THE OTHER SIDEOF VAPING

During these interviews, we discovered the best way to capture teens’ attention was simple: Get people their own age who have experienced the negative effects of vaping to speak with them. The hard truth is that teens do not trust adults, do not live the same kind of lives, and hear adult advice as moralizing. Elisabelle, 16, put it this way: “You need teens who have already vaped—not just facts and big speeches. It will have more impact—they’re a more trusted source. For me, if someone my age said ‘vaping is fun and it’s hard to quit’ I would listen because I didn’t know vaping actually did that.”

In other words, teens’ experience is the most concrete and impactful way to illustrate addiction and the negative effects of using e-cigarettes. That’s why we created an infotainment content platform based on revelations and questions asked by teens about e-cigarettes and their effects—all revolving around teens themselves. This platform had to live and evolve over the space of five years in order to have a greater impact on the target audience, based on our findings, as well as offer new themes every year.

1. Engage teens by gathering lived experiences, opinions, and interviews that enabled us to speak to them about the risks of addiction—as opposed to trying to talk to teens about facts, which risked alienating them. “The key arguments related to nicotine use (cancer, shortness of breath) we’ve heard them all before. People are still vaping as if there are no risks. It goes in one ear and out the other,” said Gabriel, 17.

2. Avoid the use of shock value, which could prove counterproductive. Scaring teens could cause more anxiety and add to their not wanting to look closely at the risk factors.

3. Create a solid content ecosystem to inundate their social-media platforms with complementary information: short ads in paid media, medium and long ads to catch and hold their attention so they can learn more.

When it came to media strategy, a detailed analysis of our audiences enabled us to use digital channels that specifically targeted the young people we wanted to speak to. We also worked in close collaboration with the content strategy team when it came to building a paid media strategy. Short videos (teasers) were created to feed the media strategy and expose as many teens as possible to the EPAV Média content platform and generate traffic on content pieces to increase the view rate of each episode.

It was important that we raise awareness of the EPAV Média platform to ensure the success of the editorial content. That’s why TUX mandated influencers to quickly raise the target audience’s awareness of EPAV Média. A pre-roll campaign ran during shows for young people on Télé-Québec and Tou.tv, which served to generate views for three teasers and increase visibility for EPAV Média. To ensure a good view rate for each episode, it was also important to support this initiative with targeted media investments across social media via precisely targeted placements on Instagram aimed at 13- to 17-year-olds, which generated click throughs to episodes.

Created as a kind of broadcast media outlet—including editorial content and changing seasonal concepts and episodes—EPAV was able to cover a wide range of information sub-themes via different formats. The main “long” video formats were able to be diffused in different formats across various platforms, including YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. The informal tone was designed to not sound like an ad, instead bringing teens together in the types of moments and interactions they are used to seeing online. The end result was an information portal for teens that involved them in information research and brought them closer to the subject.

Thanks to a multi-platform presence, phased deployment, and collaborations with influencers to accelerate discovery of the content platform, we were able to reach 92% of Instagram users aged 13 to 17 across Quebec with our three teasers. Engagement with the platform was also a success, notably when it came to collaboration with influencers, reaching a retention rate of 89.4%—a real tour de force for a launch. By diffusing information to raise awareness as well as engaging teens to promote behaviour changes, we were able to share the negative effects of e-cigarettes with Quebec teens to help educate them to make informed choices—including not trying vaping for the first time, vaping less, or quitting altogether.