Aliya Sternstein: A broader call of responsibility

When Elliot dropped a trail of Reese's Pieces behind for E.T. 20 years ago, he left a dangerous trail for alcohol advertisers to follow. Product placement has soared to extraterrestrial levels. And Mothers Against Drunk Driving is not too pleased.

First, the grassroots group scolded NBC for what would have been a primetime Smirnoff brand campaign. Then last week, the moms told Congress to set stricter guidelines for all alcohol advertising -- not just the hard stuff, but wine, beer and those Mike's Hard malternatives -- during programming watched by the under 21 crowd. They do not want babysitters sipping slurpees to wander over to the liquor cabinet.

But what about subliminal ads? According to the MADD Web site, a 1998 Office of National Drug Control Policy study observed top-rated network TV series and caught alcohol consumption in 71 percent of the episodes, including 65 percent of the programs teens tuned into. Only one percent showed anybody passing up a drink.

Product placement is trendier than breath mints these days. In October, Forbes wrote that, "Facing budget constraints and an increasingly fragmented audience, marketers are seeking more targeted and cost-effective ways to reach consumers than traditional advertising. Increasingly that has come to mean creating or funding entertainment where they can embed products in the storyline or performance." (Translation: E.T. phone home on your Nokia).

And then you have TiVo and the economic downturn erasing commercial opportunity. If liquor cannot make it in television commercials, it's going to audition for television series and movies.

All the fuss about hard alcohol commercials reaching kids will not protect those kids from Absolute TV. If this country is really serious about messages of moderation, it should stop plugging and chugging. Also consider that family environment, genetics and peer pressure contribute more to alcohol abuse than advertising. However, pop culture does play its part. Beer and wine product placement is genius marketing but not when geared at teens.

MADD parents are not seeing things.

I was curious as to what messages are actually out there, so I did some investigative reporting. Turned on NBC at 10:26 p.m. Saturday night (prime babysitting time) and saw Johnny Walker Black Label in the forefront of the screen, a little to the right of "Coach" Craig T. Nelson on The District.

But unless they're channel flipping, most teenagers are not watching The District on a Saturday night.

I consulted a 17-year-old girl closer to the issue. Dissing The District, she took me to Ally McBeal, where hot lawyers unwind every night at the local bar. Then she mentioned the MTV spring break footage, where drinking is associated more with hilarity than hangovers. And then she tells me that Drew Carey runs a side business in beer distribution.

It's easy to understand how Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard backed MADD at a press conference last week: "With this constant daily exposure to alcohol marketing, it's no wonder that over 10 million kids under the age of 21 consume alcohol, and that the average age at which children start to drink is now just 13 years old."

Yesterday, Harvard University released a study saying, disturbingly, nothing is new: binge drinking continues on college campuses, despite awareness and efforts to reduce it. Of the more than 10,000 full-time students questioned, 44 percent were binge drinkers -- a number not much different from previous years.

How about sending kids away to college with pictures of Coyote Ugly instead? The hot barmaids turn down alcohol in favor of turning it up on top of the bar and not falling off.

Children, preteens and especially high schoolers are impressionable. Advertisers know this. They also know that the offspring of the information age eat up whatever images and words are offered -- online, on TV or on the big screen.

So, remove the bottle, put down the glass and serve Pepsi sometimes. We can help too. Quakers headed to Madison Avenue: do not pour alcohol into entertainment content when kids and teens are watching. Elliot and E.T. did not like the stuff too much, anyway.

Aliya Sternstein is a senior Psychology major from Potomac, Md.

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