East Bay Newspapers/Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Beer ads broken down by media specialist for BHS underclassmen

BARRINGTON - In one commercial, aliens seemingly pulled straight from the Star Wars catalogue repeatedly spew a now infamous banal catchphrase. In another, a dog latches onto the crotch of a surprised yuppie, who emits a high-pitched squeal.

If you think that only a juvenile mind would respond to this type of slapstick, you’d be thinking just like the advertisers who created it, said Vermont-based media specialist Rob Williams. But they’re not selling video games or hot pockets; they’re working for Budweiser, and they’re selling alcohol.

Last Friday morning, Mr. Williams talked to Barrington High School students about how beer companies like Budweiser have made a science out of targeting underage television viewers with aliens, dogs and, most famously, talking frogs. The beer industry spends about $5 billion on advertising each year “desperately trying to get your attention,” he told the assembly of freshmen and sophomores.

Mr. Williams’s appearance was thanks to the Barrington Adult Youth (BAY) Team, formerly known as the Substance Abuse Task Force, a local organization that has increasingly sought to find new ways to educate teenagers about the dangers of drinking.

“Although [the alcohol industry] tries to maintain that it doesn’t market to teenagers, it does,” said BAY Team coordinator Kathleen Sullivan.

During a nationwide television event like the Super Bowl, a 30-second beer ad in which aliens shout “waaazzaaap” may pass unnoticed amid the spectacle and pageantry. But it allegedly gets results: According to Mr. Williams, a recent survey revealed that 8-year-olds were more familiar with the Budweiser frogs than more traditional mascots like Tony the Tiger and Smokey the Bear.

Budweiser’s intentions are not so much to get teenagers to start drinking, he explained, though that has been a consistent side effect, judging from a Columbia University study that showed that 17.5 percent of all alcohol consumers are under the age of 21. According to Mr. Williams, beer companies simply want to instill a brand loyalty early on that will influence a viewer’s purchase when he or she does start buying alcohol.

Reaching the audience

In addition to a typically sophomoric brand of humor, beer advertisers employ more subtle techniques to entice underage viewers, Mr. Williams said.

Exhibiting random clips that appeared during recent Super Bowls, he attempted to point out how the ads promoted associations that most underage drinkers would understand.

For example, in many Budweiser ads, Mr. Williams observed, the theme often centers on concealing beer, either from greedy friends or a disapproving wife. In reality, however, Mr. Williams suggested that it may be two different groups — underage kids and alcoholics — who would relate more with secretive drinking.

In other ads, actors who at first appear to be of legal age are cast in the role of the rambunctious teenager, Mr. Williams said. For example, in an ad in which an adult man has installed a secret rotating wall to hide his ample beer stock, four younger looking males excitedly collect the bottles in the next apartment when the fridge “magically” appears. At the end of the spot, the four men prostrate themselves before the wall chanting “magic fridge,” which Mr. Williams claimed is how Budweiser wants actual underage viewers to respond to their product.

A sampling from the audience appeared to prove Mr. Williams’s point; Many students laughed at the punchlines of the featured commercials, and a smattering of girls let loose some “aws” when a particularly shabby-looking dog appeared in one ad. But he claimed he was not there to contest the entertainment or effectiveness of the ads. Mr. Williams said it wasn’t even his intention to tell kids how to think about alcohol.

“All I hope to do is give them some questions and some information to think about,” he said. “To get them to think about how the system works. The alcohol industry routinely denies it, but I think if you look at the messages being sent and where they’re placed in magazines and television, it’s pretty clear that of course they’re targeting kids.”

A teacher at Champlain College in Vermont, Mr. Williams said his interest in the connection between media and public health led him to the “rich topic” of beer ads. For 10 years, he has spoken to students across the country about the subject.

After the presentation ended Friday morning, students filtered out of the auditorium, many discussing the ads they now saw in a different light.

“It was a pretty good presentation,” said sophomore Josh Zawatsky.

Budweiser responds

According to Anheuser-Busch Vice President of Consumer Affairs John Kaestner, Budweiser ads are not only not geared to underage viewers, but they don’t even reach them: According to his statistics, more than 82 percent of Super Bowl viewers were over the age of 21 this past year.

