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You know the phrase out of sight, out of mind. Turns out it’s literally true when it comes to teenagers and those responsible drinking messages that alcohol advertisers put all over the place.
A new Brigham Young University study tracked the eye movements of teenagers as they looked at alcohol advetisments and public service messages.
Researchers let teens look at magazine alcohol ads as long as they wanted, which turned out to be on average for about seven seconds. The ads included a line urging responsible drinking. And the teenagers noticed that line for a grand total of…one third of one second.
Computer analysis showed that the young people spent most of their time looking at bottles, product names, models and headlines. In two ads, just 12 percent of the subjects even noticed the responsibility message.
And it gets worse. The teens were then shown ads a second time with the responsibility messages blacked out, to see if they had even a vague memory of the warnings. But 94 percent couldn’t even identify the general concept of the messages. So please remember—when you advertise alcohol, please advertise responsibly.
