Assignment 1: Critical

Writing Analysis

Critical
Thinking
“New face of alcohol
promotion defies advertising
restrictions”

David WYMAN
In this article written by Nicholas Carah (Lecturer in Communication for The
University of Queensland) and Sven Brodmerkel (Assistant Professor for
Integrated Marketing Communications at Bond University), the limitations of
some proposed bills about future regulations of alcohol marketing are highlighted,
and the implications of these limitations are discussed. Through this critical writing
analysis, I am aiming to review this article and examine the arguments presented in
terms of clarity, cohesion, objectivity and subjectivity, evidence, citations and
structure. I will also be reflecting on how these aspects influence the way a reader
may respond to the piece.

Carah, N and Brodmerkel, S indicate that greater action is required in order to

regulate how alcohol is marketed online, as current laws allow alcohol brands to
use online platforms such as Facebook in order to present their products using
various marketing tactics that undermine current regulations that do not take into
account other forms of advertisement. This thesis is introduced slowly and finally
wrapped up by the final concluding paragraphs which results in a difficult read that
fails on some levels to uphold a readers interest in the article.

The authors of this article have clearly made an effort to write a very objective
piece of writing, resulting in many statements of facts and evidence. This makes it
much more difficult for the reader to critique the presented arguments. The adverse
effect is that it becomes quite a bit harder to interpret the authors’ thesis. This
results in a piece of writing that is very slow to engage the reader, who is
bombarded with facts that mean nothing to them until they are associated with a
clear contention.

Evidence is evident throughout the article, however there are few citations
presented to support this evidence. Strong use of evidence is still effective in
delivering the authors’ intentions, particularly with their example of how
Bundaberg utilize participatory engagement in order to “prompt fans to express
their drinking culture, often saying things that brands could never explicitly say
themselves without violating alcohol advertising regulations.” (Brodmerkel &
Carah, 2014)

The structure of this article unfortunately is one of its major drawbacks. Due to the
drawn out expression of the authors’ thesis, readers are presented with lots of
meaningless data before they can connect it to the intent of the authors. This means
that readers are not engaged quickly at the beginning of the piece and therefore are
much less likely to read the entire thing. Those readers that do persist will likely
not retain many of the evidence presented as they were still trying to figure out
what the writers actually wanted to say.

“New face of alcohol promotion defies advertising restrictions” presents useful and
powerful data to support the thesis presented, however, this article falls slightly
short in its delivery, and as a result becomes a somewhat difficult read, despite
being a short piece. Overall I believe that re-structuring and
Creating an engaging and concise introduction are key features in order to maintain
the efficacy of their point and increase their audiences retention of the presented
information.