Summary
Much of the confrontational efforts in the last four decades regarding the reduction of alcohol consumption have focused on the advertising of alcohol beverages. Critics of alcohol beverage advertising argue that the amount and substance of the alcohol advertising results in increased consumption of those beverages. A good deal of the research that supports this viewpoint utilises either cross-sectional data or controlled experiments, and identifies advertising as one of the possible factors influencing alcohol consumption. Using time-series analyses, this manuscript examines the relationship between distilled spirits advertising expenditures and consumption in the US from 1971 to 2008 on an aggregate and brand level. This four-decade period is especially interesting because it includes a decade in which the spirits industry ended a voluntary ban of advertising on electronic media.

Summary
This presentation explores the emergence of the middle class consumer in Russia following the development of capitalistic consumerism in the country. The findings presented are based on the results of qualitative research undertaken in the alcoholic spirit drinks market, using focus groups, in-home interviews and self-ethnographic tasks. The middle class consumer is between 20 and 35 years, educated and have not known a time out of work. Their characteristics include individualism, realistic optimism, a desire for more, true consumerism and the need to balance both "personal" and "social" worlds. Brands are now fully engaged in the middle class and attitudes to brands are balanced between opposing views in Russia. The paper also focuses on the perceived benefits of alcohol to the middle class, which has taken on emotional as well as functional attributes.

Summary
Influenced by behavioural economics and related psychological theories, this paper, from BrainJuicer, a UK market research agency, describes a new behavioural model that identifies some of the influences on our behaviour that the research industry regularly overlooks. The paper shows how ideas from the behavioural sciences have been used to develop a new mass ethnographic approach – The Behavioural Detectives – and describes how this might be applied to understand the factors that lead to irresponsible drinking in the UK.

Summary
This paper describes the many human biases identified by behavioural economics and unveils a new mass ethnographic approach – the behavioural detectives – that has been borne out of BrainJuicer’s understanding of behavioural economics. Referencing a case study on the context of irresponsible drinking, this paper shows how this approach can provide an indispensible framework for observation that can enrich our understanding of, and better explain, predict and influence human behaviour.

Summary
Recession is not the time to trim brand portfolios, but to expand them, to take advantage of changing consumer behaviours. In the spirits sector, the reinvention of Plymouth gin as a premium product is an instructive example. Each brand in a portfolio should be positioned to take on competitor brands in such a way as to maximise the brand equity of the whole. Diageo's Popov vodka brand made no money but strengthened the position of stablemate Smirnoff. In a recession, every large firm should take the opportunity to revise the brand and portfolio positioning statements to ensure equities are maximised.

Summary
Alcoholic drinks marketers face a number of challenges when marketing brands across Southeast Asia, including complex demographics, different religions and contrasting political and regulatory regimes. Despite this, opportunities for rapid growth have attracted regional and international operators to invest heavily in the region. This article tracks the latest developments (including market size and growth forecasts to 2015 for Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam) and discusses consumer, social and brand marketing trends within the beer and spirits/liquor sectors. Brand strategies are generally adapted to local markets, reflecting the differences across the region, although campaigns that align with international soccer stars can offer an effective pan-regional approach. This is illustrated by a multi-market campaign case study for Singapore's Tiger Beer.

Summary
This paper provides an overview of the global alcoholic beverages industry. The paper gives a snapshot summary, with additional sections on the industry's development, organisation and structure, current conditions and its leading companies and countries. It contains a list of further information sources and reading.

Summary
The article describes Diageo’s system for evaluating marketing effectiveness for all its products worldwide. There are three basic principles: simplicity, a pragmatic approach, and focusing on getting the inputs right. Input is the focus rather than output because the aim is not so much to learn how something worked as to improve it in the future. Diageo avoids buying into proprietary techniques tying it to any supplier, with two exceptions: a global segmentation study, and pretesting which requires norms. Approaches to estimating payback vary between harder and softer measures, because of differences between brands and markets in the level of information obtainable (discussed). Diageo’s marketing capability programme, `The Diageo Way of Brand Building’, is internally developed and taught across all countries; it comprises a set of tools that are easy to understand and have practical application; it has dedicated senior resource. Its key philosophy is to create simple and practical outputs that give direction.

Summary
The article describes how Diageo manages global brand marketing. The 1990s trend to look for single global solutions changed after the millennium, as consumers began to rebel against globalisation; the trend swung towards `thinking local’, but this can lead to complexity and fragmentation. The optimum is in the middle: targeting at the local level while harnessing the power of a global brand with a big, flexible and motivating brand idea. Some drink brands have managed this: Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Bailey’s, Malibu. It requires a strong common company culture, organisational structure, planning tools and language, plus communications partners who can work at local level and understand consumers locally. How Diageo achieves this combination in its own global brand management system and its agency partnerships is explained. Powerful positioning is achieved for global brands through identifying and using strongly held and universal consumer values: six basic motivations have been found across 25 countries in the drinks market. A universal emotional expression of the core values is found and developed creatively: the idea must be `great’, not merely good enough. Then local expressions must be continuously developed and refined. Johnnie Walker and Malibu are used to illustrate how these principles have worked.

Summary
James Aitchison reports from day one of WARC's Monitoring Advertising Performance Conference 2009. Morning presentations include Diageo's global approach to communications planning and development, Mark Earls' notion of "herd" to explain human behaviour and Byron Sharp of Australia's Ehrenberg-Bass Institute on the importance of reach over frequency when planning television - a medium he maintains is as important as ever. The second half of the day covers a City briefing from Investec analyst Martin Deboo on the investment world's view of marketing and a series of sessions on measuring the implicit and emotional effects of communication.