The dialogues provided a space in which IARD was able to gather meaningful input from multiple stakeholders globally to inform content for standards, principles and guidelines to stimulate industry action.
IARD CEOs guiding principles to inform future actions
In 2019, the global CEOs of IARD member companies adopted a set of guiding principles for future actions to reduce harmful drinking. These were directly informed by lessons from the first three regional Wilton Park dialogues and guided the development of the global standards set out later.
- Harms focused: promote consumer messages that demonstrate consequences of, and actively discourage, harmful drinking, not just about how to drink responsibly.
- Community led: engage and listen to the community first and include them throughout. Utilize in-community assessments to identify social norms and determine appropriate interventions.
- Evidence based: promote evidence-based and recognized tools to reduce harmful drinking.
- Partnership: align and partner with the widest breadth of local public, private, and civil society stakeholders. Increase widespread adoption of these guiding principles, through IARD leadership.
- Unique contribution: harness innovations and technology unique to the sector. Publicly share data on the reach and impact of interventions to tackle harmful drinking.
Developing actions to reduce the harmful use of alcohol
Wilton Park facilitated discussions among a broad group of stakeholders who have helped to shape and inform IARD actions to reduce harmful use, notably in the areas of:
- raising standards for online sales and delivery of alcohol
- raising standards in digital marketing
- increasing data sharing between industry, academia and public health.
To date, IARD has engaged over 35 global partners to embed and widen the implementation of its global standards, including some of the world’s most prominent digital platforms, e-commerce retailers, and advertising agencies.
Global standards for online sale and delivery of alcohol (May 2021)
IARD member companies partnered with 14 (now more than 20) prominent global and regional online retailers and e-commerce and delivery platforms to develop and enhance safeguards to prevent the online sale and delivery of alcohol to minors and reduce harmful drinking among adults.
The Global standards for e-commerce include:
- enhancing safeguards and security measures that aim to prevent minors from being able to buy alcohol
- mechanisms to prevent alcohol being delivered to minors, to individuals showing visible signs of intoxication, or where prohibited by law
- providing tools, information, and education, or other support to drivers to empower them to deny deliveryenhancing consumer information and control
- promoting global standards as a resource to support the development of national level codes and practices that build on local regulation.
To support the implementation of the global standards, IARD developed Frontline delivery agent training to help ensure alcohol is delivered responsibly. This is a free online tool that is available in several languages; it also supports delivery agents to refuse delivery in the following scenarios:
- where valid ID cannot be produced when age is in question
- where those of legal purchase age appear to be purchasing alcohol for minors
- where recipients are knowingly intoxicated.
Global standards to ensure responsible marketing of alcohol by social media influencers (September 2021)
To help prevent those under-age from seeing alcohol advertising on social media channels, IARD members, alongside global advertising, public relations and influencer agencies, collaborated to establish common standards relating to influencer and creator marketing. The principles cover the selection, engagement, and monitoring of influencers.
- Influencer guiding principles (IGPs)
- Influencer pledge
- Influencer how-to video (translated into several languages)
Data sharing portal (June 2023)
The WHO Global Alcohol Action Plan called for Economic Operators to share more data to inform public health research and actions to reduce the harmful use of alcohol. As part of its evolving response to this request, IARD has developed an open access Data Sharing Portalthat collates publicly available literature that uses or includes industry data, as well as data series, analyses, and methodologies accessible from market research companies at a cost. The portal also contains resources such as guiding principles, considerations, and expectations to support data and information sharing.
Further information for consumers
Feedback from stakeholders convened by Wilton Park was also instrumental to IARD’s Labelling commitments to improve consumer information.
Additional information on IARD standards is available here.