Washington, D.C. – Industry leaders, government officials and media experts from across the country gathered recently in Washington, D.C. at the Distilled Spirits Council’s (DISCUS) Fifth Annual Best Practices Media Summit for a full-day session focusing on social media and compliance with the DISCUS Responsible Advertising Code.
“DISCUS Media Summits are the place to go for companies of all sizes and from all sectors to learn and share best practices in self-regulation,” said Janet Evans of the Federal Trade Commission.
This year’s Summit addressed the challenges and opportunities for alcohol advertising on social media, and showcased Code compliant tools available for use with social media platforms. Also featured were innovative techniques and technologies to moderate user-generated content on social media sites and to appropriately engage with brand page visitors.
“With the proliferation of new media options available to marketers today, a continuous exchange of ideas on best practices for responsible alcohol advertising placement and content is critical,” said Peter Cressy, President of the Distilled Spirits Council. “Now in its fifth year, the DISCUS Summits underscore the collective commitment by our industry to ensure that our products – beer, wine or distilled spirits — are advertised responsibly and directed to adults of legal purchase age regardless of the medium.”
There was also a session explaining DISCUS’ social media marketing guidelines, which went into effect September 30, 2011. The guidelines apply to all branded digital marketing communications and were developed jointly by DISCUS and the European Forum for Responsible Drinking, an alliance of Europe’s leading spirits companies.
“Social media has become an increasingly important marketing channel to reach adult consumers and the DISCUS digital guidelines reflect our companies’ strong commitment to extend their responsible alcohol marketing practices to these emerging media platforms,” Cressy said.
The Summit, which was held November 27, featured speakers from the Federal Trade Commission, experts in social media disciplines,and top executives from social networking sites and syndicated demographic data sources, including Facebook, Google/YouTube, Twitter, DEI Worldwide, Evidon, Nielsen, and comScore.
The distilled spirits industry’s Code of Responsible Advertising Practices has been pointed to as a model for other industries by the Federal Trade Commission, and has been commended on numerous occasions by regulators, industry watchdogs and the media. The Code Review Board issues transparent public reports summarizing complaint decisions and the advertiser’s response and posts these decisions on the DISCUS website after the conclusion of the review process before publication in the Code Reports.
To learn more about the Code of Responsible Practices for Beverage Alcohol Advertising and Marketing and the Code Review Board’s public reports, please see http://www.discus.org/responsibility/code/.