...t hat the corporations that want a "free market" aren't ready for one.. as they are failing even in this one to produce products anyone wants.

No one drinks your swill beer because it is just that... swill! Go pick up a sixer of some magic hat or Flying Dog... or start making something to compete with Woodchuck cider... then try to do something that is actually GOOD. Not watery swill.

As for these drinks... nothing new. Nothing new at all.

What I would be more interested is the question... why do people feel the need to drink so damned much??? Could it have anything to do with the quality of their lives???

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Those bottles look more like they hold perfume/cologne than they do some kind of sweet booze.

Why are they wasting time pushing more crap - even on adults? America doesn't need a new way to get drunk. We already know how to take care of that "need." This is just more waste from big business.

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One could make the same argument about wine coolers (I date myself, I know).

Businesses have to sell stuff. Period. So they will find ways to do it, but I don't think even Anheuser-Busch has a guy who says "Mwah hahhha! I will sell booze to 8-year-olds!"

I mean, be real. If beer sales decline, just what are they supposed to do? Roll over and die? No. They are doing what any responsible business owner does--find a new product and sell the thing.

Before the flames start, I do not believe that marketing stuff to kids is right. Read it again if you don't get it. My point is that the origins of ad campaigns are not so linear.

There is a whole culture of hip, youthful-looking stuff that Anheuser-Busch is trying to capture, and the 21-29 market is one they have a stack of focused marketers to target. That may be more of the strategy than marketing specifically to underage drinkers -- in fact, I'd call the marketing director and ask to talk to the people that came up with this, as it might offer some insights.

In one sense, blaming them for the habits of 19-year-olds in colleges is simply silly. I drank a lot in college too, and it wasn't because of anything Anheuser-Busch had to say. It's a lot more complicated than that -- something that advertisers have known for at least a generation and used to immense profits.

You think kids would want this stuff if their parents didn't tell them it was forbidden? Hell no. (South Park did a brilliant satire of this with the Chin-Pokemon episode). Everytime someone screams about "they are marketing to kids" every kid on the block wants whatever it is. In terms of Judo, the people concerned would be getting thrown and pinned every damn time.

Again, you can't endorse excessive drinking, anymore than you can endorse smoking or drug use. (Tell me, what would the reaction be to legalized marijuana marketing? After all, smoking anything is pretty unhealthy, though I grant I'd rather be in a room with a bunch of stoners than drunk college kids).

But everytime I see somebody rant about ads geared to kids, I sigh and think that the ad companies understand their marketing strategy a lot better than those that would fight it.

Let me give an example: car ads often seem geared to a younger market than one would expect. Why? Because even though Dodge or Chevy knows that 16-year-olds can't buy a car, they know that they will be able to do so years down the road. That is what they want.

The same is true of many products-- the models look younger, for example, because they want older people to feel younger buying and younger people to fix the brand in their minds and turn to it when they can buy something. Not many ads reach this adman's nirvana, but they all shoot for it. (See the Bluefly.com ads for an example-- Bluefly's market is actually women in their 30s and early 40s).

None of this is to endorse this behavior (again, flamers, read this twice please). But given the kind of society we live in, ranting about a single ad campaign doesn't seem to address any of that and at best seems to feed into what every marketer wants -- attention. Think of it -- picture an offensive ad campaign, and ask yourself how many brands would you otherwise forget if they didn't do that?

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Such things as "alcopops" have been for sale for years in Britian and in the USA. This has been going on for years and, yes, it is a concern due to their 'sweetness' makes it more likely than younger people, weaned on sugar, will drink them. Prior to the 'alcopop' phenomena, of course, we had the 'wine cooler' phase and, for states in the US that prohibited stronger alcohol, even 'beer malt' wine coolers. And, lest we not forget, the cross-over phenomena of fortified wines (from skid row bums to suburbian youth) of 'Cisco', 'Maddog', and, more mainstream for a cheap highschool drunk, the standby 'Strawberry Hill' brand wine products.

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