Mississippi State Department of Health
A Nasty Campaign for a Nasty Habit
The Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) had a predicament: teenagers were picking up vapes across the state. To deter them, we used a multimedia campaign as a mirror for the audience, showing them how they look while vaping, only with actors who are their parents’ age. No one wants to be their parents.
The Goals
- Connect to teens who are vaping or considering vaping with relevant messaging.
- Generate conversation among students, among parents, and between the two.
- Drive audiences to resources that equip them with vaping facts and tools to quit.
The Process
Trying Not to Blow Smoke
First, we spoke to our audience. When we realized we didn’t understand most of what they were saying, we asked them to translate. Once we had that sorted, we wrote some headlines, scripts, and body copy—and asked them to translate it the other way.
The Services
How Mad Genius Didn’t Kid Around With Vaping
In the first 60 days, the Vaping Is Cringe Campaign:
- Exceeded traditional media guaranteed impressions by 4 million
- Came within 2% of the all-time cumulative response rate for the text hotline
- Drove over 200k clicks to the MSDH website
Client Testimonial
“Mad Genius knocked it out of the park. This campaign was more than we could have hoped for creatively, and outperformed in just about every aspect. We look forward to telling more stories with the Mad Genius team.”