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The 2002 Alcohol Monopoly Campaign 179

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The core message of the 2002 campaign was to argue for the Swedish alcohol
monopoly or what would happen if Systembolaget was abolished. Every ad in
this campaign presented advantages of Systembolaget and was frank in tone,
and each headline was followed by a large section of text. In total, there were five
ads, two of which are shown in Figures 8-1 and 8-2.

Media

Newspapers were used as the prime media group to disseminate the campaign
message in 2002. Morning press was considered the most appropriate for the
campaign because the ad would then be surrounded by social and news reports.
The intention was to catch the readers at the most convenient moment when
they read the daily news. A large share of the Swedish population reads the
morning press (74% in 2002), especially people between 30 and 49 years old
(70%) and between 50 and 85 years old (84%; Westlund, 2007).
For the first campaign, five ads were placed in both national and local
morning press, in a total of 90 newspapers. The reach was at least 70%. The
ads ran on five occasions, mainly during weekdays, during two weeks in
November 2002. A new ad was used each time. In addition to this, ads were
placed in the subway in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, to increase the
reach. The total official gross media cost for the campaign was SEK10.7 mil-
lion (approximately US$1.16 million). The total production time was six
weeks carried out in late 2002.

Evaluation

The campaign has been thoroughly evaluated by different marketing research
companies using two different types of measurements. One focused on the ef-
fects of the ads (outputs), and the other focused on the attitude to the alcohol
monopoly (outcome).

The Campaign Outputs

The evaluation of the 2002 campaign was made toward the end of the year. A
telephone survey was conducted among a national random sample of 1,018 in-
dividuals from age 16 and older. The reason for monitoring consumers from age
16 is that they are becoming customers in a few years, and their attitudes are,
therefore, of interest for Systembolaget. The purpose was to evaluate how the