Drinkaware: What's Britain Drinking?

Investigating the UK's festive alcohol problem: Campaign concept, art direction and design.

Everybody drinks too much at Christmas, even your mum, but nobody really thinks about it. In 2009 Drinkaware asked us to do something about that, so we launched a national experiment to work out just how much alcohol we pour down our collective throat over the festive period.

We built an ambitious integrated campaign which revolved around people telling us how much they'd drunk in the last 24 hours. We collected demographic information as well, so we could display a whole load of different metrics - does the North West drink more than the South East? What's the favourite drink of women aged 21-30? Does anybody actually like Lambrini? Etc.

We also had promo staff at key locations around the country, encouraging passing shoppers to share their drink secrets. Data from all the respondents - both on and offline - was streamed to big screens in the same locations, the biggest of which (in Covent Garden) was streamed back to the Drinkaware site via webcam, so people filling in their info online could see it broadcast.

The lure of transient fame proved powerful - so powerful that at one point the site couldn't handle the strain and had to have a little lie down. The campaign was Drinkaware's most successful ever, polling over 30,000 people throughout December. We also ran a banner campaign, which generated a well-above-average 3% conversion rate. It was shortlisted for the 2010 CIPR Excellence best integrated campaign award, and got coverage throughout the media.