Alcohol makers on tricky path in marketing to college crowd

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Thu Nov 17, 8:02 AM ET

Every marketer has its sweet spot.

That's the age group where brand preferences begin forming for their product. For fast-food giants, it's the Happy Meal set. For soft-drink makers, it's preteens. For beer kingpins - and, increasingly, wine and liquor producers - it's the college crowd. (Photo gallery: Alcohol marketing and college students)

"If you're going to attract a new group to your brand that has a chance of sticking over a lifetime, the college years are crucial," says Barry Glassner, sociology professor at University of Southern California.

Also lucrative. Besides being ripe for learning brand names, these students have money to burn. The bulk of them hold down jobs, and they wield $231 billion in annual spending, according to a 2005 study from youth marketing firm Alloy.

Those facts are why beer and spirits makers have quietly worshiped at the dorm-room altar.

But something's changing in the cultural ozone that is giving chills to alcohol marketers - and a lot of other big-time food and beverage advertisers. They are under the microscope of industry watchdogs, savvy lawyers, vote-seeking lawmakers and health-and-safety-conscious boomer parents. Their goal, the companies fear, is nothing less than a ban on advertising, or even, for alcohol marketers, prohibition.

That's why McDonald's now sells apple slices and Coke pitches bottled water. But perhaps no industry has been hit harder than the big alcohol makers, particularly when it comes to marketing in and around campuses. This comes even as some marketers have put the brakes on over-the-top college promotions, such as giant inflatable beer bottles and raucous spring break beach booths.

Momentum is building to ban alcohol ads from college sports broadcasts, arenas and even whole campuses. Already, conferences have set various TV ad limits for their events. For tournaments and championships, the National Collegiate Athletic Association limits beer and wine ads to 60 seconds per broadcast hour and says they must include a "drink responsibly" tagline in the ad.

Even so, $68 million was spent to advertise alcohol on college sports TV in 2004, up from $54 million the year before, reports TNS Media Intelligence.

"How can young people make the right choices in an environment that's polluted?" asks Mark Pertschuk, executive director of the Marin Institute, an alcoholic-beverage-industry watchdog group.

The scrutiny of college marketing is intensifying even though a majority of college undergraduates are of legal drinking age. The average age of an undergraduate student is 26, reports the American Council on Education. But the average age of an undergraduate living on campus is 20, the group says.

So, what's a beer or liquor maker to do? The companies' futures depend on recruiting and keeping new customers. And this is a very big group: There were 14 million undergraduates as of October 2004, reports the U.S.
Census Bureau.

The alcohol giants are not about to abandon what's arguably their most precious market.

Hot spirits give beermakers chills

Beermakers are particularly worried about twentysomethings' developing tastes, since in recent years they've been losing many drinkers to hard liquor.

In the intense competition for alcohol market share - where a tenth of a percentage point is big money worth fighting over - beer was the biggest loser from 1999 to 2004, at 2.2 points, while distilled spirits gained the most, 1.3 points.

"Beer isn't as cool and sexy as it once was," says Joseph Anthony, CEO of Vital Marketing. "We're turning into a cocktail-and-martini generation."

But reaching college students is a delicate dance for Big Alcohol. One way, as flashy TV ads draw fire, is to find even smaller, less-visible promotional openings - often inside the off-campus bars or off-campus liquor stores - that are less likely to generate backlash.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it implodes. Here are some examples: