Objective

• To help university students be more mindful of their drinking
• To raise awareness of irresponsible drinking and alcohol abuse
• To help combat underage drinking
• To increase knowledge about spirit drinks among students (the art of distillation, agricultural raw material, origin, tradition etc)

Description

University students are taught about responsible consumption and spirit drinks before taking part in a competition to design their very own campaign to promote responsible drinking.  The idea is to use communication between equals as peer-to-peer communication is very effective.  Once the winners are selected an award ceremony takes place, where the winners receive their prizes, and a press release is issued in order to bring awareness to the project.  Winning entries are made available by Espirituosos España for municipalities and organisations to use, such as on their social media and logos.

PHASE ONE: Information on Responsible Consumption

• Information session on responsible consumption: Before taking part in the information session students fill in a survey about their consumption habits.  The lesson is supported by the “student’s guide” which covers topics such as: the effects of alcohol on the body; what a standard drink is; responsible guidelines, limits and when you should not drink alcohol; reasons why you should drink alcohol in moderation; myths, and what the law says about drink-driving.
• Optional Distillery Tour: A distillery tour to show students how spirits are produced.  Before the tour there is a presentation about spirit drinks to provide information on the art of distillation; the agricultural raw materials used to produce spirits, and the origin and tradition of spirit drinks and how they have shaped spirit drinks over the centuries.  During the tour students find out more about distillation, flavouring and maturation of spirits.

PHASE TWO: Creating and presenting the campaign: Students work in groups over a six-month period to design a responsible drinking campaign targeting young adults or informing minors that they shouldn’t drink any alcohol.  Students are supported by university teachers during the process.  When finalised, the teams chosen by the University present their proposal to Espirituosos España’s marketing committee.  The winner receives two prizes: A gift and the pride of seeing their campaign launched!

Winning entries

2022-2023: The winning campaign is called “Head”.  It creatives refer to the fact that regardless of how alcohol is drunk (with a straw, with ice, with orange soda, lemon soda, etc) it should be done “using your head” thus drinking responsibly and not abusively.  In addition, the winners also made a graphic to explain that a good drink is one where responsibility makes up the largest part of it.

2021-2022: The winning campaign aims to change young people's mindset by recalling that "The best toasts are the ones we remember".  It highlights that you shouldn't drink alcohol to try to forget, as a means of escape or to try to become more extraverted.  It should be drunk to accompany the best moments of your life such as a celebration or a toast.  Creatives have a happy tone and show young adults drinking all kinds of alcoholic drinks.  Two phrases encourage people to reconsider the value of drinking alcohol and above all to do it responsibly. "And you, which one do you remember" to call for action and "Toast with whatever you like, but do it responsibly" to emphasise responsible drinking.

2020-2021: The winning poster campaign addresses underage drinking with curious and fun facts about animals to create a comparison between them and underage consumption.  There are two sets of creatives:

• Set 1 “Temptations”: This set plays with the idea of resisting temptation and shows animals calmly facing temptation.  They encourage the observer to “Resist temptation dude.  If you are a minor, zero alcohol!”
• Set 2 “Data”: This set provides a fact about the animal shown such as “a camel can go more than 10 days without water” then asks, “And are you in a hurry to drink alcohol?”

2019-2020: The winning campaign is called “Historias y punto” (stories of full stop).  The protagonist “punto” is a play on punctuation and alcohol consumption that gives the double meaning in Spanish of “get a buzz”.  The visuals were adapted by Espirituosos España who added logos of the municipalities who used them.

2018-2019: The jury decided both finalists were winners.  The winning proposals are NoTanto (Not too much) and YoNoLoVeo (No Way).

• NoTanto: This creative is comprised of four posters that use examples of daily life to show that moderation is better than excess.  They encourage responsible alcohol consumption by appealing to moderation and common sense and by highlighting the need to live a healthy lifestyle.  The audience then connect the idea of moderation to the consumption of alcoholic beverages. 
• YoNoLoVeo: This creative has five visuals which mix drawing and photography to reflect situations in which there is an obvious misfit.  This serves as an analogy to show that the consumption of alcohol by minors is equally out of place. 

Partners

Rey Juan Carlos University

Granada University

País Vasco University

Results

So far, more than 900 university students have received training on responsible consumption.

In addition creatives have been used:

• 2023. FAS used one of the Temptations visuals across cinemas in Spain.
• 2021-2022. Espirituosos España used some of the winning visuals to promote responsible drinking during the 2022 Christmas festivities via their Instagram. 
• 2020-2021. The Temptations campain was used by the municipality of Madrid buses EMT Madrid. Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid, S. A. - EMT brindará apoyo a la Fundación Alcohol y Sociedad en sus campañas de sensibilización and also by the Madrid regional buses Interbús y la Fundación Alcohol y Sociedad lanzan una campaña para prevenir el consumo de alcohol en menores de edad | A21 Periódico Gratuito Sierra Oeste de Madrid.
• 2019-2020: Visuals were used by 10 municipalities and by other Universities (like Universidad de Huelva) to spread the responsible consumption message on their social media.  The municipalities have reported more than 40 different posts and more than 3,000 views of the campaign.
• 2018-2019: The posters from the NoTanto campaign are displayed on university campuses in Madrid to raise awareness among students.  The visuals from the YoNoLoVeo were used for Espirituosos España’s “Minors and Not a Drop” campaign and were shown on on-street advertising, buses and bus shelters in Madrid.  They were also used in 2021 by Metro de Madrid for their underage drinking campaign (Metro and the Alcohol and Society Foundation join forces against under-age drinking | Metro de Madrid (metromadrid.es)

Measurement & evaluation

2022-2023: Pre-and-post information session questionnaires were given to the university students.  Results show that:

• 3% believed that they drank alcohol responsibly before the session but after it this dropped to 38%.
• 22% already knew that mixing types of alcohol does not make you more drunk but this increased to 80% post session.
• 43% acknowledged that they sometimes overindulge in alcohol.
• 9% say that the session made them rethink their drinking.

Although there is still room for improvement, these data suggest that the information session is very effective in increasing alcohol knowledge.  In fact, 91% said that their knowledge about alcoholic beverages had improved. 

On their future commitments:

• More than 71% said they are “very likely” to use the responsible drinking information.
• 70% say they will drink responsibly from now on. 

What they said about training: 

• It is necessary and you learn a lot from it. Thank you very much.
• It is very interesting.
• I learned a lot about alcoholic beverages.
• Thank you, I really enjoyed it. 

2020-2021: Pre-and-post session questionnaires were given to the university students.  Results show that: 92,3% of students believed that they drank alcohol responsibly and 43% said it was responsible “most of the time” before the session.  However, this dropped to 37% after the session.  24% already knew that mixing alcohol doesn’t make you drunker, but this rose to 90% post session.  10% stated that the session made them to rethink their drinking.  90% said that their knowledge about alcoholic beverages had improved.  More than 70% said they would use the responsible drinking information received and 66% said they would drink responsibly from now on.

2018-2019: The information session helped to break false perceptions and myths held by many students.  The pre-training survey found that 90% of the students believed that young people drink too much.  However, official data shows that 95% drink responsibly.  This shows that the students did not know what “excessive drinking” is and that they lacked general information about alcohol and its effects before the training. 

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