All I want for Christmas is booze?

Now that January is here, think back to your festive celebrations. While watching TV, you might have been frustrated by the endless adverts – but how often did you notice alcohol featured in them?

Alcohol harm is a growing public health priority. In England, in 2022 there were 10,048 deaths related to alcohol use, an increase of 33 per cent since before the Covid pandemic (and these figures are likely to be an underestimate), as well as 342,000 hospital admissions. In the UK, there are approximately 602,391 dependent drinkers, with only 18 per cent receiving treatment. A quarter of adults regularly drink over the recommended guidelines, and the World Health Organisation has recently declared that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption regardless of alcohol type, every drink increases your chance of harm. All of this harm comes in at a cost of approximately £27.4 billion to the UK economy annually. 

To maintain profits, the alcohol industry needs to recruit its future drinkers. To do this, the industry uses marketing techniques, and this works well. Exposure to alcohol adverts or other audio-visual content (AVC) in the media is associated with alcohol initiation and subsequent use by adolescents and adults, especially those with or at risk of an alcohol use disorder. A combination of factors including social learning, social norms around alcohol use, and marketing content being seen as a cue to drink, results in alcohol marketing being highly effective. If marketing didn't work, the alcohol industry would not spend money on it!

Christmas has always been a time of excess – even before Christmas existed, the midwinter festival of Saturnalia featured alcohol consumption! In modern times, the alcohol industry has capitalised on the association between Christmas and alcohol consumption, leading to Christmas-based advertising. This is alongside the social norms of drinking at Christmas – from office Christmas parties to the traditional raising a toast to good health at Christmas, alcohol is everywhere, which may make Christmas a hard time for those in recovery or at risk of an alcohol use disorder.

Christmas 2022

In 2022, we decided to explore the amount of alcohol marketing on TV at this time of year. Over five days (1 Dec – 5 Dec), we recorded all adverts shown on ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 in the peak family viewing times of 6pm -10pm. We recorded a total of 2063 adverts and found only 86 (4 per cent) for alcohol, the most common was for Guinness, seen 14 times. Overall alcohol adverts were relatively rare, however, while exploring this data, we noticed there was a lot of alcohol content being shown in supermarket adverts, and these were being shown a lot - we decided to look a little deeper. 

We conducted a content analysis of adverts from the seven main supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Asda, Aldi, Lidl, and M&S food), splitting each advert into 10-second intervals and recording whether we saw any alcohol and what this was. We found that alcohol content was common in supermarket Christmas adverts, occurring in 28 per cent of intervals, concluding that a large amount of alcohol being repeatedly shown during the festive period could be normalising alcohol use with the image of an idealised Christmas. We published our findings (Barker et al., 2023) and contacted the supermarkets to let them know about our findings and with a plea to show less in the 2023 Christmas adverts. 

Last Christmas (I gave you my heart…)

We repeated our methods of exploring alcohol content in supermarket Christmas adverts in 2023 and found that alcohol content in adverts had fallen to 17 per cent of intervals. We published our updated results as a blog post with the Institute of Alcohol Studies. We were very excited, and while supermarkets did not want to comment, we saw a reduction in the amount of content being a great thing for those who may struggle at this time of year. 

Christmas 2024

This year we have repeated our methods to assess whether the amount of content shown is continuing to fall. We found that only 15 per cent of intervals this year have shown alcohol content, which is a year-on-year decrease, with the amount halving since we first looked at this. 
 

Not only had the amount of content dropped but the portrayal of alcohol in adverts has changed throughout this period. In 2023, only Lidl showed a Christmas dinner table with no alcohol, whereas in 2024, four adverts showed a Christmas dinner table with no alcohol (Sainsburys, Lidl, Morrisons, & Marks and Spencer).

Examples of content seen this year come from bottles on tables in other adverts, Christmas puddings being set alight (and nearly roasting Kevin the Carrot!), a gingerbread house pub in the Tesco advert, a Gnome-pun on a pub sign in the Asda advert, and the Tesco doorstep delivery containing bottles of wine (seen four years in a row now). There were only three intervals containing implied alcohol use, a glass of wine on a table in the Aldi advert, partygoers holding glasses of wine in the M&S advert and a glass of wine on a Christmas dinner table in the Tesco advert. This is a huge change from 2022!

On the nice list

The reduction in the amount of content shown by the supermarkets over time will help to normalise a Christmas where alcohol does not need to be front and centre for people to have a good time – this will help make Christmas a little bit easier for people wanting to cut down or who may be in recovery. We have contacted the supermarkets, and while they did not wish to comment (they need to sell alcohol at the end of the day!), we think the responsible stance being taken is a great thing. 

Barker, A. B., Thorley, R., & Murray, R. L. (2023). Have yourself a 'merry' little Christmas: Alcohol adverts and alcohol content within adverts in the run-up to Christmas. Public Health in Practice, 6, 100390. 

This is our original article looking at Alcohol adverts and content in supermarket adverts in the run-up to Christmas 2022.