Global alcohol is big, profitable and powerful.

This was the message of David Jernigan speaking at an Institute of Alcohol Studies conference to launch the UK release of his report Thirsting for Markets: The Global Impact of Corporate Alcohol.

Jernigan, associate director of The Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems called for an end to unrestricted alcohol trade and for controls on alcohol marketing.

"Alcohol causes health and safety problems, and heavy use of alcohol causes major health and safety problems," he said. "What we have here is a small club of companies that have divided up the world to minimize competition and maximize profit. The combined sales of the top 10 global brewers and top 10 distilled spirits companies total nearly $200 billion. Companies with these resources can afford to be part of the solution, not just the problem."

Jernigan referred to a recent study by WHO, the World Bank and the Harvard School of Public Health that holds alcohol responsible for between three and four percent of all global disease and disability. This puts alcohol problems on a level with measles, tuberculosis and malaria, more damaging than tobacco and more than five times as severe as illegal drugs in terms of impact on global health.

In his report, Jernigan tracks what he calls "big alcohol" around the world with in-depth looks at alcohol marketing in newly industrializing Malaysia in Asia; developing Zimbabwe in Africa; and post-communist Estonia in North-Eastern Europe.

The world's largest alcohol companies are aggressively promoting their products to the poorest and heaviest drinkers in countries where Western-style beer is a badge of honour even when purchased at the expense of food.

Their predatory marketing tactics in developing and post-communist countries are often fuelled by governments thirsty for business and by the World Bank, which pressures them to cut spending and deregulate markets including alcohol sales - if they want World Bank dollars. Unlike the more health-conscious western world, where alcohol consumption is flat, these nations have inadequate prevention or treatment programmes.

In the majority Islamic country of Malaysia, where a small percentage of the population drinks heavily, Jose Cuervo tequila offers a national promotion with the theme "Lick, shoot and suck": lick salt from a woman's breasts, take a shot of tequila, then suck from the lime she holds in her mouth. Jose Cuervo is affiliated with the largest spirits transnational, Grand Metropolitan, which owns Burger King, Pillsbury, and Haagen-Dazs.

With the blessing of the Malaysian Government, Benedictine D.O.M. (nearly 40 per cent alcohol content), touts its "health-enhancing" powers for new mothers with a poster of a woman holding her infant next to the liqueur bottle. Facing a government threat of adding print and cinema advertising to its ban on broadcast alcohol ads, Denmark's Carlsberg creates its own vehicle to advertise beer - a chain of stores that sell only comic books, sports trading cards and CDs, while decorating every aisle with Carlsberg's beer posters.

In Zimbabwe, where about 80 per cent of people earn less than $21 a month, households spend about seven percent of their annual income on alcohol - seven times the proportion spent by families in the U.S. The Minister of Health and Child Welfare blames alcohol for half the country's divorces and a majority of traffic crashes. The leading cancers for men and women are strongly related to alcohol use, according to a 14-year study of nearly 11,000 cases.

The Zimbabwe affiliate of Grand Metropolitan advertises "Robert E. Lee" whisky with the flag of the U.S. Confederacy to an overwhelming black African market.

In Estonia more than 70 percent of adults apprehended in 1995 for homicides, serious assaults and rapes were drunk. Alcohol was involved in 72 percent of drowning deaths. Today, the capital has four times the number of alcohol outlets mandated for most California cities. Giant street kiosks depicting a man holding a woman's hand over a glass of beer adorn nearly every corner of the capital, where few women drank beer prior to free market reforms.

In Zimbabwe and Estonia, modern alcohol marketing techniques operate in societies already saturated with alcohol, where illegally produced alcohol competes with corporate alcohol and increases the problems. In Malaysia and Zimbabwe, where most people drink in places open to the public rather than at home, vestiges remain of colonial rule that used alcohol to keep native workers tied to plantation work and indebted.

The formula for marketing alcohol changes little from country to country: Target the poor, the young, the addicted, and encourage them to drink even more; capitalise on local customs as marketing opportunities; build on brand prestige. Jernigan discovered that alcohol promoters in the developing world are proud of the success of their campaigns to keep heavy drinkers drinking.

