How Juul used celebs, influencers to hook teens on vaping

Mimi Sweeney was 17 when a friend messaged her about an exclusive email invitation from Pax Labs for the launch party of the company’s “revolutionary new vapor product, Juul.”

When she walked into Jack Studios in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, in June 2015, the teen — who was an occasional cigarette smoker — saw a dance floor full of influencers and tastemakers, all puffing on sleek 4-inch devices that looked like USB drives and tasted of flavors such as mint, crème brulée and mango.

Above her, screens flashed hashtags like #Juul and #JuulVapor along with real-time Polaroids of attendees vaping.

Sweeney, who admits to using a fake ID at the party, recalls the pleasure of not coughing the first time she took her first puff off a fruit-flavored Juul at the launch party.

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, is this what a cigarette is supposed to feel like?’” she says in the new Netflix four-part docu-series “Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul.” She also recalls how she took two Juuls home with her — kicking off a habit that got her hooked and soon found her influencing her friends and classmate to vape as well.

The series, based on the book “Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul” by Jamie Ducharme, examines the rise and fall of the company — and its alleged mission to convert cigarette smokers to Juul, including using marketing tactics aimed at teens.

Former staffers, scientists, marketers and vapers — some of whom barely survived —  put the  company’s motives into question in the series: Did Jule aim to drive Big Tobacco out of business by helping people quit smoking cigarettes? Or did it sell nicotine addiction as a lifestyle, lighting up social media with campaigns influencing young people?

“Our marketing team was built around using influencers — partnering with fashion people and celebrities [to promote content] on social media networks like Instagram,” a former employee who worked on Juul’s supply chain told The Post, requesting anonymity. “They were going to get young influencers, people that have a big following, and they were going to host parties. Marketing was gaining so much momentum it was able to go unchecked.” 

The third episode of the docu-series digs into how easily-influenced Gen-Z consumers became prime targets for Juul pens.

Pax hired a millennial marketing agency, Grit Creative Group, to target 300 New York and Los Angeles influencers — including young actors like Luka Sabbat and Tavi Gevinson — with free Juuls in hopes of publicity. The company also sent the devices to celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Bella Hadid, when she was 19. The model posted Instagram videos of herself using a Juul.

“[The screens] all had hashtags on them which gave us the cues for what to put into our posts. We were told to post it anywhere we wanted. We were dancing, having fun,” Sweeney remembers in the series of the launch party. 

Juul enlisted creative director Steven Baillie, who has worked with brands like Bonobos, Gap and Target, to  create its Vaporized advertising campaign, which was all about young people having fun while vaping.

The ads with dancing vapers ran on Times Square billboards and in young adult publications like Vice magazine.

“The direction we decided to take was more focused on the cool factor,” Ballie says in the series. 

“In our weekly staff meeting we would quote off internet statistics about how many views or comments we were getting,” the Juul supply chain staffer told The Post, of the influencer marketing push.

Critics like Stephen Colbert dismissed the ad campaign in on a 2015 episode of “Late Night,” scoffing:  “Something about inhaling poison steam just makes me want to dance in a way that doesn’t require much lung strength.”

Not that that deterred everyone on the inside.

“Within marketing, the people I saw were thrilled they were being mentioned by Colbert. It was an inflection point for me. I remember coming in and saying, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ The perception that it was creating was so anti what we wanted the company to be,” said the employee, who left the company shortly after that.

Juul sold 16.2 million vaporizers in 2017 and accounted for around 70% of the US e-cigarette market in the country by 2018. The company was valued at $15 billion by mid 2018.

Meredith Berkman, who co-founded the advocacy group Parents Against Vaping, claimed that a speaker was sent by Juul Labs to lecture her 16-year-old son’s Upper West Side school about the dangers of tobacco and vaping in 2018 — but instead spewed “mixed messaging.”

“My son said this man stated very clearly that Juul is not for kids, it’s for adults, and it’s ‘totally safe’ for adults — and said Juul would be getting FDA approval any day,” Berkman told The Post.

“He took the Juul apart and called it the ‘iPhone of vapes.’ When [my so] told me the story I was like, ‘this is horrifying.’”

By 2019, 27.5% of high school students and 10.5% of middle schoolers reported using an e-cigarette, with Juul as the most cited brand, according to federal data. In August, 2019 the brand’s founders were mandated to testify before Congress about its product helping fuel the vaping epidemic among young people.

“Most people recognized that would be an existential threat to the company,” the former Juul employee told The Post. 

Several states sued the brand, claiming Juul caused a “vaping epidemic” among kids and teens by “unlawfully” marketing its addictive nicotine products. In April, Juul agreed to pay $462 million to six states, including New York and California.

The company also pledged to no longer target young people in its marketing and sales, and to refrain from showcasing models under age 35 in promotional materials. It also cannot sponsor school-related events or conduct educational programs aimed at youth smoking prevention.  

“This company was marketing through the use of flavor and social media targeting platforms that young people were on. We realized the enormous prevalence of this problem,” Berkman said.