• NY Times, Monday, February 13, 2006 11:46 AM

Anheuser-Busch's popular Super Bowl ads are coming under attack for appealing to underage drinkers, even though A-B and other brewers say they strive not to target young people. The controversy was sparked by results of a survey of Super Bowl ads that breaks down voting by age and other demographic measures. In the so-called Adbowl poll, A-B ads for Bud Light ads ranked first, second and fourth in popularity. A Budweiser ad won third. Steve McKee, president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland, an advertising agency in Albuquerque that developed the poll, noted that the beer ads also scored well with adults. "I'm not saying one way or another that beer companies target kids, but to infer that they're targeting kids simply because kids like their commercials is a giant leap." But Amon Rappaport, a spokesman for the Marin Institute, an industry watchdog based in California, objected to an A-B Super Bowl ad in which a young Clydesdale pulls its first wooden beer cart. "Using a baby Clydesdale to sell beer to kids is just like using Joe Camel to sell cigarettes," Rappaport said.

Read the whole story at NY Times »