SOCIAL-NORMS MARKETING

What's the best way to stop college students from drinking? Invoke their
inner lemmings.

Social-norms marketing is the science of persuading people to go along with
the crowd. The technique works because people are allelomimetic ­ that is,
like cows and other herd animals, our behavior is influenced by the
behavior of those around us. The technique stems from a watershed study
conducted by H. Wesley Perkins, a professor of sociology at Hobart and
William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y. Perkins found that students
consistently overestimated how much alcohol their fellow students drank. In
turn, these students drank more themselves, in an attempt to meet their
misperceived standard of normalcy.

Northern Illinois University began the first social-norms marketing
campaign on a college campus in 1990, using newspaper ads, posters and
handouts to deliver the message that, contrary to popular belief, most
students had fewer than five drinks when they partied. By 1999, incidents
of heavy drinking (five or more drinks) by Northern Illinois University
students was down 44 percent.

This year universities across the country have adopted social-norms
marketing. Last summer, all 23 campuses in the California state university
system initiated social-norms campaigns to curb drinking, as have dozens of
universities elsewhere in the United States. Rather than telling students
to ''Just say no!'' they are saying, in effect, ''Just be like everyone else.''

Michael P. Haines, director of the National Social Norms Resource Center in
DeKalb, Ill., says social-norms marketing is moving beyond college
campuses. Various state health departments are trying the technique out on
issues like smoking, seat belts, safe sex and date rape. Haines says
social-norms marketing works in part because, after years of ''wars on
drugs, kids, teens and S.T.D.'s, the time is right for messages that are
affirming and positive.''