Original Ad

This is a Juul ad that was ran in Vice Magazine in 2015 as part of the company’s launch campaign, “Vaporized”. Juul Labs is the maker of the electronic cigarette Juul which is the most popular e-cigarette in the United States. Their marketed company mission is to provide a satisfying alternative for adult smokers, however their current advertisement practices has led to wide spread use across teens. I want to point out Juul’s problematic advertising practices through this jamming. One of the main problems is the use of a young teenage model having fun with their product. Also, the ad uses bright vibrant colors and #SMOKINGEVOLVED in order to appeal to the tastes of the youth. This ad makes e-cigarettes appear to be a great clean alternative to regular smoking, however research shows that one regular Juul pod, the liquid cartridge of the e-cigarette, contains equivalent nicotine to 20 cigarettes. For frequent users of the Juul, one pod can be used up in less than a day. By targeting a younger demographic, and making their product look cool and safe Juul was able to become the most popular e-cigarette in the United States. Juul Labs denies advertising to youth, we can see the negative effects of their marketing through the 75 percent increase in the number of high schoolers who used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days since 2017. While regular cigarette ads are highly regulated, since e-cigarettes were a new emerging market Juul was able to make use of shady advertisement practices in order to promote their product.

Jammed Ad

In the jammed version of the Juul advertisement the bright youthful look of the ad is transformed into a gritty black and white look, which allows the consumer to properly view the ad based on the product being sold. The hallucinogenic 3d effect on the image is meant to give the viewer a feeling of discomfort and invoke feelings of negativity towards the product. I wanted to clearly emphasize the negative effects of e-cigarettes by replacing the sleek looking Juul with a regular cigarette. There is a reason why regular cigarette advertisements are highly regulated, and looking at this Juul advertisement in the context of cigarettes properly shows the absurd social message Juul Labs is trying to create. If we were to see normal advertisements promoting youth smoking cigarettes there would be public outrage, and a similar feeling of outrage can be felt from this jammed advertisement. In order to advertise the nicotine content of each Juul pod, I added in text emphasizing how each pod contains 20 cigarettes. I edited the smoking evolved hashtag and created a teen smoking hashtag in order to highlight the direction of Juul’s advertisement campaign. The target audience of Juul is not the adults looking for an alternative to cigarettes, but easily influenceable youth. The bold addicted text along with black and white color scheme invokes a negative feeling towards the product being used by a teenager. The jammed ad intends to remove any feelings of the Juul being a cool product for the youth to try out, instead it should only be used as an alternative for adult smokers.