‘Zero-alcohol’ products and the guise of responsibility
Viewpoint
Key Messages
- Alcohol companies are using the development and marketing of products described as ‘zero-alcohol’ as evidence of their commitment to social responsibility.
- There is a divergence in how these products are described in public-facing publications, as tools to drive “moderation”, versus industry-facing publications, as tools to drive market growth.
- Citing ‘zero-alcohol’ products as evidence of a commitment to social responsibility while simultaneously using these products to support the brand identify of core alcoholic products and target new alcohol consumption occasions, reflects a pattern of leveraging corporate social responsibility initiatives for commercial gain over public health improvements.
Study Background
A growing category of products mimics the taste and appearance of common alcoholic beverages, such as beer, wine and liquor, but contains no or low levels of ethanol. The terminology for these products remains broad and inconsistent, largely reflecting marketing language adopted from alcohol producers. Common labels include
- ‘zero-alcohol’,
- ‘no-alcohol’,
- ‘alcohol-free’,
- ‘low-alcohol’, and
- ‘reduced-alcohol’.
Importantly, these terms do not reliably reflect actual alcohol content: products marketed as ‘zero’ or ‘no’ alcohol may contain up to 0.5% alcohol by volume (ABV), while those marketed as ‘low’ or ‘reduced’ alcohol may contain up to 1.2% ABV.
The global market for these products has grown significantly, driven by intensive marketing and supply-side activity by established alcohol companies. In Great Britain, 94 of the top 100 best-selling ‘zero-alcohol’ beers are extensions of existing alcohol brands. The market is projected to grow at an annualised rate of 6% through 2027. Major alcohol producers, including AB InBev, Heineken, Asahi, Carlsberg, and Diageo, have all expanded into this category through large-scale marketing campaigns and high-profile sports sponsorships.
Because ‘zero-alcohol’ products often fall outside the regulatory definition of ‘alcohol’, they are usually not yet included in statutory rules governing alcohol marketing and availability. As a result, advertising for these products has appeared in settings where conventional alcohol advertising is outlawed, including public transport, sporting events, and broadcasts subject to statutory advertising restrictions.
Leading health organisations have raised concerns that the alcohol industry is using these products not to reduce population-level alcohol consumption, but to extend brand reach into new environments, target new alcohol consumption occasions, and compete with genuinely non-alcoholic beverages.
Whether ‘zero-alcohol’ products can deliver population health benefits depends entirely on whether they are used to substitute alcoholic drinks – a substitution effect for which current evidence remains limited.
Big Alcohol’s Strategic Push into the ‘Zero-Alcohol’ Market
The global market for ‘zero-alcohol’ products has grown rapidly, driven by intensive marketing and supply-side activity by established alcohol companies. Researchers have described this investment as a strategic response to stabilising alcohol consumption in high-income countries.
Major alcohol producers have aggressively promoted ‘zero-alcohol’ variants of their core brands through mass-media campaigns and sports sponsorships.
For example:
- AB InBev’s Corona Cero became the first ever global beer sponsor of the Olympics,
- Heineken promotes its 0.0 product through a global Formula 1 partnership.
Alcohol industry sources suggest these sponsorships are partly driven by alcohol marketing limits in new markets – a practice researchers call ‘surrogate marketing’, where ‘zero-alcohol’ product promotions effectively substitute for outlawed alcohol advertising.
For example:
- In Ireland, 83.6% of the 61 alcohol brand references recorded during broadcasting of the 2022 Six Nations Rugby Championship were advertisements for ‘zero-alcohol’ variants, despite a statutory outlawing of alcohol advertising during sports events.
Research indicates that exposure to such marketing is likely to influence attitudes and purchasing intentions towards the parent alcohol brand.
The alcohol industry frames its expansion into this market as an effort to reduce alcohol harm, in line with its broader ‘responsible drinking’ corporate social responsibility strategy. However, this framing obscures the significant financial benefits the category offers and risks creating a ‘halo effect’ that improves public perceptions of the industry.
