Alcoholic beverage advertising seeks to promote excessive consumption of alcohol. Alcoholic beverage advertisers do not inform consumers of the adverse impacts of their product in the daily bombardment of billboards, magazine, television and radio advertisements. This essay will establish a link between alcoholic beverage advertising and excessive alcoholic consumption which is a recognised factor in the onset of alcohol related disease.
Exposure to alcohol messages is an everyday occurrence. Most of these messages are encountered in the mass media as part of non-commercial programming. Alcohol advertising appears roughly one tenth as often as alcohol use in programming and yet it appears in the media with ten times the frequency of public service announcements that caution against the adverse effects of excessive consumption and alcohol abuse (Fisher, 1993, p.55). Non-commercial advertising (e.g. product placement) is used by advertising agencies to advertise to the consumer when they are not aware of being advertised to. When a program breaks for an ad the viewer is automatically aware that they are viewing ads and will usually switch over or turn their attention away from the television. To overcome this advertising failure and

„X There needs to be government-funded institution that has the authority to stop or ban alcohol companies from advertising without adhering to industry codes, regulation and in the best interest of consumers.