Description:

Aotearoa has seen an increase in vaping use by rangatahi, with survey data revealing between 2019 and 2021, the percentage of young people vaping daily more than tripled, particularly Māori.

In collaboration with our team of young co-designers, the Hā Collective, and partners Te Whatu Ora, we created Protect Your Breath – a campaign that aims to reduce vaping harm for young people by anchoring itself in the realities and ideas of rangatahi.

The campaign centres the power of hā – our breath. It seeks to offer young people a moment to become mindful of their breath, encourages rangatahi to reflect on their values and build confidence in the choices they make.

Recently, we have extended the campaign to surface the Ao Māori narratives of breath that emerged through the co-design process. In our oversaturated visual world, we wanted to create a space of calm and prioritise another sense – listening.

Connect to Hā is a meditative six-episode podcast which provides a crafted audio moment where rangatahi can pause, connect to their breath and think about how it’s a part of everything we do.

Audio is easily scrolled past on a social media feed, so each episode is accompanied by contemporary 3D animations that bring the playful, air-filled aesthetic of the campaign to life.

To craft the narratives of each podcast, we held wānanga with tohunga who helped us uncover pūrakau and concepts connected to the underlying themes of Protect Your Breath.

Through wānanga we found that the conceptual thread of ‘hau’, or vitality, wove together the inherent importance of breath in all we are. From hau, we unpacked a cycle of four concepts that became strategic and creative scaffolding, not only for the podcast series, but for each element of the wider campaign:

Hā – Breath
A gift from Tāne Mahuta, this allows us to lean into the sacredness of breath and our responsibility to care for this gift.

Au – Self
A reminder of the importance of finding strength and calm in your sense of self and connecting with your emotional health.

Hau – Vitality
A core principle, this leans into the power that can come from nurturing your vital essence.

Hauhā – Exhalation
A pause before the cycle starts again, this celebrates release, play and exhalation.

Several episodes in the Connect to Hā series explicitly surface these ideas for the listener, encouraging them to understand the power of their breath through this cycle from hā to hauhā.

The series builds towards our final episode – Tihei Mauri Ora – which goes into more depth to tell the story of Tāne and Hineahuone and the origins of the phrase ‘tihei mauri ora’ – the breath of life that signalled the beginnings of the ira tangata.

Connect to Hā helps the listener understand how their breath is a fundamental part of who they are and how it connects them to te taiao and all the way back to the atua. Breath is a taonga. And that’s worth protecting.