Budweiser's Super Bowl Beer Ads Fuel Underage Drinking
Anheuser-Busch recklessly fueled this nation's underage drinking epidemic by exposing the young viewers of February's Super Bowl XL broadcast—the largest youth TV audience of the year—to more ads for beer than any other product. New research, published last month in the
American Medical Association's Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent
Medicine, shows that the more young people are exposed to alcohol advertising, the more likely they are to drink.
The world's biggest brewer spent roughly $25 million to buy 10 ads for Bud, Bud Light and Michelob during the Super Bowl, when an estimated 25 million underage youth, including seven million under 12, were watching. Using animals in beer ads, like the baby Clydesdale, sheep and bear in Bud and Bud Light's Super Bowl commercials, makes the brands popular among youth, according to research. A study published last fall in the
Journal of Health Communication found that youth 10-17 years old prefer beer ads with humor, music, and animal characters, and are more likely to say such commercials make them want to buy the beer advertised. "Using a baby Clydesdale to sell beer to kids is like using Joe Camel to sell them cigarettes," said Amon Rappaport,
Marin Institute's Communications Director. "It looks like Anheuser-Busch finds inspiration for its TV commercials in kids' story books."
Not surprisingly, a poll conducted just after this year's Super Bowl found that the four favorite ads among viewers under 17 years old were Bud and Bud Light commercials.
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