GAKYBM Chapter 2: Promoting Tools as Toys.

Go away, kid. You bother me.

A Canadian vape shop owner's opinions and observations of an industry in its infancy.

Chapter 2

Promoting Tools as Toys

In the very early days, the promotion of vaping products was primarily done by word of mouth and personal demonstration in smoking areas across Canada. This wasn't paid advertisement for a specific brand or shop. This was the organic conversation that occurred when a person walked into a group of smokers and proceeded to not have a cigarette. The very act of pulling out what looked like a pen and puffing on it and exhaling what looked like cigarette smoke but smelled very different would almost immediately start a conversation full of questions.

"What is that?"

"How does it work?"

"You don't smoke cigarettes anymore?"

"Does it feel like smoking?"

"Do you feel better now?"

"How much did it cost?"

"Where did you get it?"

"Does it always smell that good?"

"Can it help me?"

It was these question-driven conversations and the answers provided that birthed the Canadian vaping industry. Driving an underground market, smoker to smoker, as those who had tried other solutions and failed, tried a new solution and succeeded. In smoking areas. Across back yard fences. Outside of coffee shops, hotel bars, and night clubs.

Smokers. Talking to smokers. About a tool. A fantastic tool that helped them to stop smoking cigarettes.

In the early days, this is what a smoker saw when they were introduced to vaping.

Then the nascent commercial industry, for a few reasons, changed the tone of that conversation. 

To maintain credibility in the claim that schedule F allowed the vape shop to operate, businesses were encouraged to avoid making cessation claims. Cessation claims, in the eyes of Health Canada, would shift the product category from a consumer product to a medicinal product, which would then require far more stringent testing and data collection to be sold in the legitimate market. So vape shops started talking about "Replacing cigarettes," "Switching to e-cigarettes," and my own business' public-facing statement "Stop setting things on fire." This began muddying the messaging towards smokers.

Comparative (to combustion-based tobacco products) risk statements were similarly discouraged, as they could be construed as "health claims," again shifting designation from a consumer product to a medical product. Vaping products retailers instead focussed on the aesthetics and economics of the product. 

"Vaping tastes better than a cigarette."

"Vaping does not smell as bad to others as cigarette smoke."

"Vaping, in Canada, is far cheaper than smoking."

"Vaping is an enjoyable way to use nicotine."

That last one. That last one started to get attention. Not from smokers so much as the professional non-profits. The anti-smoking organizations and NGO public health groups. The "All Stick - No Carrot" crowd. Much like Tolkiens fictional dragon, those groups turned an eye to this new intruder from the top of their hoard of public funding and moral righteousness. Deep in their belly, a rumble started as they prepared to belch a flaming hell upon the industry and barbeque us for the insufferable sin of existence.

The industry response? Did we slip on a ring of invisibility and get on with business? We did not. We flipped them the finger and made liquids with names like Monkey Jizz and Unicorn Puke. We dropped trou and showed them our backside on a label, right next to a massive pair of cartoon breasts, and then we waggled our dangly bits about like a 12-year-old petulant child.

2016 E-Liquid Label from Now Defunct Company

2016 E-Liquid Label from Now Defunct Company

We stopped reaching out to smokers. We started promoting to hobbyists and enthusiasts. We started talking about how cool the product was, not how effective it was at helping smokers.

We created our own social club with titles like Vape Nation. We referred to ourselves as Vapefam. We made memes with Hollywood stars with witty captions. 

We were not celebrating the fact that we were not smoking anymore, we were revelling in the spectacle of vaping.

We had our own sports...

Cloud Competition. Toronto - 2016

We had expositions...

Canadian Vape Expo - 2016

And we struggled with the difference between Advertising to Adults and Adult Advertising.

Canadian Vape Expo - 2016

We struggled harder with that difference in on-line advertising. If one were to run a google search for "Vape Model" one will not find late-middle-aged former smokers so much as hyper-sexualized images of aesthetically proportioned young women in revealing clothing demonstrating novel ways of displaying vapour products...

