Leap 2- Please Drink Responsibly

Will Peterman

Professor RobbGrieco

Com 416

3/29/2023

For this Leap 2 assignment, I wanted to make sure that the topic covered was a form of propaganda most people are familiar with. I wanted to choose and analyze a specific subject matter that carried a lot of familiarity with it. That is why I chose to target liquor advertisements and their promotion of drinking responsibly. The anchor of this assignment that gives another perspective on these propaganda liquor commercials was the clip I pulled from Southpark, which made fun of and showed the very real hypocrisy of it all.

I watch TV pretty often and consume commercials at a normal rate I would say, and I think most people would relate. It seems as though TV commercials have been limited to just a handful of products and subjects to promote to viewers. Alcohol, food, and sex. With alcohol and liquor promotions, every single one it seems now has the same theme, and that is young, attractive, men and beautiful women out at a bar, club having fun, getting out sports cars, entering the bars as king, and party, party, party. Then when everything at the end of the ad is said and done, if you put a magnifying glass on the screen, a message will appear “Please Drink Responsibly.”

Katherine Smith at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, her study on alcohol advertisements found over 85% of the alcohol ads studied did relay a responsibility message to the viewer, however none of them clarified what that meant. “According to the study, most of the ads analyzed (87 percent) incorporated a responsibility message, but none actually defined responsible drinking or promoted abstinence at particular times or in certain situations. When responsibility messages were accompanied by a product tagline or slogan, the messages were displayed in a smaller font than the company’s tagline or slogan 95 percent of the time.”

One struggle I faced, the ad itself from Skyy vodka that I chose to put, didn’t do the message justice I felt. More was needed I thought to promote the common theme of liquor ad promotions, or instead to put into focus and shed light on the foolish and hypocritical themes that most of the promotions have in common. This is where the clip from Southpark saved the day. The short 30-second clip perfectly captured the reality behind the liquor commercials we see all the time. Trey Stone and Matt Parker were able to put the subject matter into simplest terms of what the liquor companies actually want from their consumers, and that is more, more, more. Their clip had the alcohol being sold along with sex, women, fancy cars, and partying. The cherry on top, ending the video with a black screen and in a bland font, “Please Drink Responsibly”. The accuracy and truth were perfectly captured in this skit, showcasing and poking fun at the propaganda we see today in alcohol advertisements.

Works Cited

In Just 26 Seconds, “South Park” Nails the Hypocrisy of Alcohol Advertising. https://www.fastcompany.com/3038174/in-just-26-seconds-south-park-nails-the-hypocrisy-of-alcohol-advertising.

YouTube, YouTube, 6 Nov. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_n5nbx0Z9s. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.

YouTube, YouTube, 15 Jan. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F9GA64ll4Y. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.

“‘Drink Responsibly’ Messages in Alcohol Ads Promote Products, Not Public Health.” Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2014/drink-responsibly-messages-in-alcohol-ads-promote-products-not-public-health.