Rules must be fair to all, plead purveyors of alcoholic drinks
Thai Beverage, which sells not only booze but non-alcoholic products like sodas and bottled water, seems to be the only player smiling after new ad rules were announced by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday.
Starting on December 3, all alcohol ads will be prohibited around the clock. However, authorities have decided to allow the broadcast of corporate-image commercials promoting culture, tourism or sport. The sponsors of these social or corporate-image spots can use their corporate name on the air, but only if it is not similar to their alcohol brands and the ads do not contain alcohol-related words such as "liquor", "brewery" or "winery". Boonrawd Brewery, brewer of Singha beer, would be left out in the cold, while Thai Beverage would be free to put its company name on the messages it sponsors. With the new rules, both Boonrawd Brewery and Thai Beverage can advertise non-alcoholic beverages around the clock using the same logo as their alcoholic beverage, namely Singha and Chang. This is unfair to other players that represent only liquors and have no non-alcoholic drinks in their product portfolio. Witawat Jayapani, president of the Advertising Association of Thailand, said last week that the association would support any regulation as long as it was fair to all players. "If any rules have been introduced to favour one or a few companies, they should be eliminated," he said. Companies with a diverse range of products and no alcohol-related words in their company name would benefit while companies that import only hard liquors, such as Riche Monde, would lose. "Many small liquor companies will drop their prices to drive sales instead," he said. A source in the alcoholic-beverage industry said players had not tried to bargain with or make requests to the authorities to force them to relax their ad ban regulation or allow any type of corporate-image commercial. "What we would like to see is measures that are transparent and fair to all players," the source said. Besides outlawing ads, authorities should seek other measures to reduce alcohol consumption, particularly increasing the excise on white liquor and beer to the same level as other special blended spirits, he said. A new excise system calculated on alcohol content, which is fair to all players, should be introduced, he added.
Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn The Nation
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