Madam, – I refer to recent letters in your columns calling for bans and restrictions on advertising of alcohol. Every organisation, be it a business, a government department, a State agency, a college, a professional association or a charity, needs some kind of marketing or advertising in order to promote its products, services or cause. Commercial businesses need it for the same reason, and it is an essential part of their development and jobs in them depend on it. This applies even to alcohol companies.
Without advertising or promotion, how would one know about an organisation or what it does? I’m puzzled by people who criticise alcohol advertising and at the same time state “I take a drink myself”, somehow suggesting that they favour being able to get a drink of their choice but that it shouldn’t be advertised.
Why is that? Is it because they consider they are better able to find out about something than other people? Or that they don’t need an ad to tell them what they should choose?
Of course, advertising isn’t the only way, or perhaps even the main way, that we get to know about something.
But there is still a question – how do you know what to choose to drink? Or whatever else product choice you might be interested in? Would you “know” that perhaps a better-for-you product came on the market without advertising? Maybe you would; maybe you would chance upon it or maybe someone would tell you about it. Maybe you’d hear about it from your peers or another adult or from your travels.
In all of this, regardless of advertising per se, it is illegal to sell alcohol to anyone under 18 (though, by the way, it’s not necessarily illegal for an under-18 to drink alcohol).
Advertising doesn’t make us do anything. And there isn’t a guarantee that if you advertise that you will as a result succeed. The commercial world, including among alcohol companies, is filled with examples of products that haven’t survived or never succeeded just because they were advertised. So to suggest that advertising or promotion of some products or information should be banned or prohibited because somebody thinks they are not proper in some way seems downright wrong.
We wouldn’t propose to ban political speeches or political advertising, would we? We shouldn’t, not even when we might think they are stupid or outrageous. We do believe that advertising should be responsible and this is a principle we fiercely promote.
Bans and prohibitions don’t seem to be as effective as some presume, and also don’t seem to very well address what may be the problem in the first place. The advertising ban on tobacco (regardless of one’s views about tobacco) hasn’t exactly been a success in stopping people from smoking.
Heroin and cocaine are not advertised and yet people are buying and using them.
One of the most widely advertised bans throughout Ireland seems to be extensively broken on a daily basis.
All of our roads carry speed limit signs that clearly tell drivers what the maximum speed is, and yet these limits are frequently breached. The law bans the use of hand-held mobile phones by drivers while driving – but this ban is frequently broken.
The key issue surely is about people’s attitudes and behaviours, and seeking to influence them to change them for the better, rather than stopping them from knowing about something through an ad simply because you don’t approve of advertising as a channel.
Remember George Orwell's book 1984and the role of the thought police? They wanted a situation where we wouldn't do any thinking for ourselves; it would be done by an elite on our behalf. As Julia said to Winston in the novel, "They can make you say anything – anything – but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you." – Yours, etc,