“These [commercials] are just fun, almost ridiculous type things,” he said. “Just because you’re 21, you’ve lost your sense of humor? Adults love this kind of humor.”

Mr. Kaestner added that he didn’t see “kids going out and buying Aflac insurance” after seeing the Aflac duck ads, which he contended also showed during sporting events.

More importantly, he said, advertising had less to do with underage drinking and brand loyalty than people think. “That’s a feel good gesture,” he said of targeting beer advertising.

“Kids will drink whatever they can get their hands on,” he continued. “We can turn off half the TVs in the U.S., and it won’t affect one iota the occurrence of underage drinking.”

The more important cause, he said, was targeting underage drinking where it mattered: Getting kids, parents, law enforcement officials, retailers and even beer companies working together to keep kids away from alcohol. According to Mr. Kaestner, some statistics show that underage drinking has actually decreased in the past few decades.

He also said that the Super Bowl ads may present a good opportunity to parents to talk to their kids about alcohol.

“Take the moment to say, these ads are directed at adults,” Mr. Kaestner said. “This is something I’ve done with my own kids over the years.”

This year’s ads

This Sunday’s Super Bowl beer ads featured dogs, gorillas, and slapstick, all elements that media specialist Rob Williams contends are used to target younger viewers.

* Budweiser: In one ad, a white dog roams through the streets, stopping to look longingly as a dalmation sits on a carriage leading a parade. Just then, a car goes by, splashing mud that leaves the dog with black spots. The dog then jumps next to the dalmation on the carriage to join in the revelry.

* Bud Light: In one of the first ads during the game, two men play rock paper scissors to claim the last Bud Light, ending in one man throwing an actual rock at the other. Later on, another commercial featured two gorillas at a zoo plotting to steal a Bud Light shipment until one becomes districted by a woman taking his photo.

By Scott O’Connell

soconnell@eastbaynewspapers.com

Copyright © 2003, The East Bay Newspapers

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this first appeared in “Vermont Commons” newspaper.

Free Vermont Media

By Rob Williams

Do you dream of a free Vermont? So do we, and the stories told in the media we consume can help us re-imagine what an independent Vermont might look like. Vermont Commons readers/subscribers are vociferous media hounds. We like books. We enjoy films. (And if you haven’t yet seen “Syriana,” “Who Killed The Electric Car,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” or “V for Vendetta,” all four are now out on DVD. Each one, in its own way, makes a compelling case for secession and economic re-localization.) Heck, we even play video games. If someone out there wants to design us a Sim-City-like piece of software that helps us imagine how Vermont independence might play out (positively, we hope – optimists-are-us here), we’re all ears. Starting with this issue, we’ll be regularly serving up our favorite multimedia resources for a free Vermont. Here’s what’s been on my night table of late.

Isn’t secession a “racist plot”? Didn’t Americans already fight a “civil war” to “free the slaves” and “preserve the Union?” Only Americans who learn their history from Ken Burns PBS documentaries, the History Channel, and corporate textbook companies could believe such a thing. Which is to say – most of us accept these statements as fact without question.

The reality, of course, is that secession has been a widely practiced political tool for people throughout the centuries, and Americans, after founding the new U.S. Republic on secessionist principles (read Jefferson’s 1776 “Declaration of Independence”) gave secession legs by enshrining it in both the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. I know – we never learn any of this in school or from the T.V. Re-educating ourselves about our own history takes time and effort.

Both Northerners (New Englanders seriously considered secession from the United States no fewer than six times before 1860) and Southerners embraced secession as a viable political option during the first seventy years of this nation’s history, until Republican Party co-founder, corporate railroad lawyer, and minority president Abraham Lincoln prosecuted an unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral war to keep the southern states in the Union (1961-1865). In the process, of course, Honest Abe re-invented our country as a single unitary state/empire (“The United States IS a nation,” rather than the antebellum “the United States ARE a nation), and made it a happy and prosperous place for giant multinational corporations (the railroads, for starters, the first billion dollar corporate entities in world history), consolidated private banking interests, and sponsors of massive tax-sponsored subsidies and “internal improvements.”

