Should Smirnoff be Advertising on YouTube?
Smirnoff’s update to the popular Tea Partay video released this week, Boyz in the Hillz, is a playful sendup of the Cali nouveau riche, but it served to remind me that in the wild west of online video, there are some ethical questions about advertising sweet, green-tea flavored beverages spiked with grain alcohol in the ironically-inflected colloquial style familiar to any young person.
For fifty years, the friendly corporations that serve you hard liquor voluntarily declined to create commercials for broadcast television, but then changed their minds in 1996. During that time, advertising for other mood-altering substances came and went — cigarette advertising was banned on television, while the ban on advertising pharmaceuticals was lifted here in the United States.
Now, I’m not calling for a repeal of the repeal of prohibition, but since YouTube and most other popular video sharing sites have taken the hard line on nipples, why isn’t anyone asking the same question about the promotion of booze, pills and cigarettes?
For all my griping about the creepy age verification procedure at Bud.tv, at least they attempted to respect American laws and customs intended to curb underage drinking. But you can find any of a number of Bud.tv clips on YouTube, working their viral magic. The Smirnoff Raw Tea site does have a nominal age verification system, but what leads me to believe that neither company will be issuing DMCA takedown notices any time soon?
Though I have to admit, old cigarette ads like “More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette” are pretty hilarious, but you can see why people didn’t think they were really serving the health of the body politic. In the legal psychotropic category, plenty of folks are smoking salvia divinorum and filming themselves. Or if illegal narcotics are more your thing, you can watch Kate Moss blowing rails — a double whammy of copyright infringement and a potential relapse trigger!
As for Boyz in the Hillz, there’s at least an illegibly tiny “Please Drink Responsibly” disclaimer and Smirnoff trademark notice that appears for a few seconds at the end of the clip. Which is the only indication that what you just saw was a advertisement for alcohol from a multi-billion dollar, international purveyor of distilled beverages. Naturally, Diageo would be right to point out that they have as little control over people copying and distributing the commercial as anyone, but for agencies like JWT which produced the spot, that’s the selling point, not an area for concern.
But like the the hooky jingle that accompanied Hamm’s Beer’s cartoon-animal ads which I can still hum after all these years, I wonder if minors today might similarly remember that funny YouTube video when they come of age in a few years, and while picking up a sixer of Smirnoff Raw Tea, beatbox the backing track under their breath unconsciously and fantasize about getting a rub-down from a waifish lass in a bikini.
While the news media works everyone into a lather over sexual predators online in an effort to think of the children, advertisers are already in the bedroom entertaining little Dick and Jane with vodka-fueled minstrelsy. I’ll be the first to stand up and defend their free speech rights to do so, but it certainly makes the censorship of erotic content on the grounds that its tasteless vulgarity seem pretty damn arbitrary.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Obviously, you can’t get drunk on nipples.
Except metaphorically.
You raise a good point….
Cable nets used to have a moratorium on hard liquor ads but there was a dry spell (pun intended) in revenue and before you know it, late night broadcasting on the virtue of rum, vodka, and whiskey.
Excellent and I´ve lost my words :)
The fastest route to government intervention/regulation is a lack of self-regulation.
Presuming Google/YouTube are not deriving any revenue from these corporate advertisers (who are getting a free media buy to boot), why protect their corporate freedoms?
But, if Google/YouTube are accepting “paid advertising” and profiting from companies who are regulated to not pitch their products to Minors, then, they must make some effort toward self-regulating.
Think of the Games industry (non-public space that brought on the wrath of many) and forced self-regulation. Would be nice if Google/YouTube were pro-active in being responsible when it comes to exposing minors to corporate/for-profit regulated substances.
I guess one reason why Youtube would protect their corporate freedoms, is the expense of policing content, along with a possible desire to not be too proactive at policing the site lest this sets a precedent and becomes expected of them. Just as with their problems with copyrighted material, they will try to avoid responsibility for as long as possible.
Anyway these sorts of issues are the reason I dont automatically sign up to movements who believe in no regulation of internet video.
In In the UK and from what Ive read, the EU are taking steps that will effectively make internet advertising as accountable as television broadcasts. But quite how publishers on the net will be held to account is another question – these systems are used to having to deal with a limited number of commercial partners in media distribution etc companies, who are already setup and used to having to comply with government regulation of one kind or another. Theres no reason why the likes of Youtube should also eventually come to fit within these systems, but the lack of geographical barriers and general sizze & diversity of the internet make this a challence. I suppose they can always target the companies who make the products that are advertised.
I think that here in the UK, where culturally we have a huge drink problem, the rules about TV advertising of Alcohol have some stricy clauses, such as not overglamourising drink, not pretending that it makes men sexually appealing to the opposite sex, not encouraging ‘irresponsible’ levels of drinking, etc. However as some of those things seem pretty core to the methods used to make advertising work, there seems to be quite a lot of flexibility in the system.
I dont know what its like in the USA, but here in the UK, issues such as protecting children on the internet from porn, seem to have been handled by placing responsibility firmly in the hands of the individuals to police how their children use the net. The rationale, compared to the hands-on regulation of TV to protect the kids, seems to be that TV pushes stuff into peoples homes, wheras people are more ‘in the driving seat’ when it comes to the net. Whether this is valid or just a useful fudge in the face of realities like never being able to impose time-of-day restraints on the net, and so having limited powers to proactively protect due to technological realities of the net, remains to be seen.
It’s YouTube’s job to raise people’s kids? Believe it or not there are responsible adults, over the age of 21, who have no children, and watch videos on YouTUbe ( gasp! ).
It stinks! This is not Advertising anymore – it’s sick! I will not support a brand that does garbage like that.
This is a lawsuit waiting to happen in my opinion, unless youtube makes it so that cigarette ads only show to people with 18+ and alcohol to 21+ (you must enter birthdate when registering) there is bound to be a case formed around it eventually.
Amazing site! love the easy layout