CITY OF JACKSONVILLE

The Challenge

Launch a campaign on behalf of the City of Jacksonville, in Florida, to raise awareness of the dangers of vaping among middle school and high school aged students ... in the middle of the COVID pandemic. We couldn’t hold events, often so important to public education campaigns, we couldn’t visit school campuses to speak to teachers and students, and we were not able to build the kind of partnerships with local community groups that so often drive success.

What We Did

We looked at youth-oriented consumer brands and vaping companies, and it became obvious that a serious “public health” style campaign would not work – not when pitted against the vitality, color, and humor of consumer campaigns. Many teens see vaping as a cool and harmless act of defiance and any long-term health impacts seem abstract and not worth the worry. And vaping fits neatly into adolescent desires to seem mature, and the urge to be rebellious.

But vaping also poses real dangers to developing minds and bodies. Our strategy would be to show our young audience that vaping chemicals cannot resist the need to expose themselves and negatively impact things teens care about – including how peers see them as they attempt to navigate their convoluted social environment. In short, possible long term nicotine addiction is not a winning argument … pooping your pants in front of your friends is. 

What We Achieved

Our teen-focused digital advertising campaign was seen by tens of thousands of middle-school and high-school students. More than 12,000 of those students swiped, clicked and engaged with our content, easily out performing industry averages and expectations.

The videos shared through the companion adult-focused campaign were watched all the way through over 65,000 times, while the campaign content hub onCoJ.net averaged 65 visits a day, during the core advertising period. The average time spent on the campaign homepage was 135% of the 2020 average for websites, and close to 150% of the average time, across consumer industries.