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by arpinum 1 day ago
Same with the drinks companies, they switched to explicitly advertising their zero alcohol beers.
5 comments

It just now clicked with me why they are doing that. I've been wondering why they are pushing them so hard. Barely anyone seems to buy NA beer.
I imagine like many things, market penetration is uneven.

I have a subscription for NA beers, my friends and I drink them when out and about, etc. We're young-ish Americans in New York, I suppose the news says we drink a lot less than previous generations.

I'm not saying the market doesn't exist, just that the marketing never seemed to match the size of the market. It's the old dirty open secret of the alcohol industry that their market was never really social drinkers, and I've just never seen the equivalent consumer regularly going through multiple 6 packs of NA beer a week.
Last big social event I went to a few weeks ago, the coolers were packed with Athletic Brewing and Liquid Death along with a few off-brands of flavored sparkling water.

Post pandemic, in my little bubble at least, I almost never see people drinking beer anymore.

I don't go to a lot of parties, but at the parties I do go to I'm starting to see non-alcoholic beers become a regular thing. From none, to one variety, to two...

Seeing NA beers at a party that also has an open bar is neat.

Since I became a parent I've started buying nonalcoholic beer fairly often. It certainly helps that they've gotten A LOT better in the last 5-10 years.
> Barely anyone seems to buy NA beer.

Not true around me. They are pretty popular. And I stopped drinking them few years ago, when I realized I drink 5-6 a day and it is probably too much.

Norway banned alcohol advertisements in 1975. Companies similarly tried to get around by advertising by using water bottles, or merchandise, so they the law was amended in 1997 to ban those, which seems to have been successful.
That is in response to an actual trend. Alcohol has fallen out of favor these last few years.
It's a response to laws that prohibit advertising of alcohol in certain countries at certain times of the day. There may be a trend towards these products, but the prohibition prompted the advertising change.
Look at diageo stocks over 5 years, for ex. It is a real trend that people drink less in general: boomers the least, then genz.
This is genuinely funny. I have to admire the chutzpah.
That might be considered an intended result of the rule - encouraging more non-alcoholic drinking.