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Celebrity-Owned Alcohol Brands Promoted on Social Media
Gedefaw Diress Alen1,2, Megan Cook1, Dan Anderson-Luxford1
1Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.
Celebrity alcohol brand promotions on Instagram are common and often not disclosed. These posts are widely visible to underage users, highlighting a need for stricter social media marketing regulations.
Area of Science:
- Social media marketing
- Public health
- Adolescent health
Background:
- Social media platforms have disclosure policies for sponsored content.
- Celebrities owning alcohol brands may bypass these policies by promoting their own brands.
- This can lead to increased exposure of young audiences to alcohol marketing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine the prevalence of celebrities promoting their own alcohol brands on Instagram.
- To assess whether these promotional posts were disclosed as sponsored content.
- To evaluate the accessibility of such posts to underage users.
Main Methods:
- Identified 112 celebrities owning alcohol brands via Google searches.
- Analyzed 85,673 Instagram posts from these celebrities (2020-2023).
- Checked post visibility to underage users using a simulated 15-year-old account.
Main Results:
- 75% of celebrities referenced their alcohol brand in posts; 3.4% of total posts featured alcohol brands.
- Only 1.7% of alcohol-brand posts had clear sponsorship disclosures.
- 98% of sampled alcohol-brand posts were accessible to a simulated underage account.
Conclusions:
- Celebrity alcohol brand promotions on Instagram are frequent and largely undisclosed.
- These posts are readily accessible to underage individuals.
- Stricter regulations are needed to protect adolescents from alcohol marketing on social media.
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