Buzz marketing

Drink me: energy drinks line the shelves.Three years ago, Jim Shepherd, his wife and son Brian were waiting for an awards ceremony to begin. Brian had spent the day playing in a paintball tournament and would be receiving a second place trophy.

While they were waiting for dinner, 15-year-old Brian collapsed.  He died shortly after in hospital.

Brian had always been athletic and loved competitive sports — when he was eight years old he played goal in a hockey league and according to his dad could skate just as fast as the rest of the kids with all his extra pads on.

The doctors said Brian had suffered an arrhythmia, which meant his heart suddenly changed rhythm, either it went too fast or too slow.

“We went through every type of testing that could be done on Brian’s tissue, and the bottom line was they couldn’t find a reason for the arrhythmia,” Shepherd says.

They had their entire family tested for heart problems, they had multiple tests done on Brian post-mortem and they had genetic tests done to see if there might be something that could explain their son’s sudden passing.

There was nothing.

“I suspect the energy drink was contributory in his death, if not the whole cause."Then, three months later, when Shepherd went back to the paintball park where his son had died to put up a memorial plaque, he had a conversation with the owner. He found out Red Bull had visited the park that day to offer free samples. Brian had been offered one and later drank it.

“We didn’t know for three months that he had had a Red Bull. I didn’t even know what a Red Bull was. This was a boy who took water to sport when he went,” Shepherd says.

“I suspect the energy drink was contributory in his death, if not the whole cause,” Shepherd says. Until that day, Brian had never had an energy drink and had no signs of heart trouble. Since then, Shepherd says, he has been in touch with others whose children suffered arrhythmias after consuming a caffeinated beverage.

From a health product to a food item

On Oct. 6, 2011, Health Canada announced that it would be changing the way energy drinks are classified and sold in Canada. Health Canada reclassified the popular beverages from a natural health product to a food item, which means they will all need nutritional labels, and also mandated a caffeine cap of 180 mg per can on all energy drinks, or 400 mg per litre.

It did so after a Health Canada commissioned an expert panel to offer counsel on whether and how energy drinks should be regulated.

"There is a lack of knowledge about the risks associated with high caffeine intake among young people and those young people are the drinks’ target market."But the panel wanted much stricter regulation of the drinks than Health Canada has adopted.

The panel’s report called for the product to be reclassified as a drug and its sale restricted to adults. It also recommended limiting advertising of the product and even coordination with the country’s coroners’ offices to better track the number of fatalities (especially of young people) in which caffeine is implicated.

Dr. Noni MacDonald, a professor of paediatrics at Dalhousie University, chaired the panel. She says there are a number of issues associated with high caffeine intake.

Sleep disruption, anxiety and irritability are side effects that have been discovered at lower doses, while delirium, vomiting, tremors and convulsions have been noted at the higher end. In addition, MacDonald says, “It can cause cardiac arrhythmias, which can be quite serious.”

“A problem is the amount that [young people] would drink. A kid doesn’t know that that’s what they’re taking in... The problem we had is that the concentration is too high for young people,” says MacDonald.

MacDonald also says there is a lack of knowledge about the risks associated with high caffeine intake among young people and those young people are the drinks’ target market.

Targeting youth

Buy it: marketing on the side of a vending machine.Matthew Johnson, the director of education for the Media Awareness Network, an organization that promotes media and advertising literacy, agrees. He says the drinks are “marketed primarily towards preteen and teenage boys especially.”

Companies such as Red Bull, the leading energy drink supplier in Canada, frequently sponsor and have representatives present at extreme sporting events. Red Bull representatives offer free samples (a sample is considered a full, unopened can). The practice is widespread and has occurred at sporting events and university campuses across Canada and the United States, like the one Brian Shepherd attended.

And Canadian schools say the marketing is working.

“When your target audience is so impressionable, there’s no doubt that there’s going to be an impact. There’s a growing recognition that high-caffeine drinks can play a significant role in the conduct of our students,” says Catherine Fife, the president of the Canadian School Board Association.

Ontario has banned energy drinks in its schools, and on a national level her organization supports the recommendations made by the panel to restrict their availability to young people, Fife says.

Stricter regulations called for

But some argue the regulations have gone too far and aren’t entirely fair. Justin Sherwood, the president of the Canadian Beverage Association, says nutrition labels on drinks will help the consumer compare products, but a caffeine cap makes no sense.

Warnings on energy drink cans will soon change.“When it comes to caffeine caps and labelling, we are being singled out compared to just about every other caffeinated product out there and treated differently.”

“Most folks are under the impression that energy drinks are more caffeinated than they are,” Sherwood says. The average cup of coffee has more caffeine than the top-selling energy drink, he says. And he’s right. A medium Tim Horton’s coffee has 100 mg of caffeine, while a Red Bull has about 75 mg of caffeine.

The difference that MacDonald and Fife are concerned with is that kids aren’t interested in drinking coffee — they’re interested in energy drinks.

Fife herself has a son in Grade 8. “He tells me kids view the high caffeine drinks as a drug. He said, ‘We know that it’s bad, but you still want to try it.’ ”

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Source: http://www.energyfiend.com

And while she says schools are hoping to educate students about the risks and eliminate their consumption of high sugar and high caffeine drinks, “There’s only so much school boards can do in that regard. It’s not part of our vending machine contracts or cafeteria contracts, but it’s across the street from the school.”

Sherwood says it's all but impossible for the drink companies to restrict their advertising appeal to adults, in isolation from minors. “What is cool and hip to a 22 year old may appear cool and hip to a 15 year old. There is an extreme challenge in being able to differentiate the two,” he says.

Johnson agrees it can be a difficult balance. “Generally when things are marketed with an explicit target of early 20s, advertisers are typically actually marketing to teens, and sometimes preteens, as well.”

But some European countries have eliminated the need to limit advertising to young people altogether.  In 2006, Turkey  banned the sale of energy drinks with caffeine over 150 mg. Denmark has also banned the sale of energy drinks. Others such as Norway have made them available only to those over the age of 15 at pharmacies, where they are located behind the counter and are dispensed by a pharmacist.

In the press release announcing the changes Health Canada would make to the regulation of energy drinks, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said, "I firmly believe that it's up to individuals and parents to make their own decisions when it comes to what they eat and drink."

But Shepherd, MacDonald and Fife all say they were disappointed Health Canada did not restrict the sale of these beverages to minors, and that the industry has been left to police itself in terms of advertising.

The Canadian panel recommended stiff penalties for companies found to be marketing to children. Health Canada merely encouraged energy drink companies not to advertise to young people — a measure Shepherd and MacDonald find empty.  “Consequences have to be stiff," Shepherd says. "There was no consequence for [energy drink representatives] handing a sample to my son.”

Since then Shepherd has attended sporting events and seen energy drink representatives put energy drinks in the hands of young people, a practice he hopes to see stopped.

He also hopes that anyone who experiences adverse effects from energy drinks or from too much caffeine will report it.

“I don’t want to see another family go through what my family had to go to and be left with these questions,” Shepherd says.

Energy Drinks: Selling An Identity

Gender colour-coding, extreme sports and hip-hop.

Matthew Johnson, director of education at The Media Awareness Network, critiques some examples of the advertising methods employed by energy drink companies to target their young adult market.