 

We alienated ourselves from the public in general and smokers in particular. If you were present in a smoking area between 2015 and 2018, you could see it. Instead of a small device inspiring curiosity, smokers now were taking a step back to avoid the massive, dense clouds of vapour and moving upwind. No questions were being asked anymore.

And the biggest boon of the product was lost...

Comparative Harm Spectrum - Abrams et al. Annual Review of Public Health, 2018

 ...to the rebel image.

In fairness, not the entire industry was this way. Some were trying to self regulate and those who were focussed on trying to tidy up the category's public image and return to the original focus. There was slow headway being made.  However, this was very much what the public saw of vaping for much of the time frame between 2015 and 2018.

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Things are not much different today. We see less promiscuous advertising, but it still exists. Federal regulations are clamping down on all forms of promotion and not always in a manner that would be beneficial for smokers. You cannot promote a product in a way that can be perceived as 'appealing to children.' However, vendors are also prohibited from promoting the product on its merits as a tool to help lower the risk profile of adult smokers.

'Perceived' is a subjective decision, and is touted wildly by anti-vaping groups, tobacco prohibitionists, and abstinence-only (quit or die) organizations. The mere existence of 'flavours' is a marketing tactic in their view. Flavours are a deliberate tactic by the industry to appeal to children. They spend a lot of funds to create very slick advertising that says in no uncertain terms that flavours in vaping products exist only to attract young people who never smoked. They then spend more funds to put that message in front of as many young non-smokers as possible—on-line, on television, and in print. 

No entity tells young people that vaping flavours are present and appealing to young people with greater efficacy or frequency in Canada, than the anti-vaping organizations.

The prohibition of relative risk statements, is in effect, a prohibition on the dissemination of science. Prohibitionists are not inclined to speak of relative risk. Vendors are prohibited from speaking of relative risk. The Canadian federal government will tell you that they did speak to relative risk on the populations' behalf, and technically, they are not lying. They put out some relatively weak statements, on a web page that is not promoted and is unlikely to ever be seen by the vast majority of the population unless they are highly motivated to spend an unreasonable amount of time searching for it.

It's the equivalent to a brick and mortar barbershop in Alberta, Canada, placing a 1-inch ad in the classified section of a locally run community newspaper in Miramichi, New Brunswick, and thinking that they have reached the appropriate audience.

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The security of the future for the vaping industry is as it always has been, migrating as many smokers as possible to a less harmful delivery system. That is the one thing we can do as an industry that cannot be directly attacked. To do this, we have to go BACK to those conversations in the smoking areas that were occurring between 2011 and 2015, we need to focus on reaching smokers above all else.

If your promotional materials speak only of made-up words like the New-New, VapeFam, or Flaving, you are marketing to vapers, not smokers. Smokers don't know any of those terms.

If all of your promotional materials solely focus on voluptuous and exotic models who look like they are still in college, you are marketing to young adults and hormonally driven teenage boys. Smokers span all age ranges and body types.

Migrating smokers to a less harmful delivery system is not the same as destroying big tobacco. Stop distracting yourself with delusions of grandeur and dragon slaying, you are not St. George. We have enough dragon slayers; to them, your head would look really good on a pike in the public square.

If your legislative efforts come from a heartfelt place of 'that'll f**k my competitors over very nicely,' then you are not focussed on migrating smokers, you are concentrated on f**king over your competitors.

Fight FOR comparative risk statements. The scientific data is there to support them, and they are the one untouchable promotional tool that exists that could massively increase your customer count.

Fight FOR the availability of flavoured products. The science shows that it is a crucial element in transition and preventing relapse.

Stop offering sacrificial lambs. Flavours are not the ONLY thing that makes vaping successful. Yes, you have sales data that shows you transitioned hundreds of smokers, perhaps more than one thousand or maybe two thousand. Your data does not track those you failed to reach. You need to reach multiple thousands—millions on a national scale. You don't do that by excluding the heaviest smokers via a nicotine cap. You might think you are crippling your competitor, but in the long run, you are hobbling your own potential growth market.

Fight FOR SMOKERS, not against each other.

Because if you do not, if the focus does not change, then I have seen your (our) future.

It will be found in your (our) past.