In the 1989-90 academic year, the health promotion staff at Northern Illinois University (NIU), led by Michael Haines, became the first to use social marketing methods to inform students that—contrary to what they believed—the majority of their peers were in fact moderate and safe drinkers.
Annual self-report health assessment surveys and other data gathered at NIU over a multi-year period showed dramatic increases in the percentage of students who correctly perceived the moderate campus norm, along with significant concurrent increases in safer drinking and abstaining, as well as decreases in alcohol-related injuries.
Source:
Berkowitz, A. D. (2005). An overview of the social norms approach. Chapter 13 in Lederman, L. C., & Steward, L. P. (eds.) Changing the Culture of College Drinking: A Socially Situated Health Communication Campaign. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.