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Home » 37% of beer websites have age gates. Time to review yours?

37% of beer websites have age gates. Time to review yours?

  • 2 min read

I covered two really important marketing topics to me in today’s newsletter: placing an age gate in front of beverage alcohol websites and adding a privacy policy.  To me, using an age gate really isn’t even a question.  Coming from wine & spirits before working in beer, I worked closely with the legal departments to ensure we were always using best-practices with respect to marketing to adults of legal purchase age.  There was no gray-area there, and we were always on the radar of State and local authorities to be on our best behavior because we were in what’s called a “sin” industry.  But what does that mean for craft beer?  Small breweries may be off-the-radar at this point, however it’s important to get ahead of putting an age gate in place so that down the road it is not a hurry-up-and-comply situation where everyone is scrambling.

MailChimp archive:
https://mailchi.mp/f8eff13437b9/180731_agegate?e=a83dcf3085
Download:
https://app.box.com/s/subzfee8ckrdp8nl11obd0in6m28ve91

The Brewers Association has been very clear on what they expect of independent craft breweries today (from the Brewers Association Marketing and Advertising Code: Digital Media Guidelines):

“Brewers should require disclosure of a viewer’s date of birth with a message indicating that brewers’ products are intended only for those of legal drinking age:

  1. at the entry to their websites
  2. at the point of download for permanent use media with or without access to a brewer’s website; and
  3. with third-party compliant digital media sites that include interactive features in brewer advertisements.”

I’m also urging clients to create, review or update their privacy policy on their brand website. Given all the talk recently about the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it’s a miss for any website not to have a privacy policy. There are a number of privacy policy “builders” out there that comply with the new regulations, including this one from Shopify. You can check out mine here. Have a great week, cheers!