Heimkaup emails promote alcohol despite Icelandic advertising ban

Online retailer Heimkaup regularly sends targeted marketing emails promoting alcohol, including Gull Lite beer and red wine, Morgunblaðið reports. Heimkaup is owned by Drangar, which is in turn owned by investment company Skel.

The emails appear to conflict with Iceland’s alcohol laws, which prohibit advertising alcohol. Article 20 also bans showing alcohol consumption or handling in advertisements for other products or services, and defines advertising broadly to include marketing notices featuring alcoholic drinks or related brands and materials.

Morgunblaðið asked the Media Commission whether the emails were allowed and whether media companies could send similar messages. Its director, Elfa Ýr Gylfadóttir, said media legislation does not apply because the activity is not media publishing. The messages are commercial communications and therefore fall under alcohol laws, she said. The commission has not considered whether media companies could send such emails, so she could not comment on that.

Ólafur Stephensen, director of the Association of Employers, said alcohol sales and advertising rules were marked by inconsistency on the part of the state. He pointed to the state handing control of the country’s largest alcohol shop at Leifsstöð to a private company last year, while prosecuting private businesses including Smáríkið, Santé and Heimkaup. Those companies use provisions in the European Economic Area Agreement to sell alcohol through dedicated online wine shops, he said.

Stephensen said there was little that could be done about companies sending alcohol marketing emails to people who had signed up to receive them, given the lack of rules. The situation might be different when messages go to people who had not consented to receive them, he said.

He described the legislation on alcohol sales and marketing as outdated and said it did not reflect changes in technology or business practices. Although the law bans alcohol advertising, he said, it does not set out rules for such advertising. He added that alcohol promotions have long appeared in the media, including in foreign sports broadcasts, newspapers and magazines, and on overseas social media platforms and websites.