Analyses of alcohol industry corporate social responsibility consistently highlight not only the misleading nature of such claims, but their strategic function in deflecting regulatory pressure and diverting attention from evidence-based alcohol policies.
Study Methodology
To examine how alcohol companies frame ‘zero-alcohol’ products, the researchers analysed publicly available industry comments in online publications and media. Sources were identified through company websites and targeted Google searches, covering annual reports, sustainability and responsibility reports, strategic documents, and media releases. Searches were conducted between August and September 2024, limited to content on select company and brand websites and within the first five Google results pages.
The analysis focused exclusively on major beer producers and their brands, as ‘zero-alcohol’ beer is the largest and fastest-growing segment, accounting for over half of all ‘zero-alcohol’ sales.
While the authors acknowledge the limited scope of this approach, they found a clear pattern:
- in public-facing channels, alcohol companies present ‘zero-alcohol’ products as a means to reduce alcohol use;
- in industry-facing channels – such as trade and business publications – company executives discuss the same products as tools to increase alcohol consumption occasions and compete with non-alcoholic beverages.
The authors note these two objectives are not aligned and are unlikely to be mutually reinforcing.
The Public-Facing Narrative: ‘Zero-Alcohol’ as a Tool for Corporate Social “Responsibility”
Despite limited evidence to support such claims, major alcohol companies have publicly championed ‘zero-alcohol’ products as a public health benefit, framing the growth of their market as proof of their positive social contribution.
These products feature prominently in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies of major global beer producers – including AB InBev, Heineken, Asahi, Kirin, Carlsberg, and Diageo – and have even been cited as evidence of contributions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Taken from the Asahi Group’s 2023 Sustainability Report:
In 2023, non- and low-alcohol beers made up 31.3% of our beer portfolio in Australia and New Zealand. This is a reflection of the important role we play in contributing to a responsible drinking culture in Oceania.”
Asahi Group’s 2023 Sustainability Report
Another example the researchers include in the study is from AB InBev, the world’s largest beer producer:
When consumers … incorporate in their [alcohol consumption] occasions the consumption of no-alcohol beer, both moderation and responsible [alcohol use] are reinforced and public health outcomes at aggregate levels may improve. We are committed to expanding our no-alcohol beer offerings.”
AB InBev’s ‘Smart Drinking’ corporate social responsibility campaign
In public-facing channels such as corporate reports and media releases, ‘zero-alcohol’ products are consistently framed as tools for ‘moderation’ and ‘responsible consumption’. This relies on deliberately vague and undefined ‘responsible drinking’ messaging – a well-documented feature of alcohol industry CSR activities. Companies imply that growing ‘zero-alcohol’ sales reflect a broader cultural shift towards declining alcohol use, and use metrics such as portfolio composition or media spend as CSR performance indicators. In this way they try to create the impression that growth in the ‘zero-alcohol’ market comes at the expense of alcohol consumption.
In reality, Big Alcohol’s own analysis acknowledges that ‘zero-alcohol’ products are mostly replacing non-alcoholic drinks on the same occasions, representing an incremental growth opportunity rather than a substitution for alcohol. The public narrative of “moderation” therefore appears to be contradicted both by the evidence and by how Big Alcohol discusses these products in commercial contexts.
The Industry-Facing Reality: ‘Zero-Alcohol’ as a Tool for Alcohol Market Growth
While alcohol companies publicly frame ‘zero-alcohol’ products as tools for “moderation”, a starkly different picture emerges in alcohol industry-facing channels.
In trade publications and business interviews, alcohol executives are candid that these products are designed to expand the total alcohol market – not reduce it – by targeting new alcohol consumption occasions and competing directly with genuinely non-alcoholic beverages such as soft drinks, water, and coffee.
For example:
- A Director at Heineken UK described Heineken 0.0 as a product with “no limit to when you can drink this,” explicitly positioning it as a competitor to Coke, Fanta, and spring water.
