#1335 2026 · FARE / Every Moment Matters (Berlin, Perth) · Public health advertising
FARE made partners and friends enforce the pregnant woman's alcohol-free months
the problem
Lectures to pregnant women didn't move abstention; the people around her were never recruited to help
background
FARE's national alcohol-and-pregnancy program ran from November 2021 with a first phase speaking directly to women who were pregnant or trying to conceive. The evidence from that phase was strong — abstention after pregnancy confirmation rose from 66% to 80.2% between October 2021 and October 2023 — but the agency Berlin, Perth saw that preaching at the drinker again could not push the number higher, because the bottleneck was no longer awareness. A willing abstainer already knows the risk; what kept failing her was the room around her — the partner offering a drink, the social event pouring alcohol, the friends treating her sobriety as a side note.
The default public-health play was a louder, more graphic warning aimed at the individual woman — but that multiplies the scolding of a person already trying, and never reaches the people who actually steer her daily environment.
what everyone would do
The textbook response was a louder, more graphic warning to the pregnant woman herself — bigger fonts, worse pictures, harsher 'don't drink' framing aimed at the drinker. It fails because awareness is not the bottleneck: a willing abstainer already knows the risk, and no amount of messaging to the individual changes what the people and drinks in her room do. The campaigns fought a daily decision with a broadcast aimed at a person who had already decided.
what they saw
A behaviour held up privately is sustained by the room, not the will — so stop messaging the actor and hand everyone beside her the small acts that make the right choice the social default.
the move
FARE's second phase, 'We All Have a Part to Play', stopped addressing the pregnant woman and made everyone else in the room the audience. Launched nationally on 16 August 2026 across out-of-home, online video, social, radio and digital, it positions an alcohol-free pregnancy as a shared, not individual, responsibility and hands partners, family and friends concrete micro-acts of enforcement — always offering an alcohol-free option, going alcohol-free alongside her, offering support instead of opinions. The film unfolds like a memory: a black-and-white week-by-week photographic archive of a real pregnancy before colour and movement bring it alive, cast with real couples, families and friends, not actors.
why it works
Abstaining for nine months is a decision the drinker re-makes every day, dozens of times, in environments where alcohol is the default — so a message aimed at her fights one person's resolve against the whole weight of the room, and social pressure usually wins. By making the room itself the audience, the campaign converts indifferent bystanders into enforcers who restructure the environment: the alcohol-free option is now physically present, the partner models abstention, no one passes judgement. The drinker's daily choice stops being a lonely fight and becomes the supported default, and the number of decision-points where the norm is upheld multiplies by the size of her network — which is why a cheap broadcast can move a repeated private behaviour that lecturing the individual has never moved.
the payoff
Per SAHMRI/NCETA evaluation, recently-pregnant women's abstention rose 66% (2021) to 80.2% (2023); a 2024 SROI returned $9 per $1.
where it breaks
It fails wherever the behaviour is invisible or the room cannot act: a drinker who hides her intake, or a solitary context with no bystanders to recruit, leaves no one to enforce. And it depends on a well-meaning, present network — where the partner co-drinks, the family dismisses the risk, or shame silences the drinker, the enforcers are absent or sabotaging and the norm collapses anyway. Because its effect is diffuse and slow, it suits long-run public-health norms, not launches that need a sharp, measurable near-term spike.
what came after
The campaign converts indifferent bystanders into norm-enforcers, so a low-cost public-health message substitutes a willing-and-alone abstainer for a supported one, and structurally rewires which decision-points uphold the norm. Funded and endorsed by the Australian Government with NOFASD Australia and NACCHO, it unwires a single-discipline behaviour into a social one.
references
- [1]Campaign Brief — Berlin and FARE call on partners, family and friends to support alcohol-free pregnanciesCampaign Brief, 2026campaignbrief.com
- [2]LBB Online — Real Couples Front National Alcohol and Pregnancy Campaign From PerthLittle Black Book, 2026lbbonline.com