- 23 hours ago
Upon launch, Juul rolls out an edgy campaign targeting youth culture until the popular ads come under criticism and spur new regulations from the FDA.....
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00:11the buzz was fantastic the flavor was cool I was literally floored and it kind of made me feel like
00:22a virgin my immediate reaction was really like this feels exactly like a cigarette
00:35but I quickly realized this isn't saying this is better I remember trying it for like a couple of
00:44days and I realized that I had just quit smoking it was this huge moment for me
00:56ever since one puff and never ever again smirk another cigarette my whole entire life never
01:02again with the jewel they had made something remarkable and their one job now is to get it
01:09everywhere this is a bold product to put out up against these companies that have existed since
01:16forever if you know you have a product that is going to change an entire industry that's exciting
01:38the jewel came under my radar in about 2015 people had been hearing about what this new jewel thing
01:44might be and it just kind of started to percolate into my brain that like there's something bigger
01:49and interesting happening here the reason I was interested in them is because there was this
01:56big question going on at the time how do we use technology to improve every piece of everybody's
02:02lives you have people like the uber founders who say I was just trying to get around and getting a
02:08cab
02:08was annoying or people didn't know where their friends were and so they invented Twitter jewel felt
02:13like a particularly high stakes version of that the idea that we can use technology to improve the lives
02:22of a billion people was really appealing the first thing you would notice walking into their offices was
02:31that everybody was vaping everybody James is a total tech guy and I mostly mean that in a good way
02:40he
02:40was super confident super smart really thoughtful about the kind of thing that they were trying to do he
02:47wanted something that felt cool and discreet and wasn't trying to build a better cigarette he
02:52wanted to actually change the experience of smoking and the clear sense they had was we have reinvented smoking
03:01the headline of my article was this might just be the first great e-cig if you take this thing
03:07people
03:07enjoy the experience of but don't want to die from and you can replicate the experience without the bad
03:13parts that tract is the right way to think about this they had made something remarkable appearing in a
03:20publication like Wired was huge for them because it lent the company a ton of legitimacy as it launched
03:25Juul the mission was to make something that had enough nicotine in it you wouldn't feel a need to
03:31go back to your combustion cigarette we're trying to get smokers away from smoking with various options
03:37so Juul offered flavors for the same reason Tesla offers multiple colors not everyone's gonna like
03:44the same thing when we first started we had four flavors you kind of cover all bases with fruit
03:49brulee mint and then tobacco for all your marble red smokers their flavors had incredibly stupid names
03:57like fruit was spelled f-r-u-u-t and creme brulee was b-r-u-u-l-e and
04:03mint was spelled m-i-i-n-t
04:06they were just trying so hard that it felt dumb honestly but the flavors were a key part of the
04:13whole thing they wanted to make this not only satiating from a nicotine perspective but also
04:18enjoyable and pleasant to smoke and smells better than your average cigarette your typical vapor
04:24doesn't want to smell like a cigarette doesn't want to inhale all the carcinogens from a cigarette or
04:30just want some different flavors I thought the names were stupid but I actually thought the idea was
04:36pretty smart James and Adam had created a product that seemed like it would work really well and be
04:43attractive to users but there were still issues the pods were a problem we did not have a hundred
04:50percent yield anywhere near that you set out to make a hundred you know we may have ended up with
04:56eight
04:56that were good yeah a lot of people got a squirt of nicotine liquid into their mouth when they
05:04would inhale one employee said that he got creme brulee liquid in his mouth so often that he now
05:10can't eat creme brulee because it was so disgusting you know to get a battery in there to get tubes
05:16in
05:16there to get the pods small enough to work was a technical challenge people say hey we need a
05:22paper unit James just refused to budge on the unit's end you know he really liked the way that unit
05:28looked
05:29that's kind of what a visionary does right he's an artist but you know we were rushed about a month
05:36before the original launch date we didn't have a way to fill pods yet James told them you have to
05:42figure all of these problems out you have no other choice you ever heard the old adage when in doubt
05:48ship it there's a variation on that one which is fuck it ship it there was pressure to get this
06:00product