- The CEO of AB InBev acknowledged that growth is coming from outside “traditional beer consumption moments.” AB InBev’s own 2023 annual report categorises ‘zero-alcohol’ products under ‘occasions development’ – one of five levers to “lead and grow the category” of beer.
- Heineken, meanwhile, celebrated a ‘zero-alcohol’ campaign in an advertising industry publication for having “almost no cannibalization” while delivering a “positive halo effect” on the Heineken brand
- The halo effect is what experts describe as the product’s true purpose: to increase alcohol consumption and appear “responsible” at the same time.
The study reveals that AB InBev certainly view the ‘zero-alcohol’ market as an opportunity for alcohol market growth:
We are expanding beer consumption beyond traditional occasions through our no-alcohol offerings …”
AB InBev 2023 annual report
Marketing campaigns have reinforced this strategy by depicting ‘zero-alcohol’ products being consumed in settings where alcohol would not normally be accepted, such as whilst driving, at work, and operating heavy machinery. This is particularly concerning given that many ‘zero-alcohol’ products still contain measurable amounts of alcohol, and that research shows young people associate these products – which mimic the branding and appearance of their alcoholic counterparts – with alcohol rather than soft drinks.
The extension of alcohol branding into such contexts risks further normalising alcohol use, especially among young people.
Key Findings and Conclusion: A Tale of Two Narratives
The study reveals a clear divergence between how alcohol companies publicly frame ‘zero-alcohol’ products and how their executives discuss them in commercial contexts. Publicly, these products are presented as tools for “moderation” and “responsible” consumption. Privately, in industry-facing channels, they are discussed as instruments for market expansion, brand growth, and capturing new drinking occasions.
While ‘zero-alcohol’ products could in principle support the prevention and reduction of alcohol harm – if used to genuinely substitute alcoholic beverages – the evidence for this is currently limited. Studies show these products are more commonly consumed by people who already drink alcohol, including at high-risk levels, but evidence of actual substitution and reduced alcohol use remains weak. There is, as yet, no evidence that an expanding ‘zero-alcohol’ market translates into a public health benefit.
On the contrary, parents, young people, and public health advocates have raised concerns that the largely unregulated marketing and availability of zero-alcohol products may increase alcohol brand penetration, normalise alcohol use, and even serve as a gateway to alcohol consumption. Research has shown that exposure to ‘zero-alcohol’ products produces similar effects on young people as exposure to alcoholic beverages.
The researchers conclude that alcohol companies citing ‘zero-alcohol’ products as evidence of social responsibility – while simultaneously using them to expand alcohol markets, create new alcohol consumption occasions, and increase brand awareness – reflects a broader pattern of leveraging corporate social responsibility for commercial gain rather than genuine public health improvement.
Moreover, the evidence indicates that alcohol industry corporate social responsibility activities not only fail to prevent and reduce alcohol harm, but are actively used to shape the framing of alcohol policy in ways that serve industry interests, mitigate regulatory pressure, and drive product acceptability. The authors caution those working in public health to critically scrutinise claims of altruism from Big Alcohol corporations that profit from the sale of a health-harming product.
Abstract
Alcohol companies have expanded their presence in the ‘zero-alcohol’ market with intensive product development and marketing activities. This has been framed by the alcohol industry as an effort to reduce or solve alcohol-related harm.
Such framing fails to acknowledge the financial benefits ‘zero-alcohol’ products offer alcohol companies and the ongoing concerns regarding alcohol brand marketing.
To help inform an understanding of alcohol industry priorities, the researchers looked at comments about ‘zero-alcohol’ products by major beer companies in online publications. In public-facing channels, ‘zero-alcohol’ products were discussed as tools for moderation, and their market a reflection of the ‘good’ that companies are doing.
However, this contrasts with how they were discussed in industry-facing channels, as tools to expand markets, target new alcohol consumption occasions and compete with non-alcoholic beverages.
Alcohol companies citing ‘zero-alcohol’ products as evidence of their commitment to social responsibility reflects a broader pattern of leveraging corporate social responsibility initiatives for commercial gain over genuine public health improvements.