{
  "id": "MSG-179",
  "slug": "msg-179",
  "title": "Alcohol content must not be aimed at people under the drinking age",
  "statement": "Alcohol brands, and drinks designed to resemble alcoholic ones, must not be marketed in a way that appeals to or targets people under 21.",
  "rationale": "An age gate is the whole basis on which alcohol messaging is permitted at all, so copy built to appeal to minors defeats the mechanism rather than failing to install it — which is why T-Mobile treats this as its own refusal rather than as an age-gating defect. Alcohol-resembling drinks are named explicitly because they slip the gate by construction: an alcohol-free brand extension in the same livery is sold to the same audience with none of the restrictions, and the brand association is the marketing. The innocent cause is a genuine 0% product line marketed on exactly the assets built for the alcoholic one.",
  "layer": "MESSAGE_CONTENT",
  "layerSlug": "message-content",
  "object": "campaign.sample[] + campaign.description",
  "severity": "BLOCKING",
  "detectability": [
    "AI_FORM"
  ],
  "failureClass": "HARD_STOP",
  "authorities": [
    "T-Mobile"
  ],
  "codes": [
    {
      "provider": "Bandwidth",
      "code": "706",
      "remediable": true
    },
    {
      "provider": "Twilio",
      "code": "30456",
      "remediable": false
    }
  ],
  "applicabilityText": "Applies to every 10DLC registration.",
  "universal": true,
  "remediation": "Remove the youth-facing appeal — the cartoon, the school or campus timing, the sweet-confectionery framing, the under-21 talent — and market the drink to adults. Note that the age gate is not the answer to this finding: gating the site is already required for alcohol content, and a campaign that targets minors is refused whether or not the gate exists.",
  "pitfalls": [
    "A zero-alcohol product does not escape this when it carries the parent brand's identity — the brand is what is being marketed, and it is an alcohol brand."
  ],
  "phase": "approval",
  "automated": true,
  "url": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/message-content/msg-179/",
  "markdown": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/message-content/msg-179.md",
  "registry": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/",
  "updated": "2026-07-25",
  "licence": "CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}