RTD Focus: Public enemy number one?

"We need concerted and horrendous action against alcopops, and the people who promote them. They are just like the cigarette companies who target their effort on recruiting new smokers, preferably new young women smokers. The alcopop effort is just to get children hooked on booze. Anyone who says that's not so is a liar. The directors of the companies involved ought to feel disgraced at what they are doing. I don't know how they can move in decent company."

Frank Dobson, then-Secretary of State for Health, (in The New Statesman - June 13, 1997)​

Remember 1997, the time when Britpop ruled, New Labour seemed quite new and England's cricketers knew their place and let the Aussies walk all over them? It was also a time of mass hysteria. Both Frank "where-is-he-now?" Dobson and the tabloid press had a new enemy and it was the alcopop.

The hysteria was so extensive it was said that Bass, owners of Hooper's Hooch, didn't have to spend a single penny on above-the-line advertising for the first six months after its launch because it was getting full page colour "advertising" in the national newspapers everyday such was the depth of the coverage.

The mania was so intense that a year previously The Portman Group had, through working with the industry and the last Tory government, unveiled a new code of practice on the naming, packaging and promotion of alcoholic drinks.

While this code applied to all categories, there is no doubting what prompted its drawing up. "It was initially a reactive and responsive measure to the enormous media, political and public outcry to alcopops," says Jean Coussins (pictured)​, chief executive of The Portman Group.

"It was the advent of RTDs that led people inside the industry and in government to realise that there was a gap in the regulatory framework and that a code of practice was needed."

From that point on a new wave of more grown-up RTDs came onto the market. The new code has stopped a great many products with cartoons and other inappropriate designs being launched. Remember Whitbread twice getting rapped by The Portman Group for having images of marijuana leaves on the packaging of products (such as Wild Brew)?

"Problem solved" the brand owners must have thought. Well, they had to think again. Eight years down the line hysteria over binge-drinking still remains and if one category gets blamed for the binge epidemic more than any other it is RTDs.

Karen Salters, marketing director at Beverage Brands - makers of WKD - is fed up with it. "The big thing we have had to face in the last few years is the spiral of negativity towards the category from the press," she says. "The fact is that RTDs are only about three per cent of the market - about the same size as cider. And yet we are somehow held accountable for a hell of a lot more than that. We are the whipping boys and an easy target."

There is no doubt she has a point. Only last month Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips wrote: "One of the main factors behind the escalation of juvenile drinking is the sale of alcopops, sweetened alcoholic drinks deliberately aimed at children and which have made alcohol as regular a part of their intake as Coke or Sprite."

When I was in my younger teens (before alcopops were on the market) I regularly used to bump into my mates in McDonalds or Burger King pouring vodka (which they had bought at the off-licence) into their extra large Coke cups. In other words, deliberately sweetening the alcohol. This is not a new phenomenon, despite what the Mail's number one femme fatale might tell you.

However, this is not enough for some critics. They believe that it is the, as they see it, deliberate targeting of younger people through six-figure marketing budgets that crosses a moral line as Simon Loftus, chairman of Adnams, explains: "The question for RTD manufacturers is 'are you really disguising the alcohol in your product into tasting something like a sweet or lolly?' It feels almost like they are trying to catch people unaware."

However, as Jean Coussins points out, people have raised these concerns before. "The problem is there is no technical or legal definition of what an RTD is. When the code was being drawn up people were saying 'you must ban all alcopops'. But when you ask them how they would define one they run into problems."

Her point is valid. Any claim that a bright blue bottled alcoholic product should be banned because it is appealing to children could be countered by someone brandishing a bottle of Blue Curacao - that is bright blue and bottled, but not a product I see the lads swigging down the park on a Saturday afternoon.

"People tried to define an RTD as anything that is a packaged alcoholic drink mixed with a soft drink," continues Jean. "But then you say what about pre-packaged gin and tonic? Anything fizzy? Well what about champagne? Anything sweet? Should we ban sherry, dessert wine or créme de menthe? What it actually narrows down to is the packaging and that is where the code came in."

So perhaps we had just better make do with what we have. A code of practice that has at times been shown to be very effective - look at the Roxxoff scenario: where an RTD was ruled to have made an association between consumption of the product and sexual success and was effectively prevented from launching.

Several RTD brandowners have enthusiastically signed up to The Portman Group solution - Diageo, Bacardi-Martini and Beverage Brands are all full members. That accounts for most of the big brands in the category - not something that could be said for all the big wine brands.

But once again we have to look at the reality of the situation. So much of this is based on stigma and perception. Wine is not considered the bingers drink - RTDs are, as Martin Hartridge, managing director of Hartridges soft drinks, explains: "We have been asked lots of times if we would go into the RTD market. However, we refused each time even though it could have been very profitable. The fact is we did not want the Hartridges name associated with anything anti-social, with a younger audience that shouldn't be in pubs."

And that is the struggle RTD brand owners will continue to face.