Campaign for responsible retailing of age restricted products
In order to help retailers be vigilant in preventing the sale of tobacco products to minors, the Be Age OK campaign is ramping up with a dedicated awareness week this month
Print19 June 2015
The Show Me I.D. Awareness Week 2015 kicks off on Monday, 22 June and will involve activities in nearly 3,000 stores right across the country. The Show Me I.D – Be Age Ok campaign is Ireland’s largest youth access prevention campaign and aims to assist retailers in preventing minors from accessing tobacco and other age restricted products.
Over the last four years, the Show Me I.D campaign has grown from strength to strength and to date nearly 7,000 retail staff have clicked onto www.showmeid.ie to check out the free, online training on age restricted sales.
Responsibility packs
As part of Awareness Week 2015, Show Me I.D Retailer Responsibility Packs will be sent out to nearly 3,000 retail outlets across the country containing useful information and point of sale materials. The aim of these materials is to provide retail managers and staff with all the information and tools to assist in the prevention of sales of age restricted products to minors.
The awareness week will also involve a concerted effort by retailers and trade associations across the country to make sure that their staff and members are up to date on the dos and don’ts when it comes to the sale of age restricted products.
Consistently looking for ways to innovate, Show Me I.D recently launched a comprehensive social media campaign across both Facebook and Twitter to communicate the key training messages to retail staff around the country to prevent sales of age restricted products to minors. You can follow the campaign on both sites.
From a retailer’s perspective
Retail store owner, Aaron Massey believes it is vital that there is effective implementation of these initiatives: “While the majority of Ireland’s retailers are compliant when it comes to tobacco sales, there is still some work to be done to ensure all retailers and their staff comply with age restricted sales.
“However, this level of compliance can only be maintained by the retail trade implementing effective initiatives. Show Me I.D – Be Age Ok is currently the only youth access prevention programme available to retailers to ensure that their staff are trained on exactly what they can and can’t do when it comes to age restricted products. The programme also empowers them to deal with those difficult conversations around refusal,” continues Massey.
“Retailers do a terrific job in preventing underage access, as shown by the results of inspections by the Health Service Executive in 2012 which shows an 84.8% compliance rate. However, there is always room for improvement and the Show Me I.D Awareness Week is a fantastic opportunity to remind retailers of the importance of staff training in this area,” says Massey.
“As part of the Show Me I.D Awareness Week, over 15,000 people actively engaged in retail will be contacted through the in-store and social media aspects of this campaign to get the message across that properly trained staff are key to complying with age restricted sales.”
Support from Retail Excellence Ireland
According to David Fitzsimons, CEO, Retail Excellence Ireland: “The Show Me I.D – Be Age Ok campaign provides retailers with an excellent training opportunity to ensure that their staff know exactly what they can and cannot sell to minors and how to deal with difficult situations arising from the non-sale of age-restricted products. This protects minors but also retailers and their staff.”
In 2014, Show Me I.D became the industry standard in youth access prevention. Show Me I.D – Be Age Ok is supported by Retail Excellence Ireland, the Convenience Stores and Newsagents Association (CSNA), the representative organisation for independent family grocers (RGDATA), the National Federation of Retail Newsagents (NFRN), the Irish Tobacco Manufacturers Advisory Committee (ITMAC), the Vintners Federation of Ireland (VFI), the National Off-Licence Association (NOFFLA) and the South Dublin Chamber of Commerce (SDC).
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