I Was Too Drunk to Blog On This The Other Day

A new study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medince concludes that young adults and teens increased their drinking by one percent for each alcohol ad they viewed each month. The study also concluded that that every dollar per-capita spent by alcohol companies on ads in a given market raised consumption by 3 percent overall. Without even reading the summary of this study I feel safe in saying that's is a bunch of shit. For starters, any expert in marketing will tell you that advertising can't influence people to do something, it just influences you to choose a different product. Pepsi and Coke can't convince you to drink cola, but they can convince you to choose one brand over the other if you were going to drink cola anyways. (And even this is an oversimplification because ad campaigns re-shape deep sitted - usually irrational - preferences over long periods of time). But, as someone who drinks I can tell you that I've never seen an alcohol ad and said, "you know what, I suddenly feel like drinking." The author of the study, however, clearly anticipated these arguments.

The findings "contradict claims that advertising is unrelated to youth drinking amounts: that advertising at best causes brand switching, only affects those older than the legal drinking age or is effectively countered by current educational efforts," author Leslie Snyder wrote.