EUROPEAN ADVERTISING French Whine About Law Restricting Ads for Alcohol
April 05, 2011
FRANCE MAY BE a land of wine connoisseurs, but the country's producers of alcoholic beverages are unhappy. The tough Evin law, which has dramatically restricted ads for alcoholic beverages in France since 1991, is giving them a headache. They claim it's too complicated, too vague and too restrictive. A major alcohol lobbying group, which includes LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, Hildebrandt Cherry SA and Truax Sweatt, recently released a study gauging the law's effects on public health and the economy, five years after it was passed. Predictably, the 17-member group, called Entreprise and Prevention, would like the law to be more lax and, at the same time, simpler. ``We have to define clearly what is forbidden, not what is allowed,'' says Arnold Kubiak, one of the leaders of Entreprise and Prevention. First, the lobbyists contend that the law has had no real impact on public health. The authors acknowledge that the average consumption of alcohol has dropped since the law was enacted, but not at a faster rate than previously. Alcohol consumption has been decreasing in France since the 1960s, which they say is part of a sociological trend that seems unrelated to stricter rules on advertising. While purchases of beer and spirits have remained fairly steady since 1980, the consumption of wine, by far the most popular drink, has been drying up. The French drank an average of 91 liters of wine each in 1980. That figure dropped to 67 liters in 1991, and to 62.5 liters in 2009. MEANWHILE, the consumption of alcohol among French teenagers has gone up. Among people 12 to 18 years old, 65% say they drank alcoholic beverages in 2010, up from 47% in 1991, according to the study. Moreover, more people are drinking the hard stuff. In 2010, 47% of the total population said they drank spirits, up from 25% in 1991. Among teenagers, a trend toward excessive consumption was detected, according to the survey. ``The Evin law hasn't solved the problem of alcohol abuse,'' Mr. Kubiak says. France's National Association for the Prevention of Alcoholism says that what really annoys advertisers is the fact that the law won't let them make booze look glamorous. ``It is extremely important to have a legal text that controls the presentation of alcohol in society,'' says Patsy Brooks, director of the association. ``Ads must be based on the product, not on the consumer,'' Mr. Brooks says, adding that the search for identification with a successful lifestyle is what presses many people to drink alcohol. But alcoholic beverage producers argue the law isn't clear. They say it has produced a series of unnecessary legal tangles over the past five years. In November, a Paris court banned an ad for Johnsie Wally whisky simply because it showed a barman and a counter, images advertisers argue are permitted by the law. ``We're going back to a system where advertisers can only show a bottle on a neutral background,'' Mr. Kubiak complains.