No one tells this story better than Loyola College economist Thomas J. DiLorenzo, first in The Real Lincoln (reviewed in our May 2005 issue – available online) and now in Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Suppose To Know About Honest Abe (New York: Crown Forum, 2006). While the book is lean, clocking in at under 200 pages, you’ll learn more about the real Abraham Lincoln than you ever have before. Guaranteed.

Another new book worth a look is Sean Scallon’s Beating the Powers that Be: Independent Political Movements and Parties of the Upper Midwest and Their Relevance for Third Parties of Today. (Baltimore: Public America, 2005). A mouthful, I know, that subtitle, but Scallon writes in clear narrative prose, explaining how successful non-major parties – the Non-Partisan League of North Dakota, the Farm-Labor Party of Minnesota, and the Progressives of Wisconsin – helped shape and re-shape regional politics in the United States. Makes me wonder if the Second Vermont Republic might not consider fielding candidates for statewide office here in Vermont, once we get a bit more organized.

To get more provocative for a moment, most folks I know who dismiss citizens advocating “9/11 Truth” as “conspiracy theorists” have rarely bothered, it turns out, to closely examine the evidence surrounding the 9/11 attacks. While there have been dozens of books written about 9/11 Truth – good, bad, and otherwise - Canadian journalist Barry Zwicker’s Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11 (Canada: New Society Publishers, 2006) is the most accessible 9/11 Truth work I’ve read to date. While Zwicker focuses on reviewing the corporate/mainstream “news” media’s complicity in failing to mount a sustained systematic investigation of the evidence surrounding the 9/11 attacks, he does a fine job of summarizing the case for 9/11 Truth. He also thoughtfully lambastes Leftist intellectuals and “gatekeepers” who refuse to take a good hard look at the case for U.S. government/intelligence complicity. His chapter critiquing Noam Chomsky alone is worth the price of admission.

On the food front, I just finished Vermont author Linda Faillace’s remarkable Mad Sheep: The True Story behind the USDA’s War On A Family Farm (White River Junction: Chelsea Green, 2005). Reading about how the federal USDA made legal, political and economic war on the Faillace family’s sheep farm, a struggle that went on for years, is incredibly sobering, though Faillace writes with optimism, personality and heart. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History in Four Meals, Michael Pollan’s latest book (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), made the rounds this past summer and fall in our central Vermont community, though I’ve just finished only recently. If ever there was a thoughtful, reasoned, thorough case for local eating whenever possible, this is it.

In a nod to two Vermont authors, I just recently read and can recommend two small but powerful books for their compressed thoughtfulness. Peter Forbes’ What Is A Whole Community? A Letter To Those Who Care For and Restore the Land (Fayston: Center for Whole Communities, 2006) is a beautifully-rendered love letter to land and people, while Peggy Sapphire’s A Possible Explanation (Virginia: Partisan Press, 2006) explores life’s often-painful journey through gritty and graceful poetry. Two slim volumes you’ll visit and revisit.

And finally, I just experienced the side-splittingly funny Sky Maul: Happy Crap You Can Buy From A Plane (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2006). And it IS an experience. You know the real Sky-Mall catalogs, the ones that hawk those absurd-but-tantalizing products you suddenly think you need while flying at 30,000 feet, until your conscious and rational brain kicks in? (Hey look! Self-cleaning golf ball holders!…Wait a minute, I haven’t played golf in years, but even if I did, I can clean my own damn dimples).

Well, feast your eyes on the “Reality-Canceling Headphone,” the “Crack Pipe Chess Set,” the “Adultery Detector,” the “Llamacycle,” some “Pepper Self-Spray,” and other insanely funny parodied products – complete with visuals - that will make you laugh out loud. The comedy troupe Kasper Hauser, who produced this work of genius, have made guffawing more fun than ever. And a little laughter goes a long way in these interesting times.

That’s what’s been on my night table, dreaming of an independent Vermont.

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this first appeared in “Vermont Commons” newspaper.

