Transcendental alcohol marketing: rap music and the youth market

Abstract

Denise Herd's article, Changes in the prevalence of alcohol use in rap song lyrics, 1979–97, (Herd 2005) offers a rare examination of the new world of alcohol marketing. Herd demonstrates that marketers are operating with new rules, assumptions, boundaries and goals. Marketing is no longer limited to promoting a product during advertising breaks on television and radio programming. The marketers’ new goal is to integrate the program and the product and to remove the boundaries between entertainment and advertising. Naomi Klein, in her groundbreaking treatise, analyzes this new world of marketing (which she terms ‘branding’), where advertisers seek to embed their brands in the culture itself (Klein 1999). As Klein puts it (p. 21): The old paradigm had it that all marketing was selling a product. In the new model . . . the product always takes a back seat to the real product, the brand, and the selling of the brand acquired an extra component that can only be described as spiritual. Advertising is about hawking a product. Branding, in its truest and most advanced incarnations, is about corporate transcendence. The products that will flourish in the future will be the ones present not as ‘commodities’ but as concepts: The brand as experience, as lifestyle. The alcohol industry's assault on the rap/hip-hop music culture provides a classic illustration of Klein's thesis. As Herd documents, the relationship of the alcohol and rap music industries have become intertwined during the last decade, and the boundary between rap music, the hip-hop culture and the alcohol products being promoted has become indistinguishable. Herd's analysis of alcohol and alcohol brand references in rap music from 1979 to 1997 provides a historical record of the transformation of traditional advertising into Klein's transcendent branding. During this period, alcohol became a popular topic in rap songs, was more likely to be referred to in positive terms and more likely to mention alcohol brands. By the 1994–97 period, an astonishing 71% of songs included references to alcohol brands. This represents the culmination of the alcohol marketers’ goal—an integration of the cultural medium and the brands. The implications of these findings for public health are profound for at least two reasons. First, the cultural medium for this marketing experiment is clearly targeting young people, and African American youth in particular. Herd documents the popularity of rap/hip-hop music in youth culture and its migration from African American communities to the American mainstream. Young people are most vulnerable to alcohol problems and have the fewest defenses against these sophisticated marketing campaigns. The industry has effectively transformed a youth medium for expression into a vehicle for promoting its products. There can be little doubt that the industry is targeting young people. Brown and Williamson, a tobacco marketer, initiated a similar rap/hip-hop-orientated marketing campaign in the USA for its Kool brand (Spitzer 2004). Several state Attorneys General sued the marketers, arguing that it was an attempt to circumvent provisions in the Master Settlement Agreement that prohibit marketing that targets youth. The tobacco industry settled the lawsuit, agreeing to desist from future rap/hip-hop-orientated marketing practices. In at least this instance, alcohol manufacturers have overtaken the tobacco industry in its rush down ‘tobacco road’ and its efforts to reach youth with its marketing messages. Clearly, additional research is needed to augment Herd's research, continuing to document these new marketing strategies and assessing their impact on youth drinking behavior. Secondly, public health must be concerned that existing models for protecting young people from the harms associated with alcohol marketing are inadequate. New tools and strategies are needed to address the transformation of alcohol advertising into Klein's transcendental ‘branding’. Traditional efforts to restrict the amount of alcohol advertising, its placement and content to protect vulnerable populations cannot address the industry's integrated marketing approaches. The Attorneys’ General tobacco/hip-hop lawsuit provides a model worthy of further study.