A group of eight alcohol companies responsible for over €2 Billion of advertising and promotion through Europe have agreed a set of self regulation benchmarks to apply across all markets including Ireland.  The group includes major sporting brands including Carlsberg, Guinness, Heineken.
The common standards will apply to the promotion of beer, wine and spirits, and is focused in three main areas.
1. To prevent minors from seeing alcohol marketing on social media. This will include common standards for Facebook sponsored stories and user-generated content, as well as controls on sharing and forwarding content. Rules similar to those in the USA where consumers have to direct message a brand with age confirmation before engaging are being considered.
2. Limit exposure of minors to alcohol ads. Such ads would be limited to media where at least 70% of the audience is over the legal purchase age of 18. This threshold is in fact lower than the self regulation already applied here and where that happens the tougher regulation remains in place.  The GAA have separate pitch side guidelines governing minor as opposed to senior games, up to and including on an All Ireland Sunday.
3. Ensure that the content of alcohol ads appeals primarily to adults.
Ireland is already ahead of the curve with regard to responsible marketing and the drinkaware initiative has a strong sporting element to it as has been covered previously.  These new guidelines though will apply across every market in Europe where some of the local rules and self regulation have not been so strong.
Monitoring and compliance will be undertaken by the European Alcohol and Health Forum, under the guidance of the European Commission and will be monitored independently by Accenture.
Existing tougher guidelines in individual markets, for example in France where sports sponsorship is banned and where advertising is limited to a picture of the bottle and a responsible drinking message, will remain.
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