ANTI-VAPING AWARENESS CAMPAIGN

KEEP VAPING FOR SCIENCE.

PROJECT: ANTI-VAPING PSA
CLIENT: PRO-BONO

THE WHY

Teen anti-vaping campaigns often rely on direct warnings, statistics, or authority-driven messaging, approaches that younger audiences have become conditioned to ignore, distrust, or tune out entirely.

The challenge was finding a way to break through skepticism using a language and tone that felt culturally disruptive, mysterious, and impossible to ignore.

THE INSIGHT

Teenagers are already highly suspicious of corporations, surveillance, data collection, and hidden manipulation.

At the same time, vaping has effectively turned an entire generation into real-time test subjects for a product whose long-term health consequences remain largely unknown.

THE IDEA

We created “The Institute,” a fictional scientific organization that openly thanked teenagers for participating in its ongoing vaping experiments.

By reframing teen vapers as unwitting research subjects inside a disturbing pseudo-scientific campaign, the work weaponized paranoia, mystery, and institutional manipulation to expose the uncomfortable truth that vaping itself is still an uncontrolled experiment.

The campaign blurred the line between fiction and reality through environmental storytelling, social leaks, fake surveillance systems, live activations, and unbranded digital experiences.