Hasta La Creative!

For many marketers getting to work on a beer commercial for the Super Bowl is a dream come true. The budgets are boundless. The ideas are big. The sky is the limit. But, it’s a different world at the point of sale in the bars and liquor stores. Advertisers must navigate a confounding and constricting maze of laws and regulations and getting it wrong carries significant risks.

Due to new initiatives by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau to forge partnerships with the states, this year’s Super Bowl might prove to be a risky one for run-ins with regulators, a time when the regulators’ senses are often already heightened because of the uptick in marketing and promotional activity.

Recently, the TTB joined forces with alcohol regulatory agencies in Illinois and Florida to ferret out “pay to play” schemes where manufacturers pay liquor stores and bars to stock their products. In fact, the TTB described a Miami sting as the “largest trade practice enforcement operation that TTB has initiated to date.” The TTB couched their overall effort as a drive to “secure a level playing field nationwide for law-abiding businesses.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com