"If you want to talk about success, a lot of the promotional campaigns we can directly relate to consumption," says Lee Kee Hock, marketing director of Guinness Anchor Berhad in Malaysia. "If you look at people who actually drink, we probably have the highest consumption in the world. Have you seen the Chinese drink? Each one can finish one bottle of cognac. Out of the 18 million total population, our research tells us that less than one million people actually drink. Of that, 20 per cent account for 80 per cent of the consumption."

A similar observation comes from Maureen Paul, assistant director of marketing for African Distillers in Zimbabwe. "The cheapies make up 95 to 97 percent of our volume " she says, describing their best-selling, inexpensive line of sherry packaged in small containers. "People can put them in their pocket and carry them around and strengthen their drinks (beer) with them."

And from Richard Wylie, who creates advertising for three of the six brands of clear, European-style lager produced by National Breweries in Zimbabwe, which spends about $1.2 million annually on advertising:

" There is a marked tendency among that (lower-income) population to drink for effect. They drink to get drunk... and you'll find that the wage earner will have a big family, he'll have five to eight children. They'll struggle to make ends meet. He'll go and spend on alcohol for himself... the worry in those situations is that they don't get decent food to eat... it's way down on the list. At the very bottom end of the market is image. Western culture sets the pace in terms of what people aspire to."

It was Wylie's company that forged the Carling Black Label campaign for "the denim jeans brigade" with the tag line, "It All Happens Quicker With Carling Black Label." The tag line was "a subtle way of telling them it's stronger," Wylie explains.

Urve Vali, production manager of Liviko, the state-run largest vodka producer in Estonia, also boasts of marketing to a heavy drinking population: "We advertise how to drink, how to make cocktail mixes, we have to educate the people."

Although these three countries are very different, they experience similar marketing strategies - philanthropy and sponsorship (sports in particular), sweepstakes that appeal to low-income people, use of sexual imagery and messages that alcohol strength matters and that alcohol enhances health. As Koh Poh Tiong, CEO of the Asia Pacific Breweries, says, "We are not selling beer, we are selling image."

In Malaysia, Carlsberg has won the loyalty of Chinese consumers through funding a local rock and roll band competition that culminates in a tour by the winning bands to the largely privately financed Chinese language schools. Carlsberg pays all costs for concerts, enabling the schools to keep all of the proceeds. When Carlsberg built its Malaysian brewery in the early 1970s, the brand had only a five percent share of the beer market. Since that time, its sales there have exploded to more than 60 percent of the market. Carlsberg's advertising executive, Raymond Choong, credits "the long cool Dane" campaign targeted primarily to rural drinkers and starring a Caucasian blonde dressed in a white bathing suit.

Over time, the blonde has become more a part of the beer she advertises -- her hair blending into the golden bubbles of the brew -- and she plays opposite the "Carlsberg man," whom Choong describes as "pan-Asian" and, if unable to obtain the Caucasian woman, capable of having the beer. Choong says this makes the brand "a person rather than a product so it's like to him the brand is a friend he can rely on."

Lee Kee Hock says that his company meets its goal of making personal contact with each of the estimated 200,000 heavy consumers of Guinness, Heineken, Tiger and Anchor beers in Malaysia. Both Guinness and Carlsberg hire young women to work in pubs and restaurants representing the brewer. Whether they are "women in green," "women in red," or seasonal variations such as the Anchor Santarinas, they are there to greet customers and offer the company's beer. In addition to the bar and restaurant women, the brewers sponsor tours of beauty queens and models through bars.

The spirits trade in Malaysia has its own version of personalised marketing that happens in hostess clubs catering mostly to local businessmen. Virtually everyone working in the club has an interest in seeing the clientele drink heavily each night, according to information provided by Paul Chin, marketing director for Riche Monde, which handles the leading cognac. Management receives a bonus over and above profits from sales to push a particular brand. Spirits companies offer customers a variety of gifts perfume, watches, leather goods - based on how much of a brand the businessman drinks. It is understood that drinkers pass the gifts on to the hostesses, who are hired by the club.

