It's not beer advertising when we do it

Big Alcohol Exposed, part of the web of EU-funded temperance groups, is running a ludicrously ambitious campaign to crowd fund an alternative sponsor for Everton FC. Everton is currently sponsored by Chang beer and the temperance lobby want to use people power to outbid the beer company and replace it with a seemingly random Merseyside hair salon.

The only snag is that this will cost $23,000,000 and they have so far managed to raise just $1,705. The use of dollars is a clue that this is not an entirely British initiative and the crowdfunding page confirms that it was the teetotallers at Big Alcohol Exposed who initiated the project...

When the people at BigAlcohol.Exposed approached us, we immediately felt that we wanted to be a part of this campaign. 

I assume the barber shop is after a bit of free publicity so fair play to them, but I'm not sure the temperance lobby have found the ideal company to take a stand against beer advertising. Looking at their Twitter feed, it seems that their own marketing strategy largely revolves around giving customers free beer with their haircuts.

 

 

This is rather awkward for an organisation that wants to denormalise alcohol. I'm sure the barber shop would never give beer to a child but their advertising can be seen by children, which is what they object to about the Chang sponsorship.

That aside, the whole campaign is obviously doomed to failure. The groups that make up Big Alcohol Exposed - which include our very own Alcohol Concern - cannot meet their own running costs without handouts from the taxpayer so surely they cannot believe the general public are going to give them $23 million for a symbolic gesture? The pitiful amount raised so far only serves to confirm that the temperance movement has virtually no popular support.     

Big Alcohol Exposed are running this campaign because Everton are the only premiership (sorry, Barclays Premier League) team that has an alcohol sponsor. Given the amount of money required to unseat Chang, and given Everton's woeful form in the second half of last season, a considerably more realistic approach would be to hope for relegation.