BWS’ Dry July stunt is menacing, desperate marketing
Woolworths' BWS, Australia's biggest alcohol retailer, is partnering with the Dry July Foundation next month to raise money for people affected by cancer. But The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education's Michael Thorn argues that the partnership is nothing more than a sham.
Never let the truth get in the way of a corporate marketing strategy. And when it comes to flogging toxic, addictive products, Woolworths knows no bounds. The gall of the company’s latest marketing stunt is shocking.
Woolworths-owned BWS has hitched its brand to the Dry July campaign, an ill-conceived ‘sobriety stunt’ that was announced through an alcohol industry-branded media release, headlined ‘BWS Becomes ‘Because We’re Sober for Dry July’’.
The BWS media release (Click to enlarge)
How gullible does BWS think Australians are to not see straight through this sham marketing caper disguised as corporate social responsibility?
The media release freely admits the alcohol chain’s aim is to promote low and no alcohol brands, push point-of-sale offers and provide special discounts for BWS customers who participate in Dry July.
According to the release, BWS staff across the country are right behind the campaign “with team members going dry during July”, but the employees we spoke to were not aware of the partnership or a team commitment to abstain from alcohol.
The truth is, this is a cynical marketing exercise to continue normalising alcohol. Because unless every BWS outlet closes for the month, this partnership will do nothing to reduce alcohol harm in Australia.
Alcohol is a class one carcinogen. The alcohol in one bottle of wine has the equivalent cancer risk of smoking five cigarettes for men and 10 cigarettes for women.
More than 3,200 Australians develop alcohol-attributable cancer every year.
The Dry July Foundation, which raises funds for people with cancer, has been extremely misguided in partnering with an alcohol brand that sells cancer-causing alcoholic beverages 365 days year.
The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) has written to Dry July’s beneficiary organisations, including many cancer groups, calling on them to intervene and ensure Dry July repels the influence of the alcohol industry in the future.
Having BWS cosy-up to this well-intended health campaign is just one of the ways in which Woolworths surreptitiously collects ‘social licence’ credits – all the while being the biggest seller of toxic, addictive commodities (alcohol, tobacco and gambling).
In 2017, a study led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine concluded that “the alcohol industry appears to be engaged in the extensive misrepresentation of evidence about the alcohol‐related risk of cancer” and that “breast cancer and colorectal cancer appeared to be a particular focus for this misrepresentation”.
It would be naïve to think that Woolworths, Australia’s single largest retailer of alcohol, is one of the good guys and not part of this deliberate global strategy. And the company sorely needs more ‘social licence’ credits after it was recently revealed that staff at Woolworths pubs were pressured to ply pokies players with free alcohol to keep them gambling longer.
Whichever way you look at Woolworths’ marketing approach, it continues to fly in the face of its corporate mission statement of doing no harm in society.
Michael Thorn is the chief executive at FARE (the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education), which is a not-for-profit organisation advocating for reduced alcohol advertising, and working to stop the harm caused by alcohol
Fark off. So no ones says anything when BWS promotes bulk buying of alcohol but it’s the end of the world when they promote moderation or alcohollic alternatives. Think the real issue at hand is much deeper and complictated then this. Next
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This is hardly an industry perspective. The guy hates alcohol brands. No criticism of Dry July though.
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I’d argue against this being a ‘menacing’ marketing campaign by BWS. They deserve the benefit of the doubt that they can and should promote ‘responsible consumption of alcohol’ and this would be a fair fit into that category.
Thanks for the heads up on ‘five cigarettes per bottle of wine’, will keep that in mind. What I’d love to now see are reasonably priced red wine serving sizes that are maybe two cigarettes, so there is less wastage.
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Oh dear Mike – at the end of the day, BWS are jumping on board to help promote an incredible charity doing a fantastic job. As a proud supporter of Dry July I’m pleased there are some tasty ‘non alcoholic’ choices being promoted by BWS.
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I can see why the partnership has raised eyebrows. And whilst I’m yet to personally come down firmly on one side of the argument or the other, if I try to look at the basic components of the deal (or at least my assumption of what they might be) its not as simaple as the author wants to suggest. On the presupposition they BWS aren’t comparing this action with the alternative of ‘closing all their stores for a month’, I’m left asking “So would it be better for BWS to just NOT support the cause?” I don’t think so.,. If the issue is the connection between the charities beneficiary (Cancer Research) and not other issues associated with alcohol consumption, surely it’s better for the industry to be contributing to the cause? It would be like auto manufacturers being slated for supporting road safety campaigns (like Holden does with the Aust. Road Safety Foundation https://arsf.com.au/partners/ ). Sure, they could just stop making cards and road safety becomes a non-issue, but that’s not realistic….. An interesting debate…..
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If BWS wants to pour money into normalising non-alcohol alternatives, isn’t that a good thing?
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Menacing? A guy pointing a shotgun at me is menacing. An advert campaign is merely a nuisance / annoyance at worst and amusing at best.
