A stout defence of the Public Alcohol Bill

It is the clash of big business with the common good, writes Michael Clifford.

THIS Christmas will be pretty bleak for thousands, if some busybodies get their way.

The “iconic” Christmas Guinness advertisement is under threat. So we were told during the week.

You know the one — the fluffy images of Christmas Eve, in the cities of Dublin and Cork as midnight strikes, outside a rural pub where the lights have died and snow begins to fall. Young couples bidding goodnight to each other on the doorstep after a convivial evening, all of them looking surprisingly sober.

“Don’t forget to turn the light off!” The fox sniffing the cold night air, as if there might be a hot whiskey out there somewhere. The world cuddling up in the warmth of the season, contrasting sharply with the cold, cold ground outside.

And then the camera pans around to the gates of the guardian of the Christmas spirit, the repository of dreams, the elixir of life, the home of the black stuff.

“Even at the home of the black stuff,” the voice warmly intones, “they’re dreaming of a white one”.

Yes, this warm, fuzzy world has been brought to you by Guinness, as if you were actually viewing life through the lens of your fifth pint.

And somebody wants to deprive us of this highlight of the season?

That’s what was inferred during the week with the latest fusillade of lobbying from the alcohol industry.

Apparently, the effect of the forthcoming Public Alcohol Bill on advertising will be to dismantle that image of ourselves, squeezing it dry of its froth.

Will Christmas ever be the same again if they get their way?

The Public Alcohol Bill is concerned with defining a few limits on the capacity of the alcohol industry to flog its product.

The bill attempts to address advertising, availability, and pricing.

Alcohol is not chocolate or white bread. It’s a mood-altering drug which when used properly can be an enhancing experience.

Unfortunately, the cultural psyche of this country largely constrains the capacity of many to use the drug properly.

This is not by any means unique, but there is a responsibility on the State to put limits on it.

We ban other mood-altering drugs completely. Why shouldn’t there be proper limits on the sale of one that is more powerful than some of the banned drugs?

Those who deal with the fall-out from misuse of the national lubricant are all in favour of the bill.

This ranges from public health doctors and specialists to groups which care for the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.

These people who work on the frontline would have loads of material that should be included in an advert about alcohol, but they are unlikely to be asked to contribute.

All of which brings us to the “iconic” Christmas advert.

It is indeed a fine piece of work. Like many ads for alcohol, it is expertly made. When your product is lucrative, the marketing budget allows for the best.

From an advertising perspective, it places Guinness at the heart of life, nearly an extension of human emotion.

According to the industry, this gilded self-reflection of the brew will not be allowed under the new bill as “scenes of conviviality” will be highly restricted.

If that interpretation of the law is correct — and it sounds highly spun — is it even a bad thing?

One might suggest that the expensive — and in the best tradition of advertising, highly manipulative — portrayal of alcohol amounts to mis-selling.

What’s wrong with a law that might go some way to protecting consumers?

For instance, young people observing the alcohol ads, and those used to promote gambling, might subconsciously conclude that their lives will be greatly enhanced by buying into the dream.

In fact, when bombarded with the recurring images, they may arrive at the point of view that their lives will be completely unfulfilled if they don’t join in on the fun.

Naturally, the industry wants nothing to interfere with the relationship it wishes to forge with the young and impressionable.

Huge resources and some choice spinning are thus deployed to fight back against the so-called nanny state that feels obliged to offer protection to citizens.

The spinning around the Christmas ad is just the latest in the industry’s assault on the Public Alcohol Bill. Earlier this year a series of stories was spun into the media, suggesting that the bill represented a “threat” to community and arts events all over the country, which would be deprived of sponsorship.

There was also Armageddon foretold for the whole advertising industry if controls were put on alcohol ads.

Both of these stories had no real basis in fact, but spin is all about pushing an agenda, rather than reflecting reality.

Now the poor benighted Christmas ad is lined up as the next victim for the chop.

The spin has found favour in some quarters.

Eamon Delaney of the right-wing think-tank Hibernia Forum came out to stop the madness.

The forthcoming bill was “a sledgehammer approach to the alcohol and hospitality sector, which hurts consumers, producers, and those of us who believe in individual freedoms and not being treated like children,” Delaney wrote.

“Politicians love this nanny state stuff, as it distracts from the real pressing issues and gives them easy publicity and the approval of media experts.”

Eamon, whom I know to be a very nice chap, is a bit of a media expert himself, but that’s neither here nor there.

He is taking the nanny state to task for attempting to curb freedoms,

interfering in the free market, and treating people as if they were not grown-ups.

Such a position might be tenable if we were dealing with a product that wasn’t costing the country billions in healthcare and untold misery for many who don’t even abuse it.

It also ignores the reality that the target audience for manipulation is the young and impressionable, who are entitled to some protections.

You don’t see too many overweight middle-aged men with a chin or two to spare, inhabiting the beautiful world of advertising. Apart from anything else, those of any way mature years have long decided on their tipple of choice.

The real objective is to get marketing claws into potential customers at an early stage, when they have yet to settle on a brand of choice.

The issue around the Public Alcohol Bill is not to do with the nanny state versus some sort of woolly libertarian ideal.

It is actually the clash of big business with the common good, as expressed through public health. It remains to be seen which side of the fence the body politic comes down on.