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Alcohol is a toxic industrial solvent. People drink it for the mild euphoria it brings. This is undignified and advertising provides social cover. Behaviour not

Alcohol is a toxic industrial solvent. People drink it for the mild euphoria it brings. This is undignified and advertising provides social cover. Behaviour not much different from glue-sniffing is advertised into being grown-up, sophisticated, manly, adult, a reward for hard work, the drink of heroes,... First the article takes the idea of beer drinkers appreciating different flavours at face value and then rebuts it. Drinkers are claiming to be appreciating the various different flavours, but actually they taste they same. That surprises me. I think it would be easier to spin a taste-bud romance around alcohol if the flavours were more various. Second the article suggests that advertising is "creating" the different tastes and tries to draw a wider lesson for other products that one might advertise. I disagree with drawing any wider lesson. Alcohol is a unusual product such that the purpose of advertisements is especially covert. The advertisers are not fooling the drinkers into tasting differences that are not there. There are colluding with users in providing a shiny social sheen on a product that would otherwise offer only a guilty pleasure.

jrockway 16y ago
I don't think that's it. I think people will go out and drink regardless of whether or not there is any advertising. But when it comes to say the name of the beer you want, that's when advertising comes into play. Deciding which nearly-identical product to order is hard. So you can reduce the problem to deciding what ad you liked better, and then your problems are solved. Also, "alcohol is a toxic industrial solvent." So is water.
- alan-crowe 16y ago
  Your reply dodges the point raised by the article. They do a taste test and the beers have different flavours. Then they repeart the taste test blind and the beers taste the same. The article suggests that the taste comes from the advertising. I suggest that it wasn't about taste to begin with. Why do you think that stripping the labels off the bottles made the flavour go away?
  - jrockway 16y ago
    No, we're saying the same thing. Brand => perception => flavor. Brand => perception => willingness to buy it in front of your friends. The mind works in interesting ways.

jrockway 16y ago

I don't think that's it. I think people will go out and drink regardless of whether or not there is any advertising. But when it comes to say the name of the beer you want, that's when advertising comes into play. Deciding which nearly-identical product to order is hard. So you can reduce the problem to deciding what ad you liked better, and then your problems are solved. Also, "alcohol is a toxic industrial solvent." So is water.

alan-crowe 16y ago
Your reply dodges the point raised by the article. They do a taste test and the beers have different flavours. Then they repeart the taste test blind and the beers taste the same. The article suggests that the taste comes from the advertising. I suggest that it wasn't about taste to begin with. Why do you think that stripping the labels off the bottles made the flavour go away?
- jrockway 16y ago
  No, we're saying the same thing. Brand => perception => flavor. Brand => perception => willingness to buy it in front of your friends. The mind works in interesting ways.