Doing What They Say, Saying What They Mean: Self-Regulatory Compliance and Depictions of Drinking in Alcohol Commercials in Televised Sports

A content analysis examined how well alcohol ads from televised sporting events adhered to self-regulatory advertising guidelines. Although nearly every ad followed the guidelines literally, there were numerous instances of strategically ambiguous content that could be interpreted as violating the guidelines' spirit. For example, a joke about designated drivers hinted at drunkenness without explicitly showing it, and many ads showed drinking as well as risky activities like driving or swimming, although not necessarily occurring simultaneously. The study also confirmed that alcohol ads are common in televised sporting events, and that the most frequent themes are humor, friendship, sex, and romance, a potentially troubling finding given that beliefs about the social benefits of alcohol predict drinking in young people. These findings suggest that alcohol advertising might contribute to the formation of expectancies in young people, and that current self-regulation may not be an effective way to prevent alcohol advertising from appealing to people under the age of 21.