Member-only story
Myth of Responsible Drinking
We are being socially engineered!
Alcohol manufacturers have been adding small catch phrase to their ad copy: “Drink Responsibly!” What exactly is the purpose behind this phrase? To really understand the advertising psychology, we first need to understand some basic business theory.
Regardless of whatever product or service that is being sold, the profits come from the last few percent of total sales. In other words, the first 90% to 98% of sales is used to pay for wages, supplies, bank loans, etc. The company can only be said to be profitable when it gets those last few percent of sales. Because much of the costs have been paid by the first 90% or so of sales, any sales increase after this point is almost all profit. So if the business somehow finds an extra 2% in sales, this will translate into a much greater profit increase for the owners. This business concept is known as leveraging, and it is quite interesting in that the business is really not that much busier than before the 2% sales increase. Yet that small change in sales can make the business owners very wealthy as opposed to just surviving.
Leverage has its reverse consequences. For example, if the business loses 5% or 15% of its sales, employees are sometimes sacrificed so the business can survive to earn profits in better times.
