Commercial Communications
Within the EU Beer Pledge it was also thus logical that one key pillar should be around“Ensuring responsible advertising and marketing”, building upon the 7 Operational Standards and helping brewers and brewers’ associations locally to ensure that self-regulatory mechanisms remained up to speed with development in the marketing landscape, in particular with regard to the increased role for digital and social media.
Doing so, not only did the Head of Facebook’s EU office address the event in the European Parliament in February 2012 launching the EU Beer Pledge, where she welcomed the Pledge and gave her support to the brewers’ new Forum commitment on social media, but The Brewers of Europe became an associated partner on the Responsible Marketing Pact. The RMP is managed by the World Federation of Advertisers (whose membership includes the major brewing companies in Europe), and contributes to the work to strengthen the consistency of mechanisms governing advertising of alcoholic beverages in Europe and ensure self regulation mechanisms keep up to speed with the realities of the market.
In the lead-up to the official launch of the RMP, since the adoption of the Beer Pledge, companies and associations have nevertheless still moved forward, with the 7 Operational Standards remaining a useful reference point for ensuring self-regulatory systems governing beer advertising be fit for purpose.