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We should embrace this – what are we expecting them to do? Stop selling alcohol for the month and shut their business down?
They will ALWAYS market to sell product. This supports a good cause – mutual benefit. Makes total sense. It’s not a masked initiative at all.
Rubbish article.
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Reading this article just made me commit to Dry July. So it’s not all bad, Michael.
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Wow, this is shockingly bad, how can Dry July sell their soul like this?!
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A cancer-causing business sponsoring a charity that gives is meant to support cancer sufferers hmmmm
Reminds me of the days when cigarette companies paid doctors to spruik their ‘healthy’ smokes.
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This is so disappointing.
Dry July is such a great cause overall – how they can’t see through this deliberate marketing ploy by a retailer that makes its money by selling cancer-causing products is beyond me.
I’ll be supporting alternative cancer charities in the future that aren’t so open to being blatant hypocrites.
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Geez Mickey, You mentioned BWS so many times that all I can think about now is stopping by one of their stores to grab some beers on the way home!
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Toxic? Menacing? Biased, much?
What a poorly written piece.
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i can’t believe the comments from people here not ‘getting it’.
Sure, Dry July is such a great cause overall – but how they can’t see through this deliberate marketing ploy by a retailer that makes its money by selling cancer-causing products is beyond me.
At the end of the day it’s still an alcohol company. They want to sell alcohol products. THIS IS PR/MARKETING 101, PEOPLE!
I’ll be supporting alternative cancer charities in the future that aren’t so open to being blatant hypocritical…
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The most cancerous thing in this isn’t the alcohol or the promotion, its the toxic attitude of Michael Thorn. He may hate it, but many of us enjoy a drink, drink responsibly and it certainly won’t be the alcohol that does for us! So, if along the way, we want to have a dry month or support a charity helping those who have cancer – mainly from doing nothing untoward in their lives – what can he really be upset about.
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This guy is increasingly hysterical about alcohol consumption. Although there are serious issues with alcohol abuse (most notably violence towards others) the vast majority of people do drink responsibly. As for the ‘A bottle of wine gives you cancer’ worth looking at the context of that study. here they are…..
“It is important to view these results in context. For both men and women in the UK, the lifetime risk of cancer is around 50%. The authors estimate that lifetime risk is around 1% higher for men and women who drink a bottle of wine a week
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The cause of cancer is irresponsible consumption.
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Park Michael Thorn’s comments for a moment…
This is a very naive marketing judgement from BWS, but also Dry July.
It is hypocritical of BWS to support a movement that is fundamentally at odds with what they are selling.
Both BWS and Dry July have very good, but opposing reasons to trade and encourage drinking behaviour. However, whichever way you look at it, there is a pretty obvious conflict of interest…so who thought it would be good to bring them together?
Bullett in foot!
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Skol.
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Thorn has got form when it comes to selectively quoting research see the context for his comment on alcohol and tobacco equivalency – a direct quote from the study.
Dr Hydes said: “We must be absolutely clear that this study is not saying that drinking alcohol in moderation is in any way equivalent to smoking. Our finds relate to lifetime risk across the population. At an individual level, cancer risk represented by drinking or smoking will vary and for many individuals, the impact of ten units of alcohol (one bottle of wine) or five to ten cigarettes may be very different.”
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Well said. Alcohol is already normalised. This article must be written by a teenager.
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Maccas and sports.. quit campaign and tobacco giants… big Pharma and precription addiction… etc etc
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I can’t see a better place to cut through the message concerning the responsible consumption of alcohol and making consumers question their choices than at the point of purchase of the product.
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I assume you are adding a further list of naive marketing decisions.
My point is that you make yourself an easy target of cynicism when you do.
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I’m so glad I’m not the only one who skimmed this and thought, “what a bloody awful excuse for an article”.
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Good article. No one wants to hear the truth about alcohol.
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Where is your source for this claim that alcohol causes cancer? Not that alcohol has carcinogens (everything does), but actually causes cancer?
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Thorn has to be the greatest killjoy that ever lived. As wowser-in-chief, he must hate living in a democracy where sensible people are in charge rather than fringe dwelling fanatics like him.
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Agreed. Whiny copy. At least awareness and a conversation is generated about alcohol and moderation.
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If BWS was serious about backing a serious cause like this, they would have rallied the whole Woolies group to support it. Therefore, all Dan Murphy’s should rally and promote non-alcoholic alternatives.
I think the skepticism comes from feeling like the idea to partner was a half baked commitment.
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Grow up, this is as best they’re going to get – less they close their stores completely – why are we in this “OH MY GOD” reactionary phase where we are shocked not by cheeky campaigns but going against this PC layer we’ve painted on over years of generification and perfectionism.
Leave the sensationalism to the yanks and get a life
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Agreed – Michael has all the vigour of a doomsday-prepper.
Catch him in out in the woods, in his (alcohol free) bunker for additional commentary on this poorly constructed opinion.
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This is like lashing out at airlines trying to carbon-offset. Mitigation is better than nothing. Talk about naivety…
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