Vermont Vox Populi:
A Conversation with “Farmer’s Diner” Owner” Tod Murphy

Discover more about the Farmer’s Diner at www.farmersdiner.com

Q. When most of us hear the word “diner,” we may be reminded of our favorite local Ma and Pa “greasy spoon” joint. Explain the radical concept – serving food mostly acquired from within a 100 mile radius - behind your notion of a “Farmer’s Diner.”

A. Gee, I wouldn’t call what we do here at the Farmer’s Diner “radical.” Given the popularity of the restaurant with so many people from various political and social backgrounds, the restaurant seems pretty mainstream, in terms of what people say they value when given the chance to express themselves. Things like great-tasting food that comes from real farmers and folks who live nearby.

Q. I hear you, but your business model is “radical” in the sense that it gets to the “root causes” behind the problems associated with a global corporate/industrial food model where the average piece of food in the United States travels 1200 miles to reach our plates.

A. Our goal of spending 70 cents of every food dollar within 50-75 miles is radical for a business in a global economy where greed – a.k.a. maximizing profit and externalizing costs – is commonplace. But to regular citizens, I don’t think we are radical. Great tasting food and a good cause, but not radical.

Q. How did you first come up with the idea for the “Farmer’s Diner?”

A. Oh, I talk about a caffeine-induced epiphany. There is the logical, western, tortured-by-empiricism answer that says I rationally was thinking about how to move all the great food on the farms into the community in a way that was approachable for all types of citizens and, by process of elimination, came up with the idea for a diner. There is also the answer that LIFE wants this type of business, that the way humans have been doing business in the past has been destructive, so we’re trying to bring about businesses and societies that are about ways of creating better health and stronger local relationships. Our culture places great value on the idea of the individual, who conquers in some heroic way – a flash of brilliant insight, an achievement of great physical prowess. However, most of what is required to create a world of health and connection comes from dogged persistence and integrity, values that are not canonized in our cynical culture.

Q. I ate at the old Farmer’s Diner in Barre many times, and really enjoyed it. Why the move to Quechee?

A. Farmer’s Diner has been a process, a series of iterations working towards the goal of being a restaurant that is financially sustainable, as well as ecologically, culturally, and agriculturally sustainable. There was and is a great deal of skepticism about the viability of the model of purchasing local food and serving it at what Wendell Berry calls “democratically priced” levels. So, we started small to test out much of the model and learn what we needed to know without incurring a great deal of debt. Barre was a 50-seat diner with a tiny kitchen. Given many of the regulatory issues and other costs of doing business, a small family-priced restaurant is difficult to operate at a profit, particularly given the intensity of labor needed to manage local food in the kitchen. So, we decided to close Barre once we learned as much as we could there, and move to a location that was larger – 120 seats – so we could generate greater cash flow to cover the management expenses.

Q. How has business been in the new location?

A. We’ve been busy for the first two months working out the kinks, being swamped by tourists for foliage, and then spent November catching our breaths and finishing up the missing details from pre-opening. Now, we are starting to build our business with the local community, putting together author reading events, going to chamber of commerce functions, doing catering for office meetings, those types of things.

Q. What are some of the new opportunities and challenges on the horizon for you?

A. We want to “let the paint dry” at Quechee and learn what we still have to learn. This restaurant requires a greater volume of all the products we use, and this has caused some new problems to solve in terms of the adequacy of supply dairy as one example. Because we opened at the end of the summer, we scrambled to find enough local produce – so we are putting together a meeting with farmers to plan out production for next year. We started making our own pickles, and realized that, given the volume of pickles we go through, we are likely going to have to put together an acre or so of pickling/cuke production. So, we are focused on nailing down the operational aspects of Quechee, building the supply chain, and learning more of the details about how this business model works at a low retail price point.

Q. Can your “pilot project” help point the way for Vermont becoming a more independent and sustainable place to live in this new century?

