With a well-placed f-bomb, a group of students made sure their peers were paying attention to the University’s health and safety protocols on campus last fall.

Provocatively titled “F*ck It Won’t Cut It,” which plays off a common student expression, the awareness campaign sought to convey an urgent reality: if the entire student body did not take social distancing, masking, and other COVID-19 preventive measures seriously when they returned, campus life would cease to exist.

Through TikTok videos, Instagram posts, and infographics, the campaign also dispelled misconceptions and answered questions about responsible partying and dating. The goal was to cut through the barrage of standard safety messages and appeal to young people to take seriously the risk posed by the novel coronavirus.

The project was the first large-scale collaboration between students in COM’s AdLab and PRLab. “We knew it was a bold approach. We knew it was different,” said cocreator Hailey McKee (COM’21). “But it’s a dialogue we needed to have. We needed to take care of ourselves, our fellow students, and the faculty and staff who were graciously helping us during a COVID-19 world.”

Not only did the campaign turn heads on campus and in newsrooms across the country, it caught the attention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In December 2020, they invited the student-organizers to present the award-winning campaign to their COVID-19 emergency response team, with some 1,500 medical and marketing experts on the call.

Now, that’s some high-level f-bombing.