Liquor Makers’ Advice to Teens Is Questioned

“If you’re under 21, the soft drinks are over there.”

That’s just one of several slogans popping up on buttons, signs, stickers and posters at liquor stores and retail outlets across the nation as part of a new push against drunk driving and underage drinking by the Century Council, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization.

And at more than 3,000 campuses nationwide, this is National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week. Alcohol education lectures, programs and literature will be made available to students.

These two campaigns come just in time for Halloween, which has grown in the past several years to be not only a good time for children but also an excuse for adults to drink and party. Few would argue that promoting alcohol education is a bad thing.

Still, these sorts of efforts have been met with skepticism from some quarters because they are backed by money from alcohol producers and marketers. Critics see it as the latest effort by the liquor industry to try to mollify temperance advocates.

The Century Council was formed this year with $40 million, primarily from distillers. National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week features a “Know When to Say When” student poster competition sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, which will award $20,000 in scholarship money to 26 winners.

“These are definitely protective measures,” said Paul Gillette, a Los Angeles-based consultant and publisher of the California Beverage Hotline newsletter. “I don’t think anybody believes that it’s anything but a salvage operation.

“They may posture toward altruism, but if they’re so conscientious how come they weren’t so conscientious 10 years ago when everybody was sponsoring wet T-shirt contests at spring break? They’ve all gotten religion now that the neo-prohibitionists are breathing down their neck,” Gillette said.

The Century Council doesn’t see it that way.

The group, which has shipped 350,000 buttons, posters, stickers and signs in its “Front Lines Campaign” since the beginning of October, is committed to attacking the underage drinking problem and to reducing drunk-driving fatalities by 50% in as many cities as possible by the end of the decade.

“According to the surgeon general, two-thirds of the nearly 7 million teen-agers who drink are able to buy alcohol in stores--clearly, this is a problem that needs a strong response,” Century Council Chairman John Gavin said at a recent news conference.

In fact, the Front Lines Campaign has yet to generate any substantive criticism, said Roy Stevens, executive vice president of the Century Council. Members of Congress and even some anti-alcohol groups who have seen the materials “have all patted us on the back and said they think this is great.”

Response has been particularly strong from retailers, Stevens said.

“The retailers are really looking for answers,” he said. “They’re the ones on the firing line, saying to people, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t sell to you because you’ve had too much to drink or you’re clearly underage,’ and that’s not easy to do.”

Micky Sadoff, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said any voice contributing to alcohol education is welcome.

However, she added: “There’s a lot more that the alcohol industry can do than just posters. I support the posters. There just needs to be more behind it.”

The Century Council shares many of the same goals that MADD does but doesn’t have a track record yet, Sadoff said, noting that MADD accepts no funding from alcohol interests. “We’ve said to the Century Council ‘You’re too new yet to know if you’ll be able to do what you want to do.’ ”

Would You Buy Candy, Cards From the Pope?

Celebrities have been potent product spokespersons ever since the late 1800s when English actress Lillie Langtry endorsed Pear’s soap and Eastman Kodak featured famed explorer Adm. Robert Peary in one of its ads.

But among modern-day headline-grabbers, Bill Cosby has the highest “quality image,” while Jerry Falwell has the lowest, according to a survey of 2,000 consumers by Total Research Corp., a marketing research firm in Princeton, N.J.

“Quality perceptions are important because it is believed that brands that associate themselves with celebrities tend to take on some of the quality aura of the related celebrity,” said John Morton, senior vice president of advanced statistical research at Total Research.

Survey respondents rated 54 celebrities according to “consumer perception of their quality,” the company said.

Besides Cosby, those ranked best able to enhance a brand’s image were: Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Barbara Walters, Pope John Paul II, Clint Eastwood, Bob Hope, Paula Abdul and Richard Petty.

The bottom 10 were: Hulk Hogan, Madonna, Barry Manilow, Jesse Jackson, Billy Graham, Liz Taylor, Richard Nixon, Vanna White, Donald Trump and Falwell.

In a further twist, the study went on to link celebrities with brands that have similar images. For example, the survey determined that Streep “combines the loving, family imagery of Kodak with the intellectual sophistication of Volvo.”

A few unusual matchups resulted.

Pope John Paul II had the same kind of appeal as Hallmark, Hershey and Pepsi. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was more of a Coca-Cola man, but would also make a good pitchman for Land’s End and Newsweek.

Hugh Hefner was paired with Nyquil cold medicine, Buick and Continental Airlines, now operating under bankruptcy court protection.

Camel Account Walks to New Rival Agency

To steal an old slogan: R. J. Reynolds has walked a mile for a Camel. The Winston-Salem, N.C., company has dumped Young & Rubicam, which handled the $30-million Camel cigarette brand for two years, in favor of a new agency formed by two former Young & Rubicam employees who recently left the huge firm.

The start-up agency is Mezzina-Brown, made up of John Mezzina and Bill Brown, who had handled the Camel account for Young & Rubicam.