On Friday celebrity entertainer Khanyi Mbau posted a video on social media asking whether the alarming rise in Covid-19 cases had in fact been due to alcohol.
Even though alcohol sales are currently banned, Covid-19 infections are going up in the scariest way, she argued.
“I did my math,” she claimed, and for the past three alcohol bans, the liquor industry has “lost almost 1,000% of its profits”. She went on to claim that money could be used to help the health industry to fight the pandemic and even help conduct research for a vaccine.
It would later emerge that Mbau was one of a number of social influencers enlisted by SAB for its multi-approach campaign to get the government to unban the sale of liquor.
The company has also gone to court to challenge the ban.
Let’s be clear. SAB is well within its rights to fight against the alcohol ban.
Its use of social influencers to drive its message is also a permissible form of popular advertising.
It is not illegal. However, in the context of the pandemic in which we find ourselves, it is crass, disingenuous and leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
The social media campaign lacked the transparency we ought to demand from a corporate citizen.
None of the posts by these influencers were labelled as sponsored by SAB, thus suggesting they were meant to fool an unsuspecting public to believe that they were genuinely held opinions rather than curated scripts.
Second, the messaging of the campaign is disingenuous in its projection of revenue from the sale of alcohol as potentially lifesaving against the pandemic rather than what it primarily is, income for an industry trying to survive like any other.
Third, the campaign does not address the most fundamental issue, which is that alcohol is without a doubt a massive driver of reckless behaviour that not only compromises adherence to health protocols but unnecessarily cripples our health facilities.
Any campaign that papers over this reality does not only undermine the intelligence of its audience, it is simply reckless and must be rejected as such.
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