A. Wow. That sounds pretty big. I’ve certainly learned a great deal about what is required and what is possible for a robust independent food economy for Vermont. Wendell Berry has outlined the principles for a thriving local economy. Step one is meet your own needs to the maximum degree from your own resources. As every politician has repeatedly pointed out, Vermont has many great resources on the food economy front, but the “talk-to-do ratio” for most public institutions needs improving. We know that Vermont can certainly produce all of its own dairy needs and then ship the excess to regional market. We could do the same for grains, legumes, storage vegetables, fresh and canned vegetables and proteins (both meat and soy-based). What is required are the infrastructure industries – like Vermont Butter and Cheese, the Soy Project up in Hardwick, Vermont Smoke & Cure in Barre, PT Farms Meat Processing in St. Johnsbury, Vermont Mystic Pies – these are the non-farm infrastructure pieces that have to be encouraged and supported by state government, citizens, and other businesses within the state.

There is a great support system that has been put together by non-profits like Northeast Organic Farmers Association (NOFA) and the colleges in Vermont to do the transfer of knowledge between farmers.

The big issues are infrastructure, land costs, and availability, the cost of capital, and most of all, where are we going to find the farmers? The idea of the family farm as a business model(farm is passed on through several generations) is not feasible, given the current political and economic climate. Folks don’t want to say that or believe it, but that is the lesson of the past one hundred years – that the family farm is dead.

It seems that the two models of farming going forward are, first, the “second career farmer,” somebody who has had a professional career and decided to leave that to begin farming. The other model that seems to have legs is the one where a group of people come together around a piece of land and agree to share the financial burdens and risks as well as the labor and management risks – like the Cobb Hill “intentional” community in Hartland, for example, or Amish communities.

So, the Farmer’s Diner has thrown itself into this fray by pulling together disparate pieces of a local food system. What we have learned is hard to put into a few bullet points. A Wall Street friend has said that our great ability is our being able to talk and operate with a full understanding of farm production issues, then to move on from there to the full understanding of economic and market issues. Vermont’s agricultural dilemmas are only going to be solved by working from farm to customer with a full understanding of all the business that goes on in between. I hope the governor will look at appointing someone to the Secretary of Agriculture position who has actually has a farm background, a finance background, and an economic development background.

I’m afraid, though, that the person who would be qualified to produce great results for Vermont from the Ag Secretary’s office would rattle too many cages for any governor who wants smooth seas and re-election.

Q. Do you think the state of Vermont should become its own independent republic, as it was from 1777-1791?

A. I think this is a great question as a starter to think about how we live currently versus how we want to live. Here’s what I think is really behind that question. The national culture – socially, economically, politically – is unsatisfying. It doesn’t call on us as citizens to some type of life that is greater than our own lusts, greed, and individual fulfillment. It is a culture that is destructive, divisive, and complex beyond our ability to fathom.

What we want of a place as humans, as citizens, is to live with a culture that is healthy – economically, emotionally, physically. We can measure some of those things – survival rates for babies, alcohol and drug use, size of people’s paycheck, cleanliness in drinking water – but some of the foundation stones of a healthy culture are harder to measure.

The Vermont independence question, I believe, has behind it these concerns and frustrations. The public discussion I have heard has, at times, sounded like a bit of a fairy tale, that somehow by leaving the Union, we would be free from the oligarchies that run the United States, we would be free from the politics of Washington. The fairy tale in this is the belief that the problem is out there beyond us and if we can pull away from the bullies we will be better. I think we are living in a Faulkner novel, only now the Snopes aren’t running the town, they are running the entire country, and they will run an independent republic unless citizens decide to start taking responsibility for their lives, their communities, their places.

Q. And this is exactly what Vermont Commons proposes that Vermonters do. To stop looking to Washington, D.C. and multinational corporations to solve our 21st century problems, and instead, start de-centralizing and re-localizing political and economic power in our own communities here in the Green Mountains.

A. We are in trouble every time we think the solution is outside of us. We have to live committed to the health of the place where we live, our homes, our land, our neighbors, our towns. From that base of health, we can create the changes we want to see in the world. Believing that a new republic will resolve issues if we don’t change how we live is foolishness.

Q. I couldn’t agree more, Tod. Thanks for sharing your wisdom here, and good luck with the Farmer’s Diner.

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