Vape brands bypass regulations on marketing to young people by using global social media accounts

Youth vaping is a major public health concern in many countries, with New Zealand’s youth vaping rates among the highest in the world, and rising.

In 2017, 3% of New Zealanders aged between 15 and 24 vaped daily, but by 2024, this was up to 21.3%.

Globally, one of the main drivers is the promotion of vapes on social media. Like many other countries, New Zealand introduced vape advertising restrictions, including on social media, as part of efforts to curb this problem.

But vape manufacturers mirror the techniques of traditional tobacco marketing, including stylish branding, flavours and sponsorship, and use global channels to get around domestic regulations.

This raises the question of whether New Zealand’s rules can be effective in a globalised digital world.

Our new study investigates the content posted to the global Instagram account of British American Tobacco’s vape brand Vuse, which holds more than 25% of the global market. We identify and describe the marketing strategies used to promote the brand to a global audience.

Collaborations and sponsorship

We assessed the marketing strategies used by the account by analysing all posts made by @Vuse.Worldwide – including imagery, audio and text – during the year from August 2023 to 2024.

We looked for brand and influencer collaborations and posts with high engagement (likes and views). We found the company formed several high-profile collaborations as a major part of its marketing strategy.

The most notable collaboration is with the Formula 1 motor racing team, McLaren. As a key sponsor, the car is heavily emblazoned with the Vuse logo and is frequently promoted on the Instagram account.

Sharing content between the McLaren and Vuse Instagram accounts increased the @Vuse.Worldwide audience from around 17,000 followers to the nearly 14 million followers of the McLaren race team.

The four most viewed video posts in our study featured the motorsport partnership, with one clip viewed more than 225,000 times.

British American Tobacco has maintained a decades-long partnership with Formula 1, dating back to when traditional cigarette advertising was still allowed.

Social media influencers

The Vuse Instagram account also features other lifestyle and entertainment collaborations. In a series of posts related to music festivals, Vuse employed DJs, artists, digital content creators and social media influencers to create engaging and stylish videos and photographs.

The tobacco industry has undertaken music festival marketing for generations as an effective strategy to reach young people.

“Get ready with me” videos are popular on Instagram, especially among young women. Four of the ten most viewed posts on the Vuse account were in this style, featuring young women filming themselves selecting fashion, makeup and hairstyles, and explaining their choices or setting the video to popular music.

In these videos, the vape may appear only briefly, for example slipped into a handbag as the final touch before a night out. Yet this placement connects the product and brand with glamorous, fun or exciting settings, creating an important association between the brand and appealing lifestyles and experiences.

The influencers often shared this content directly with their existing followers.

Instagram policy requires users to disclose paid partnerships with the #ad hashtag or paid partnership tag. Of the nearly 700 times an influencer or brand was tagged in the posts, only 14 were disclosed in this way.

Workarounds and weak policies

Vape companies often use workarounds to bypass restrictions on marketing to maintain a presence in youth-oriented settings.

Instagram lists @Vuse.Worldwide as a verified account, based in the UK, where advertising standards permit only “factual” vape content on a company’s social media account, but paid influencer marketing and “imagery unrelated to the product” are banned. The official @Vuse.UK account appears to align more clearly with these parameters.

Instagram’s own policies on vape marketing are difficult to decipher, with complicated rules that leave significant loopholes. For example, vape advertisements and paid influencer marketing for vape products are banned on Instagram. However, these rules do not extend to the brand content on a company’s own account.

Our research shows Vuse uses the worldwide account to promote brand associations, an indirect but powerful form of marketing that sits outside Instagram policies. Cross-posting to other accounts enables Vuse to reach new audiences without paid advertising on the platform.

Researchers suggest social media policies are intentionally unclear to enable platforms and the industry to capitalise on lucrative, instant and borderless sharing of digital content to new audiences.

Dealing with these issues will require global cooperation to require social media platforms to prohibit vape marketing more broadly. It will also require active monitoring and enforcement of breaches to hold social media platforms and vape brands to account. Domestic laws and rules must also apply to international content.

Lucy Hardie has received funding for public health-related e-cigarette research from the University of Auckland, Maurice & Phyllis Paykel Trust and the Auckland Medical Research Foundation. She is an advisor for the Health Coalition Aotearoa.

Becky Freeman is an unpaid expert advisor to the Cancer Council tobacco issues committee and a member of the Cancer Institute vaping communications advisory panel. She has received relevant competitive grants from the NHMRC, MRFF, NSW Health, the Ian Potter Foundation, VicHealth, and Healthway WA; consulting fees from the World Health Organization, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Department of Health, the US FDA, the NHMRC e-cigarette working committee, NSW Health, and Cancer Council; and travel expenses from the Oceania Tobacco Control Conference and the Australia Public Health Association preventive health conference.

Christina Watts has received consultancy payment from Cancer Council NSW, on behalf of Cancer Council Australia and the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care relating to adolescent and young adult e-cigarette use.

Judith McCool receives funding from the Health Research Council NZ.