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New Year’s Prediction: Geo Location and Alcohol Advertising

We’ve posted about alcohol and social media before, but are revisiting the issue to discuss geo location and location-based advertising.

Websites and mobile apps like Foursquare, Shop Kick, and Facebook Places allow advertisers to identify the location of their audience members and then send an offer based on the consumer’s location. The marketing potential for alcoholic beverage suppliers and retailers is epic. Presume a social media savvy consumer, Joe, who checks in everywhere he goes and provides personal information across a variety of web platforms. Joe likes craft beer, and he likes to drink it in San Francisco’s Haight district. These geography-based applications will allow the brewers, bars and restaurants that Joe interacts with online and via the geo apps to know when Joe is in the Haight and send him a coupon for a discounted pint of craft beer, expiring in only a few hours. The opportunities for a personalized call to action are profound.

Though the technology is very cool, there are plentiful legal pitfalls. Leaving aside regulatory acronyms all mobile advertisers should heed (e.g. MMA, FCC, FTC, TCPA, CTIA), there are alcoholic beverage law issues with geo targeting. The rules on alcohol discounts vary by state and by the party selling the alcohol. How will these programs ensure that the underlying offers are legally compliant? How will the geo location sites identify users who are underage or have a chronic drinking problem? What about states where solicitation requires a license, or is prohibited? We expect to see alcohol advertising tiptoe into geo location in 2011, and expect to see regulators follow quickly.

Alcohol.law Digest is published for general informational purposes only and is not intended as legal advice. Copyright © 2010 · All Rights Reserved ·

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