I drink, you drink, we drink

31st May. Boris stops people drinking on public transport in London. So no surprises that there's a big party - centred on the circle line. Lots of drunken behaviour, vomiting and a number of arrests in this alcohol fuelled flash mob.

For me, echoes of the Paris Commune and the student uprisings of the 1960s. People trying to lay claim on a public space and redefine what different boundaries stand for. In this case, we're seeing a protest / class struggle / dispute over both physical and social boundaries, with the resistance coming in a playful manner (reminiscent of the Situationist International).

A few years ago, we would have marvelled how this was organised through social networks and mobile phones. (But though those of us who went to raves in the 80s/90s know that you don't need digital technology to organise some unlicensed fun.)

Interestingly, (if you follow Mark Earls and his Herd theory) this circle line party wasn't some centrally-controlled and organised event. There weren't some 'key influencers' who told everyone else what to do.

It actually came about from many different groups and people debating about the change in the law and thinking it would be a good idea to commemorate the occasion in the best way we know - a massive piss up. And the circle line pub crawl has been a student favourite for generations.

So the perfect conditions for an idea to be spread / imitated through people's behaviour:

* lots of different groups all with similar beliefs
* a highly dispersed network, with many 'weak links' that allowed these different groups to hear about what others were planning
* and yes, I suppose, the technology to make it easy for these weak links to be connected and for the idea to be spread
* an incredibly visible action that is easy to imitate

Lots of people drank far too much, and I'm sure there were many sore heads the next day. But I wonder how much more people drank because they got caught up in the occasion? Many would have gone with the intention of drinking as much as possible. And there were enough of these to get a critical mass of people behaving in one way. Through imitation and subconsiously wanting to fit in, many more will have changed their behaviour away from what they rationally would have intended.

It's like a night after work. You go out with no intention of staying out too long. If there are one or two people wanting to carry on, that's not enough to make you stay. No matter how influential they are. But if there are a few more, and the night is more interesting / entertaining that you expected, you stay out. When you see someone who's not normally out having a few, it makes you feel better about staying out yourself.

So I was particularly interested to read this month's Brand Strategy, where Pamela Bower-Nye, global marketing director for attitudes to alcohol at Diageo talks about their responsible drinking strategy.

She talks about the need to move away from lecturing about responsible drinking to talking about 'choices'. Reading what she says, the focus of Diageo's campaign is on making the consequences of irresponsible drinking personal - being excluded by their social peers for being an embarrassment. (Making people think about personal consequences is also the strategy behind Leo Burnett's drink and drive ad campaign).

However, I think for these campaigns to work, its not enough to give people a message when they're sitting in their living rooms - no matter how personal / relevant / engaging the message might seem.

It requires brand action alongside brand message. This means doing something at the moment of choice - i.e. at a night out - something that actually changes people's behaviour at that moment, so that others imitate.