The bill amending part 2, article 21 will enter into force on January 1, 2013. Deputies of the State Duma Igor Rudensky and Sergey Zheleznyak spoke about the complete ban on advertising of alcoholic beverages of any strength in the media. What is the threat of such a ban to the media and alcoholic beverage producers?
The new edition of the Law "On Advertising" will come into force on 23 July 2012. Advertising of any alcoholic beverages will be prohibited. This, according to Rudensky, will help prevent massive alcoholization of the population. But since almost all alcoholic beverage producers paid for advertising in advance, the transition period to stop promoting alcoholic beverages will last until January 1, 2013.
By stopping advertising altogether, alcoholic beverage manufacturers will be able to save huge amounts of money they paid to the media to promote their brand of alcohol.
The well-known brands of alcoholic beverages will be sold in the same volumes. Lack of advertising will not reduce sales. High-quality alcoholic beverages have formed a circle of consumers who do not need advertising to buy a particular brand of drink.
Alcoholic products of unknown brands will be sold in the same volume. Since the cost of alcohol in the absence of a brand is always much lower. This will attract a certain circle of buyers who do not care what brand they will use, as long as the price is acceptable.
Only the media, whose budget was based on the promotion of alcoholic beverages, will suffer from the advertising ban. According to preliminary estimates of experts, the advertising market will lose several billion rubles in profit.
Some sites only exist on alcohol advertising revenue. With a complete ban on the promotion of alcohol, they will simply burst like soap bubbles, or will be forced to register outside the Russian Federation and continue to do what they were doing before the amendments to the law "On Advertising".
Most media executives believe that they will not drink less from the lack of alcohol advertising. Advertising is, first of all, brand promotion, competition, and not the attraction of new consumers. However, narcologists are of a completely different opinion. Alcoholism in Russia has become much younger. In particular, the abuse of beer has exceeded all reasonable limits. The lack of advertising will help to significantly reduce the number of new alcoholics among young people. In addition, advertising of alcoholic products negatively affects the psyche of persons who previously abused alcohol, who found the strength and defeated the addiction, and there are several million of them in the country.
