Frantic Parent Syndrome Highlighted in Wine TV Ads

It’s not often that voters here the words “wine” in those wonderful campaign ads that control the airwaves during election season. However, voters in Tennessee are getting a glass full in the run up to the November election.

Having recently passed a law that (finally) allows Tennessee grocery stores to sell wine, the new wine-in-grocery-stores-law came with a caveat: local jurisdictions must first vote to approve the sale of wine in their grocery stores.

So, Red White and Food — the coalition launched by the Tennessee Grocers & Convenience Store Association—has launched a series of TV ads supporting numerous ballot initiatives in numerous communities where grocery store wine sales are on the ballot.

These are interesting ads, anchored by the catch phrase, “Where’s the Wine”? The ad showcased above, however, is the most interesting. Upon watching it, with all those kids running around the grocery store, grabbing things on the shelves, forcing their parents to chase after them, is it any wonder that the parents are looking into the camera with exasperation and asking, “WHERE’S THE WINE??!!??”

I’m sure the child advocates and healthcare professionals out there would tell us that advocating alcohol as a means of combating FPS (Frantic Parents Syndrome) is probably inappropriate. Happily, that hasn’t stopped Red, White and Food from hitting voters exactly where they live.

No less than 78 different Tennessee communities are voting on the question of whether to allow wine sales in grocery stores. Tennessee is one of only a handful of states that have long outlawed the morally nebulous practice of placing a bottle of Merlot into the shopping cart next to the cold cuts. From the looks of the clean-cut, all American families portrayed in the series of ads featuring these shoppers asking, “Where’s the Wine?”, it doesn’t look to me like proponents of wine in grocery stores giving much time to the various moral arguments against buying Pinot and pork in the same venue.

At this point, the anti-grocery store contingent, primarily Tennessee wine stores, are arguing that allowing sales of wine in grocery stores will kill their store sales. It won’t. However, it will force the to change the way they do business. But that’s ok. They have models of how to survive in 30+ other states.

The referendums on wine in grocery stores in Tennessee is a rare example of alcohol politics actually taking the consumer into account. Rarely, in the first place, to ballot initiatives offer the chance to help wine drinkers more easily access products they want. More importantly, alcohol politics almost always are undertaken in the legislature after wholesalers have given out money to lawmakers who are then asked to support their predatory business model.

My prediction is that upwards of 80% of the Wine-in-Grocery-Store votes will pass, if only because having wine available in grocery stores is such a no brainer…Plus, parents need an easy way to easily access the cure for FPS.


5 Responses

  1. Thomas Pellechia - October 21, 2014

    Tom:

    Did you really mean to say this?

    “…have long outlawed the morally nebulous practice of placing a bottle of Merlot into the shopping cart next to the cold cuts.”

    Or do you mean that the outlawing is morally nebulous?

    Or is there a subtle facetiousness to the sentence that, if so, does not come across well over the blognet. 😉

    In any case, I love the ads.

  2. Tom Wark - October 21, 2014

    Thomas:

    I didn’t think the facetiousness was that subtle.

  3. Thomas Pellechia - October 21, 2014

    Tom:

    Take it from this old hand at being misunderstood: online, neither humor nor subtlety is easy to spot without a clue having been offered. Sometimes, just quotation marks can do it.

    • Chris - October 22, 2014

      Thomas – With all due respect, the intended sarcasm and facetiousness came over loud and clear to this reader.

      Tom – keep up the great work!

  4. Scott - October 22, 2014

    One can only imagine how frantic those parents will be when the only one or two dedicated wine stores that remain open in their town are miles away and the best thing the grocery store has is Estancia.


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