How the Alcohol Industry Seeks to Own the Role of Adviser and Guardian
Written by James Armstrong
In my previous blog I looked at how as public health marketers we are outgunned and out-thought by the alcohol industry.
I want to add to this by exploring one of the most striking shifts in alcohol marketing over the past decade. The alcohol industry’s evolution from being a seller of products to positioning itself as a guardian of public wellbeing. This is the land grab for the space left by underfunded treatment and support promotion budgets.
Owning the alcohol health guidance space is a deliberate strategy designed to secure moral authority, shape public understanding of harm, and embed the idea that alcohol problems are the result of a personal failure, not structural saturation.
Across sport, nightlife, festivals, and digital platforms, alcohol brands now present themselves as advisers, protectors, and responsible adults in the room. The effect is subtle but powerful, the industry becomes the solution to the harms it contributes to.
Campaigns like Guinness Clear, a water-drinking initiative framed as a responsible drinking message, are a masterclass. Pure Genius you might say. By encouraging hydration during nights out, Guinness positions itself as the voice of moderation while avoiding any challenge to the volume, visibility, or cultural dominance of alcohol. Harm becomes framed as a matter of individual choice rather than corporate influence and that narrative deepens stigma towards people struggling with alcohol use.
Guinness is not alone and there are many other examples at places and spaces where alcohol is consumed. ‘Brand activations’ are immersive experiences that create emotional impact while subtly reinforcing the idea that alcohol harm is caused by a minority of reckless individuals. The brand becomes the guardian of public safety, even as it continues to promote high-volume consumption in the same environments.
We take a deeper view of the award-winning Guinness Clear campaign here and consider how it utilises and facilitates stigma.
This is how stigma is produced. Not just by owning the cultural narrative by outspending public health (see previous blog) but by individualising harm because when harm is individualised, people experiencing alcohol problems are the outliers, the “others” - the ones who “failed” to drink responsibly. Meanwhile, the industry’s role in shaping environments, expectations, and consumption patterns remains unexamined.
The result is a powerful form of abnormalisation whereby the normal, predictable harms of a widely consumed drug are made to look like the abnormal failings of a few.
And as research shows for people who experience issues with alcohol, the fear of being identified as the ‘abnormal other’ leads them to delay seeking help, or being unable to come to terms with the need for help.
“Participants used a range of discursive strategies to justify their own drinking, in contrast to the problematic other. In protecting one’s own positive drinking identity via the problematized other, othering appears a key strategy in maintaining low problem recognition amongst heavier drinking groups. This may in turn perpetrate stigma.” (Morris et al 2026)
We need to reclaim the alcohol health guidance space from the alcohol industry, we can’t outspend them, but regulation is needed to ensure that health guidance is not predication on a way of thinking that fosters stigma.
References
Morris, J., Oh, E., Verstraet, L., Bam, V., Manchanda, R., Jenkins, C. L., … Oldham, M. (2026). “Not me, I’m in control!” a systematic meta-synthesis of othering amongst heavier drinkers. Addiction Research & Theory, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/16066359.2025.2609632
Guinness Clear case study
Assessing “Guinness Clear” Through the Lens of Abnormalisation and Individualisation of Harm
The Guiness Clear campaign (2019) was a campaign designed to encourage drinkers to drink water, a non-alcohol beer called Guiness Clear.
It is celebrated in marketing circles as “brave”, “responsible”, and “category-leading”. On one level it is clever, on the surface a bit of a humorous idea and seem well meaning even if as discussed in precious blogs that match day drinking campaigns can have a short term impact at best. But when you read this case study through a stigma lens (REDACTED AMVBBDO Guiness Clear_Redacted.pdf) it reveals something more concerning. We can see it as a very sophisticated exercise in corporate blame avoidance, harm individualisation, and the normalisation of alcohol harm as a matter of personal choice rather than structural design.
The central paradox is that Guinness sold more alcohol by promoting water.
The case study states that the campaign had two objectives:
Increase Guinness share of drinking occasions
Take a leadership position in responsible drinking
These are not parallel goals. They are contradictory.
The document repeatedly emphasises that Guinness Clear was designed to:
“Maximise share of existing drinking occasions”
“Ensure Guinness was top-of-mind when people did choose to drink”
Deliver “5–7% volume uplift”
Achieve the “highest PROI” of any Guinness rugby campaign
This is not a well-intentioned public health intervention. It is just a sales activation that leverages stigma to sell more beer.
This is the essence of abnormalisation. Harm is reframed as something that happens when individuals fail to moderate, not when an industry designs environments that promote heavy drinking.
It shifts attention away from the fact whilst many people will drink without significant harm, that alcohol is an addictive, carcinogenic commodity aggressively marketed during high-intensity drinking occasions.
And looking at it from that perspective campaigns like Guinness Clear, as clever and engagingly humorous as they appear on the surface, they deepen stigma by framing harm as a personal failure and presenting the industry as a benevolent guide.
This isolates people who struggle, discourages help-seeking, and reinforces the idea that harm is abnormal, even though it is widespread.
References
REDACTED AMVBBDO Guiness Clear_Redacted.pdf
Guinness Clear: Make It a Night You’ll Remember | Guinness® GB