ALAC Ads Win Advertising Award

ALAC Ads Win Advertising Award

PRESS RELEASE

16 OCTOBER 2008

The Alcohol Advisory Council’s (ALAC) controversial binge drinking advertisements have won an award for effective advertising.

The advertisements won a Gold Effie for Social Marketing/Public Service for Clemenger BBDO at the awards ceremony in Auckland last week. The awards are run by the Communication Agencies Association of New Zealand (CAANZ) in conjunction with the Association of New Zealand Advertisers (ANZA) and Television New Zealand.

Comments from the judges included ‘short, sharp and meaningful'; ‘did a good job in a cluttered social marketing environment'; and 'the hard-hitting ads did a good job in a cluttered environment'.

ALAC Chair Peter Glensor said the advertisements attracted a large number of complaints due to their hard hitting content. However, he said, ALAC made no apologies for that.

``The ads show graphic examples of excessive drinking leading to harm, with three realistic characters eventually making poor and dangerous choices.

``These commercials are unpleasant but so are the consequences of binge drinking,’’ he said. The ads mirror what is happening, unfortunately, every week around this country.

``It is time to be brutally honest about some of the worst effects of intoxication.’’

Mr Glensor said that since the latest ads were released in April monitoring had shown:

- Nearly all adults have seen, heard, or read something about our drinking habits
- After prompting, 94 percent of adults recalled seeing at least one of the television advertisements
- After prompting, nearly all adults are aware of the “It’s not the drinking, it’s how we’re drinking” message
- Over half adult New Zealanders thinking about harm to themselves and others, resulting from their drinking
- Over half adult New Zealanders identifying a wide range of harms resulting from their drinking (including relationship-type harms)
- 38% have discussed it with others
- 19% have thought about drinking less
- 18% report they're drinking less than last year.

The ads had impacted on the number of first-time callers to the national Alcohol Drug Helpline, he said.

Of the total of 16,000 calls received at the Helpline in the past year, 12,000 (75%) were from first-time callers, statistics from the Alcohol Drug Association of New Zealand’s annual report show.

The total number of calls represents a 5% increase on the previous year’s calls, with the biggest rise in caller numbers occurring between April and June this year – immediately after ALAC new advertising campaign began.

ENDS

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