Damien Mulley

The Business Post reports that a Government sponsored group, the National Substance Misuse Strategy Steering Group is looking at suggesting the banning of drink sponsorship of Arts and Culture events. There’s been talk for a long while too about banning drinks brands sponsoring sports events. So no more Jameson Film Festival, Absolut Fringe, Corona Cork Film Festival and the Guinness Jazz Festival?

Arts and Culture organisations will be even more moany if another source of funding is shut down. Government grants aren’t what they used to be. We’re in a recession so it’s harder, for some at least, to get corporate sponsors. Of course one can donate to an arts project without having to publicly be listed as a headline sponsor/sponsor. I’m sure many drinks companies will instead do this, given how they care so deeply about Irish culture. So says the press releases. Bit of Dáil discussion on it too.

You have to wonder about Arthur’s day too then. Will this artificially created calendar event get killed off too? It’s not “Guinness day” but is associated with it. No coincidence it was created just as worldwide drinks companies started seeing traditional marketing routes denied to them. Funds for social entrepreneurship, like sponsoring arts and culture events are another route to keep your name around if you’re a drinks company. I wonder will these be classed as sponsorship too. It’s nice that a fraction of revenue from a single day out of a year is spent to keep these projects sustained for a while.

There’s some great lessons to be learned from the arms race between the tobacco industry and various Governments over the decades. Now it’s happening with alcohol. I’m sure fatty foods will be next. For those that haven’t issues working for tobacco companies or drinks companies then there is serious money in change and disruption. Think of the euro changeover or the Y2K bug. Fortunes were made from it. Helping these companies find newer routes to market their products will get you that mansion sooner.

And of course with tobacco TV ads banned we get this instead, now if they ban drink and fatty food ads…

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 2nd, 2011 at 8:09 pm and is filed under business, irishblogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.