The Newest Toy For Your Child: The Juul

When Juul was first starting out, they began by purchasing advertising space on multiple websites, including Nickelodeon, the Cartoon Network, Seventeen magazine and educational sites, all with the audiences of middle school and high school students. They are targeting an audience of young, nonsmokers. Juul had rejected their initial marketing proposal by a marketing firm that wanted to brand the Juul as a technology company with a target audience of adult smokers. 

“Juul decided against doing an ad campaign designed for an older audience and instead specifically chose one that targeted young people,” said Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey. This Wednesday a lawsuit will be filed by the Massachusetts attorney general. “The information that we uncovered in our investigation demonstrates Juul’s intent — they didn’t accidentally create an advertising campaign with young and attractive people —- that’s what they were going for all along.” 

Juul’s list of advertising sites consisted of educational sites like basic-mathematics.com, coolmath.com, math-aids.com, mathplayground.com, mathway.com, onlinemathlearning.com, purplemath.com and socialstudiesforkids.com; sites targeted to young girls such as such as dailydressupgames.com, didigames.com, forhergames.com, games2girls.com, girlgames.com, and girlsgogames.com; sites geared to high school students looking at colleges, like collegeconfidential.com and sites aimed at much younger children, including allfreekidscrafts.com, hellokids.com, and kidsgameheroes.com.

Juul has also attempted to recruit celebrities with a significant amount of young followers, such as Miley Cyrus, Cara Delevingne, and Kristen Stewart. 

Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, have also sued Juul over its marketing practices. 

This is without a doubt negative news coverage for Juul. People are outraged, rightfully so. Juul was literally aiming for a young audience, to get them addicted to the Juul young. The message that Juul wanted to portray is that using the Juul is cool even for children. The audience they were aiming for was children, middle school to college students, ages 12-20. Children being targeted have fallen for these advertisements. The audience has fallen susceptible to Juul. 

Juul is taking the completely wrong approach. Sure, they may be reaching a new demographic of young children and this tactic may be doing the company well economically. However, they are breaking the law which says you need to be 21 to purchase these devices. Not only is this against the law, it is so morally wrong to be reaching out to young children and basically trying to hook them on the addictive smoking. They should not be trying to reach an audience of non smokers. I personally would never be working for a company trying to advertise and brand a lethal device.

The media such as these ads for children generated this story. Juul is literally marketing something that is literally against the law, causing legal action to take place. 

If PR generated, what were the goals were to reach the young demographic and get them hooked on their product. They definitely did achieve this goal. However, I can’t be so proud of them for this since it is so wrong, and illegal.

New York Times Article by Sheila Kaplan

 Feb. 12, 2020

 Juul Bought Ads Appearing on Cartoon Network and Other Youth Sites, Suit Claims

Health section 

Company/Business involved: Juul