Tag Archives: Juul Labs Inc.

Can Philip Morris International Zynoculate Itself With a New Ad Campaign?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and plowing through the Sunday New York Times, when I came across this full-page ad from Philip Morris International about its Zyn nicotine pouches, which are apparently quite popular among the younger set.

Think the tobacco industry’s latest damage-control campaign can work, Doc?

– Zynterested Observer

Dear ZO,

Zynteresting indeed.

That ad comes in the wake of  this piece by Emily Dreyfuss in the Times Opinion section two weeks ago, which detailed the growing flight from vaping to nicotine pouches among teenagers and young adults.

Do you know what a Zynbabwe is? Or an upper-decky lip pillow? OK, here’s an easier one — how about just Zyn?

If you are scratching your head, don’t feel bad: Almost no adult I have spoken to has had any idea either. This is despite the fact that the nicotine pouch Zyn is a jewel in the crown of a multibillion-dollar tobacco company. Haven’t heard of nicotine pouches to begin with? Neither had I. But when I ask my 19-year-old neighbor Ian if he knows what a Zynbabwe is, I get a shocked reply: “You know about Zyns?”

Young people certainly do, Dreyfuss says, thanks in no small part to the tobacco giant’s efforts. “P.M.I. is . . . a company that has long denied it markets tobacco products to minors despite decades of research accusing it of just that. One 2022 study alone found its brands advertising near schools and playgrounds around the globe.”

Thus the full-page ads spinning out corporate eyewash such as “We restrict the marketing and sale of  ZYN to those of legal age – which is 21 in the U.S. We do not use social media influencers in the U.S.”

That, of course, is meaningless, since social media influencers in the U.S. use Zyn – prodigiously – as Sasha Rogelberg has detailed in Fortune.

Nicotine pouches, which do not contain tobacco but are slipped under a user’s lip like snus, have grown wildly popular. Over 800 million units were sold between January and March 2022, compared to 126.06 million units between August to December 2019 and beating out its competitors. ZYN shipped 105.4 million cans in the U.S. in their 2023 Q3, a 65.7% increase from Swedish Match’s 63.6 million can shipments in the same period in 2022. Philip Morris International, which owns ZYN’s parent company Swedish Match, partially attributed their $9 billion in quarterly net revenue to the “exceptional growth” of ZYN.

On social media, young people and so-called “Zynfluencers” are spreading the nicotine buzz, withTikToks using #zyn receiving over 715.6 million views to date.

Something similar happened several years ago with Juul Labs Inc., which in 2019 owned 75% of the e-cigarette market and was valued at over $38 billion, Suddenly the Food and Drug Administration was on Juul Labs like Brown on Williamson, and there were over 5000 lawsuits accusing the company of deceptive marketing and targeting of minors.  That led to a flurry of newspaper ads like this one.

The campaign worked so well, Juul has shelled out over $3 billion in legal settlements since then, and the company’s products are still in regulatory limbo.

So the Doc’s prescription for P.M.I.:  Zynvest in some malpractice insurance. Zynstantly.

Did Juul’s Extremely Effective Advertising Effectively Trigger Its FDA Ban?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and perusing the Weekend Wall Street Journal (the WSJ set doesn’t read, it peruses – just ask Peggy Noonan), when I came across this piece by Jennifer Maloney, Andrew Scurria, and Alex Harring about “a federal appeals court [that] granted Juul Labs Inc. a temporary stay of the Food and Drug Administration’s order for the vaping company to pull its e-cigarettes off the U.S. market.”

Here’s the part that jumped out at me.

Regulators and lawmakers have connected Juul’s fruity flavors, hip marketing and USB-like vaporizer to a surge of underage vaping in the U.S. in 2018 and 2019. Juul has said it never targeted teens. It halted most of its U.S. advertising and stopped selling sweet and fruity flavors in 2019, part of an effort to repair its relationship with regulators, lawmakers and the public.

Is that true, Doc – Juul never targeted teens? Sounds kind of vaporous to me.

– Jewel

Dear Jewel,

It’s more accurate to say Juul always targeted teens, as this New York Times piece by Steven Kurutz noted.

When Juuls were first sold in 2015, the brand surged in popularity, partly on the strength of a vibrant ad campaign that showed young people smiling, laughing and striking poses beneath the word “Vaporized.”

By 2018, Juul had grown so popular that the brand name became a verb, with teens furtively “juuling” in high school classrooms and hallways. That same year, Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, agreed to pay $13 billion for a 35 percent stake in Juul Labs.

This 2020 piece by Terry Turner at Drugwatch was even more damning.

HOW JUUL CREATED A TEEN VAPING EPIDEMIC

Throughout the summer of 2019, as congressional staffers plowed through 55,000 documents Juul Labs had previously never made public, a picture emerged of a carefully planned effort to expose American kids to one of the world’s most addictive substances.

The documents revealed a perfect storm of stealth marketing, sleek design and high nicotine doses that Juul Labs seemingly engineered to slip under adults’ radar, buying time to addict kids to the company’s vaping products . . .

Congressional investigators found Juul Labs “deployed a sophisticated program” paying schools as much as $10,000 each to let company representatives deliver its message directly to children. In at least one presentation, without teachers or parents present, a company representative showed kids how to use a Juul e-cigarette. Other evidence showed that Juul Labs also targeted preteen kids through summer camps and out-of-school programs.

Overall, the Drugwatch piece noted, “Juul Labs’ internal documents and statements by its founders reveal the e-cigarette manufacturer lifted trade secrets from Big Tobacco to market its highly addictive vaping products to youths as young as 8. The company’s deliberate marketing plan proved successful, doubling the size of the U.S. vaping market and dominating competitors in just three years.”

Juul controlled over 75% of the e-cigarette market by then and was red hot among teens, as this 2019 Time magazine video detailed.

Here’s just a sample of the news reports that have tracked Juul’s marketing to kids over the past several years.

• The vape company Juul said it doesn’t target teens. Its early ads tell a different story.

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

• Juul, accused of marketing to teens, settles vaping case for $40m

Last week, Insider News posted this deep dive into the rise and fall (TBD) of Juul.

To recap:

• Youth cigarette smoking rates dropped from 18% in 2005 to 10.8% in 2015

• Thanks to Juul’s relentless targeting of teens on social media, its U.S. market share went from under 5% in 2016 to 29% in 2017 to 75% in 2018

• The FDA said whoa

• Juul phased out its social media accounts

That last, of course, meant nothing: Teenage Juulers kept the social media machine whirring quite nicely all by themselves.

Regardless, why does the FDA now feel comfortable canceling Juul while greenlighting VUSE and NJOY e-cigs?

Here’s the Doc’s diagnosis: During the past few years, Juul’s teen targeting has gone over like the metric system with the American public. Maybe that’s part of the FDA’s conclusion that Juul is the black hat and VUSE and NJOY are the white hats in terms of protecting the public health.

Your smoke and mirrors go here.