This is one of a series of posters around the Underground that have caught my eye over recent months.

It’s part of a Transport For London campaign called ‘Together For London’ aimed at reducing anti-social behaviours across London’s transport system.  The message is ‘A little thought from each of us.  A big difference for London’.

Rather strangely, a search of the TfL website for ‘Together For London’ gives only this.   Stranger still, clicking the link on that page brings you to this page.  No background, no depth, no accountability, no process and no names.  Just those graphic outcomes.

So who is ‘Together For London’ speaking for?  And who is it speaking to?

According to the website text, the images represent ‘key messages’ chosen by Londoners for the campaign to feature; a ‘pet-hate-list’ of antisocial behaviours endured by the long-suffering public.  The list includes people playing loud music on their iPods, putting their feet on seats, hogging empty seats to stop other people sitting next to them, cyclists who don’t stop for red traffic signals and more.  You get the idea.

This all leaves me wondering: if you’re consciously antisocial (eg. you know what you’re doing but don’t care) will this campaign cause you to change your behaviour?  And if you’re unconsciously antisocial, will this campaign wake you up and then cause you to change your behaviour?

At Delta7, we believe that personal change requires a change in thinking and that this happens through dialogue with others. Pictures can be a powerful catalyst for those change conversations; but they don’t just make change happen.  They act as a doorway to dialogue out of which shifts in understanding can occur and then new actions emerge.  Where is the dialogue in TfL’s campaign?  Where is the doorway?

The effectiveness of any behavioural change strategy can only be measured if the underlying assumptions about – or model of – change are surfaced so they can be tested and evidenced.  The nature and placement of the pictures in this campaign seems to belie a change model that assumes that change will happen as a result of picturing or writing the change you want to see in a stand-alone poster.

Since I’m one of the ‘converted’ (I don’t do antisocial behaviour), I can’t comment on the effectiveness of this strategy.  Only TfL or the perpetrators of antisocial beheviour themselves can tell us.  For that we would need to hear from anyone whose behaviour had been shifted or changed by this campaign.  I will be surprised if TfL ends up with that kind of data.  Certainly nothing currently on their website suggests they will.

I suppose I could ask the next person I come across on the Tube with their feet on the seats or behaving offensively under the influence of alcohol whether these pictures will help them change their behaviour.

Somehow, though, I doubt I will.

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