and I consequently relapsed after 15 years and within a few months um I was on a life support machine in the RVI and I nearly died and um you know what what should we uh do about it is there is there anything that can be done often with uh you know digital technologies is everybody throws their hands in the air and sort of says this can’t be regulated is that the case here I think it’s a yeah really interesting question it’s thing. It’s probably the most that I learned from making this film um was a really interesting point that Professor Nick Cara in the film talks about um because to your point, social media giants and what Nick Cara he the excellent word bamboozle bamboozle sorry he talks about how social media giants purposefully tried to bamboozle politicians about how regulatable their their industry is, their sector is and these platforms are. Um, but Nick talks about makes an excellent point that these are some of the most protocol-driven platforms that we’ve ever had in human history. They’re so much more controllable than the billboard outside my house. There actually is one that often has unhealthy qualities and it annoys me very much. But, um, much more controllable than than that, much more controllable than TV even. Um because you can be so particular about who you target. Like they can show an advert, an alcohol advert in one town, but not a town sort of down the road. They can be really specific with geography. There’s a um a screen uh recording that I included in the film um probably or so in where I’ve actually gone on Tik Tok and I’m on their ad system, their ad platform, and I’m choosing what I can target. And you’ll see with the drop down, you can choose any town in England that you can target very specifically. So I could send an alcohol advert to York, but not to to Sheffield. You can be really specific about it and you can break it down by gender. You can break it down by age group and and all different kinds of things. Um so it’s highly regulable and really easy to control. It’s just that what’s lacking is partly probably the knowledge um of politicians often in knowing that that is very very possible but also the the desire to and the something again that Nick Cara talks about is the sort of um the fear that um is is instilled by social media companies because he he talks about how Facebook um were unhappy with the Australian government a number of years ago about something. So one morning they Australians woke up and Facebook had just turned off all of the news from from Australia. So the uh on on Facebook and so many people got their news via Facebook um that suddenly there was this sort of um yeah lack of lack of news that um that people could access. So they they threaten and they pretend that they can’t do things and they make it sound very confusing, but there are loads of things that could be done and those are only like the sort of the sort of stepping stones we talk about the sort of steps up up the ladder to get to a more regulated industry. What Antonio talks about in the film is about how if you if you only ban it in certain areas, if you only do controls in certain areas, there is a risk that it goes up sort of the bubble sort of increases somewhere else. And um if they ban it in one place, they they’ll just move that spending across to a different space. So really the most effective way to protect people to protect children and the vulnerable groups that we’re talking about from being bombarded with all these alcohol adverts and risking their lives ultimately is very clearly is is to ban alcohol marketing across all digital platforms is really the only way that you could ensure that people were protectedly. Well, we live in hope that uh there are people listening who can actually do something about it. But yeah, thank you very much for giving us this uh overview of the film which I encourage everybody to see. I’ve um put a link in the description uh on YouTube and also on the website. So please give it a look and thanks very much Jim. Thank you very much Phil. Cheers. ■