Alcohol manufacturers use influencers, whose community includes minors, to promote their products, while the sale of alcohol is prohibited to minors as is its promotion, warns the association Addictions France.
- The alcohol manufacturers “do not hide wanting to seduce young people to revive the consumption of wine, even if it means betting on TikTok”.
- The wine sector is aware “that it is impossible to control all the advertisements issued by influencers”, assures the association.
- Addictions France calls on MPs to take up this public health issue and ban the promotion of alcohol by influencers.
In order to reach a younger audience, some alcohol manufacturers sometimes call on influencers to “to make people forget that content, apparently anecdotal, is indeed an advertisement”as pointed out by the association Addiction France. According to her, this “influence marketing has become in a few years an essential lever of corporate communication strategies”.
Seduce young people thanks to influencers to relaunch wine consumption
She returns in particular to the example of the wine group Gérard Bertrand who requested the services of an influencer with 500,000 subscribers to give a more glamorous image to his cuvée “Côte des Roses”. The association also evokes the beer giant Carlsberg which links to influencers on the ski slopes “to integrate beer into this way of life shared by thousands of Internet users, including minors”.
According to Addictions France, these manufacturers “do not hide wanting to seduce young people to revive wine consumption, even if it means betting on TikTok” and that the Pernod Ricard group revealed “use influencers with at least 70% major followers, so 30% minors”. “It is inconceivable that the alcohol industry relies on capturing a minor public to develop its turnover, given the risks of consumption at this age”is indignant Addictions France at franceinfo. The association specifies that at least “68% of teenagers use social networks” and that they are “more likely to consume alcohol when the influencers they follow promote it”.
Promotion of alcohol: “The law must adapt to changing practices”
Although the wine industry reminds us that influencers must respect the Evin law, they are aware “that it is impossible to control all the advertisements issued by influencers”, assures the association. In the space of just over a year, between October 2021 and February 2023, more than 7,000 pieces of content have been identified by Addictions France and the Avenir Santé association. Regularly, as explained by Addictions France, the representatives of the alcohol sectors “fail to point out that in the name of protecting the health of minors, the distribution of alcohol advertisements on media popular with young people, such as cinema and television, has simply been prohibited by the Evin law”.
Addictions France calls on MPs to take up this public health issue and ban the promotion of alcohol by influencers. “The law must adapt to changing practices”, warns the association, while the law on influencers is being debated in the National Assembly. Two amendments have been tabled to ban the promotion of alcohol by influencers. If they were not added directly in the text of the law, it is because the alcohol manufacturers would have threatened to have the text unraveled by the Constitutional Council, specifies to France info one of the rapporteurs of the bill. However, the text does specify that the Evin law also concerns influencers.
Every morning at 7:26 a.m. @mdups slips “In the skin of the info” ????️
This morning, Marie Dupin is a bottle of alcohol, in the sights of the association Addictions France, which wants to ban the promotion of alcohol by influencers on TikTok and Instagram ???? pic.twitter.com/1BVJdjYY67
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) March 29, 2023
