CorpComms Magazine

Drinks industry body The Portman Group is offering suppliers free interactive training in the dos and don'ts of digital drinks marketing.

Together with communications agency BD Network, the body has created an interactive training package giving fictional best and worse-case scenarios of promoting alcoholic drinks online.

The Portman Group published its guidelines on the Responsible Marketing of Alcoholic Drinks in Digital Media last year to help the industry negotiate the potential regulatory pitfalls of this new online landscape. Many of the restrictions are the same as those for traditional media, such as age limits, avoiding images of drunkenness, not associating a drink with sexual success or popularity, and not encouraging irresponsible, immoderate or 'down in one' consumption. But others are more specifically tailored to downloadable, streamed or user-generated content.

Sarah Hanratty, head of communications and external affairs at the Portman Group, said: 'We already offer fairly extensive codes and advice on digital marketing so the free training is really just an extension of that service. But this interactive approach is designed to function in the environment its providing guidance on and makes it much more interesting than just trawling through guidelines or written case-studies.'

Adam Azor, account director at BD Network, said: 'Technology moves at such a rapid pace, sometimes you can break a code without even knowing it. For example, the age limit for downloading an iPhone app is 17 whilst you have to be 18 years old to access the content legally. Anyone creating the app would need to set up a pre-access age verification stage either on the site or the app itself.

'Another example is that anyone featured in content marketing alcohol needs to be over 25. Say you set up a Facebook Group and encourage members to upload their own photos. An 18 year old wouldn't know they were breaking the rules by putting pictures of themselves drinking online. So you need those administrating the page to know what to edit.

'We've created a presentation to give alcohol promoters a clear understanding of the digital code. We wanted to bring it to life with fictional brands and content to give those marketing drinks online practical examples of how to comply with the code.'

Training is open to in-house drinks marketing teams or agencies running campaigns in the industry. Sessions will be held in London, Manchester and Edinburgh over the next three months.

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