{"id":431,"date":"2010-05-24T17:13:20","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T17:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/2010\/05\/24\/how-alcohol-companies-launched-a-digital-campaign-against-americas-kids\/"},"modified":"2010-05-24T17:13:20","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T17:13:20","slug":"how-alcohol-companies-launched-a-digital-campaign-against-americas-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/how-alcohol-companies-launched-a-digital-campaign-against-americas-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"How Alcohol Companies Launched a Digital Campaign Against America’s Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"
According to a new study, companies like Captain Morgan and Budweiser have become extremely savvy at targeting young audiences.<\/div>\n

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May 21, 2010<\/em> |<\/div>\n
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Visit captainmorgan.com<\/a>, and next to the brand\u2019s iconic smiling pirate, you\u2019ll see the question, \u201cAre you old enough to come aboard?\u201d Go to Budweiser.com, and you\u2019ll get the request, \u201cID please.\u201d Absolut.com\u2019s home page tells visitors, \u201cYou have to be over 21 to enter this site.\u201d All three brands, like the rest of the alcohol industry, require visitors to type in a birth date to show they are of legal drinking age before entering their websites.<\/p>\n

That, so parents and the rest of public are supposed to believe, is how alcohol companies keep their online marketing away from kids. Riiight. If only bars and restaurants allowed every customer ordering a drink to simply pop the cap off a Sharpie, write his or her birth date on a napkin and pass it to the bartender. Wrote down the wrong date? No problem — just cross it out and write down a new one. Or, in the online world, quit your browser and relaunch. It\u2019s that easy.<\/p>\n

If alcohol companies were only touting their products on company websites, the fact that the industry is flimsily self-regulated might not be much cause for alarm. The trouble is, according to a new report released last week from the Center for Digital Democracy and Berkeley Media Studies Group, they\u2019re also saturating kid-popular websites like YouTube and Facebook with branded games, contests and viral videos, and tapping into people\u2019s cell phones with apps and text messages. And research shows the marketing works.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are now at least 13 peer-reviewed, longitudinal studies of the relationship between exposure to alcohol marketing and youth drinking behavior,\u201d David Jernigan, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told reporters in an online news conference. \u201cThese studies have all found that the more youth are exposed to marketing, in a wide range of forms and formats, the more likely they are to drink.\u201d<\/p>\n

Children and teens are on the web and using cell phones in stunning numbers. Nearly three quarters of 12- to 17-year olds use social networking sites, and by age 12, even more have mobile phones. Alcohol companies have no shortage of content that would likely appeal to these future consumers. Kids (who are math-savvy enough to enter the birth date of a 21-year-old) can play Malibu rum-sponsored bowling games on their phones, answer sports trivia questions on Coors\u2019 Facebook page, or watch Smirnoff\u2019s \u201cTea Partay\u201d video, joining the 5 million other viewers who already have.<\/p>\n

Read full article here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to a new study, companies like Captain Morgan and Budweiser have become extremely savvy at targeting young audiences. May 21, 2010 | Visit captainmorgan.com, and next to the brand\u2019s iconic smiling pirate, you\u2019ll see the question, \u201cAre you old enough to come aboard?\u201d Go to Budweiser.com, and you\u2019ll get \u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[86,88,87],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-alcohol","tag-kids","tag-marketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/divineearth.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}