Page 199 - The Intentional Parent

memorabilia. I asked this girl if she thought about drinking the vodka or if she just liked collecting the ads. Her response was, "I think it would be really cool to drink the vodka, but I know I'm too young to get my hands on it. When I'm a little older I know that this is the only brand of vodka I'll drink." When I asked her if she thought she would wait until she was twenty-one before she drank it, she just laughed and said, "Nobody waits until they are legal drinking age before they drink." When I pressed her and asked how old she thought she would be before she took her first drink, she giggled and said, "It's not like I’ve never had a drink. I took my first drink last year. It's just that I'll probably be fifteen or sixteen before I own my first bottle.”
This conversation was a real eye-opener for me. At eleven years old this girl had already sampled the product, identified with it, and had very strong perceptions of how she would like to associate with it. These are the very kinds of reactions advertisers stay up all night praying for. People always ask me whether I think these ads were designed to attract children to the market. My opinion on this is that these ads are not actually specifically designed for children this young. I do believe, though, that they are designed to attract college kids—"new" drinkers—who are still underage, and I think there is a side effect in that the ads attract even younger kids than the advertisers intended. I don't believe advertisers and liquor companies are so evil that they are designing their ads to pull in eleven-year-old children. On the other hand, I think that by now they are fully aware that children are very attracted by the ads, and I don't see them doing anything about that.
One way to sensitize your child to the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse is to review newspaper clippings that recount, in detail, alcohol-related car accidents. Ask your child to attend an
The Intentional Parent by Peter J. Favaro, Ph.D. 199