What's Britain drinking this Christmas?

This festive campaign made use of the Drinkaware website homepage, PR activity, experiential events and online advertising to raise awareness of units as measurement of alcohol.

What we did

We invited the UK to be part of an exciting ‘live’ experiment to investigate the nation’s drinking habits over Christmas, asking people how much alcohol they had consumed in the last 24 hours.

PR and online worked in unison to drive users to our new-look festive 'unit calculator', which appeared on the Drinkaware website, online ads, and on portable touch-screens in city centre locations around the country. All of these channels could be used to complete our interactive survey, with the data collected in a central database.

Participation

More than 111,000 people engaged with the campaign during December, and by taking part they learnt important facts about the daily guidelines for alcohol consumption, and the dangers of exceeding them. This included personalised feedback for each user, based on their drinking consumption. Users could also see how their own drinking habits compared with other participants.

On the road

The centrepiece of the campaign was a giant screen in Covent Garden, which displayed live stats from our central database to London's Christmas shoppers. Data was displayed ‘live’ on the giant screen as it was collected, so that participants could see their name and feedback on their drinking appear immediately. Live events also took place around the UK, in Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow.

A webcam also filmed the big screen in Covent Garden and the activity around it, sending a live video stream to the Drinkaware website homepage. This worked in connecting website users to the real-world regional event, and vice-versa.

Results

The campaign was a massive success - 111,000 people engaging with the campaign, and 30,400 entries into our central drinking database.

The campaign also generated over 100 pieces of media coverage with highlights including Daily Mirror, Evening Standard, AOL and our spokespeople appearing on GMTV, STV and BBC London amongst others.