DISCUS SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDELINES

The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States has issued new guidelines for responsible alcohol advertising and marketing on all social networking sites and other digital communications platforms. The guidelines apply to all branded digital market-ing communications including websites, blogs, mobile communications, and other applications. DISCUS and the European Forum devel-oped the guidelines jointly for Responsible Drinking, an alliance of Europe’s leading spirits companies. The new guidelines will be reviewed regularly and updated as needed. They require: “Age-gating” before direct dialogue between advertisers and consumers; Privacy policies to ensure protections regard-ing data collection and use of personal information; Regular monitoring of brand pages and sites and removal of inappropriate user-generated content; Clearly identifying brand marketing as such in digital marketing communications and product promotions such as blogs; Visible instructions urging individuals to forward downloadable digital content only to adults. Under the DISCUS Code, beverage alcohol adver-tising and marketing should be placed in media only where at least 71.6 percent of the audience is reason-ably expected to be of the legal purchase age.