"Ladies sit with you, they are your companion for the evening," says Chin. "The percentage (of evenings that end in sex) is as low as 20 per cent. It is not necessary that you have to. It is only meant for sitting there, and if she likes you, fine, you (the drinker) are influenced by her because if the company selling a particular brand is giving a gift that she wants, she will then say, 'Could you please open this brand x tonight?' And you may feel obliged."

Although alcohol advertising is not permitted in Estonia, there is no law defining what alcohol is, so the Saku brewery advertises on television and even boasts in its annual report that it sponsors a TV program from its pub in Tallinn, bringing "a beer drinking atmosphere to 200,000 viewers in their homes."
Since this small country declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Estonia has moved beyond vodka on its way to being the quintessential modern alcohol market. After independence, Scandinavian alcohol transnationals began to transform centuries-old drinking habits. Liviko, the state-run vodka maker, is producing lower-alcohol, sweet liqueurs (about 21 percent alcohol) that appeal to women, lower-volume drinkers than men.
Thanks to marketing, beer - once the drink of choice for male island dwellers - is now a major focus for more urban drinkers, particularly women and youth. At the start of 1990, Saku and Tartu breweries had almost even shares of the bottled beer market. Between 1991-95, Saku's sales shot up to 57 percent of the market's volume because a holding company owned by the largest Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish brewers took majority control and redesigned the bottles, labels, and advertising campaigns. For younger drinkers, they created a stronger beer, Saku Rock .

Tartu, purchased by Estonians, is evening the marketing score. With a Finnish partner, it produces many of the sweet, higher alcohol content drinks with names like rum-cola and vodkaexotic that are sold next to soft drinks and cigarettes at nearly every kiosk. Tartu sponsors rock bands in bars and sports such as basketball and cross-country skiing. Located in a university town, the brewer arranges for every student to receive a stamp on a card for beer purchase. Completed cards may be entered in a lottery in which the prize is 40 cases of beer. "Enough to get drunk for a long time for the whole dormitory," according to Arho Antilla, Tartu's marketing director.

Western packaging is also a sales success story for Chibuku Brewery, which makes about 90 per cent of the traditional (opaque) beer in Zimbabwe. Dubbed "Scud" because of its resemblance to the missiles used in the Persian Gulf war, the two-litre plastic container solved the brewer's problem with packaging shortages. The Scuds are recyclable and can be sold "in four walls or a shack," according to Ben Tafa, Chibuku's marketing director.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund hold development credits hostage in third world countries unless they cut government spending and free up markets. The former tends to undercut health education and health care; the latter forces countries to treat alcohol as if it were a normal commodity - like soap - without attendant serious health problems. Encouraged to privatise alcohol production and sales, drop tariffs on imported alcohol, and allow liberal alcohol marketing, these governments are going in the opposite direction from prevention.

This editorial, which could have appeared during colonial times in Zimbabwe, was published in that country's Daily Gazette in 1994:

"By providing easily accessible beerhalls as the only recreation centres, the colonial rulers made sure that when the African worker was not toiling in their factories, he was in a beerhall getting drunk to the extent where he could not be bothered about his wretched status. Consequently, the ordinary African worker was cultured to work and drink with little else to occupy his time."

Zimbabwean beerhalls are owned by municipalities. Although South African Brewers built Zimbabwe's legal beer industry, the government owns the controlling interest in that industry. Located today mostly amidst dense clusters of housing on the edge of urban centres, these beerhalls are the size of mini-malls and hold hundreds of drinking men. Even cheaper are the "shebeens" run by women who brew traditional alcoholic beverages and commonly use the money they get to pay for their childrens' schooling.

David Jernigan ended by proposing a series of recommendations for national governments, international organisations and the alcohol industry.

The report is available price $35 from the Marin Institute, 24 Belvedere Street, San Raphael, California 94901 USA.