06:01out there pax a loose leaf tobacco and cannabis vaporizer was the engine from a financial
06:08perspective but we started to see some pax revenue wane at the same time japan tobacco international who
06:16was a major investor was growing uncomfortable with how much the pax devices were becoming associated
06:22with marijuana jti said we can't be part of a company involved with cannabis so we're going to have
06:28to part ways and so in the end we paid them the ten million dollars back in some ways splitting
06:33with jti was actually a good thing many employees felt uncomfortable that a tobacco company was a
06:40major investor jewel wanted to be a tech company and didn't want to be dragged down by the stink so
06:45to speak of the tobacco industry at that point in time getting a reliable solid product that we could
06:52start ramping manufacturing on was the biggest focus investors had been pouring money into the
07:00company for years and they were antsy for some of that money back so james and adam knew that they
07:05needed jewel to sell and to sell really well it's really really really hard for a company to have a
07:12mission it believes in and cares deeply about and a board who wants tons of growth i gave you millions
07:19of dollars and you owe me billions of dollars if we make the world a better place in the meantime
07:24fantastic if a company doesn't make profit it's not going to last long public health first but you
07:29can't have public health if nobody buys the product silicon valley is known for these big iconic companies
07:37but what we don't remember is the graveyard of startups that is also silicon valley and so when a company
07:45is going to market for the first time it's really important to get it right you only have one chance
07:54to make a first impression so i um i love smoking and i know i'm not alone in this it's
08:02been james is
08:03extremely confident and believed in himself very deeply but it started to become apparent that he was
08:08not the kind of founder who could become his own brand and really sell the company to the world
08:13we're not an activist company we're not prescriptive right in our products if you don't if you don't
08:19like what we're making better than cigarettes then have a cigarette that's fine and we're not against
08:27that it was incredibly jarring to hear somebody say something like you know if you don't like our
08:32product then just go smoke a cigarette because the whole idea of the company had been built on the
08:37fact that cigarettes are bad for you he might say in like the context of talking to a journalist
08:44exactly what he believes as opposed to you know whatever is the most beneficial thing to say for
08:51the company i don't think that he had a very good handle on what it was that we were going
08:56to do by way
08:57of marketing it's really important that you get the strategy and the execution right the stakes are
09:05incredibly high as jewel's launch date got closer james needed someone he could rely on to sell it and he
09:12had someone at the company who'd already proven himself to be a very talented marketer
09:21richard mumby first joined the company as a marketing consultant and he was the polar opposite
09:27of your typical silicon valley bro he had gotten a degree from dartmouth he'd worked at fashion
09:32startups in new york city and he was basically a social media influencer every time that i met richard
09:39mumby it felt like he knew exactly what he was doing like he was prepared for every interaction that
09:45he had during the day he kind of exudes confidence and it's intoxicating james entirely trusted him
09:54to run everything to do with marketing and so that's what mumby did
10:02richard mumby is a dumbass fuck who i'd never want to meet again and i believe he had a big
10:08hand in
10:08ruining jewel i had previously worked with richard on different marketing initiatives so he reached out
10:16to me and told me about this exciting new opportunity he had in san francisco and he asked me if
10:21it would
10:21be something i'd be interested in i have a career of specializing in luxury advertising lifestyle advertising
10:30i'm not trying to flex this is not about my vanity but if you're a startup and you want to
10:35be relevant
10:36you know you need to douse of sexy i'd be the guy they would call
10:44bailey had a colorful reputation in the fashion world he was sort of seen as this party boy you
10:49know always surrounded with models and djs and influencers but he was definitely seen as somebody
10:55who could make a product look cool and sell it when you like look under the hood of advertising what
11:00is
11:01it all really about right desirability is like imperative if you're launching something right
11:09and the whole vaping thing was just really goofy
11:14darling fucking plumes if you think of e-cigarettes or you told somebody about e-cigarettes
11:20in the first half of 2010s they probably wouldn't have any idea what you're talking about or they
11:24would think that sounds lame and nerdy everybody had either these things that looked like cigarettes
11:30but were worse it was like a fake cigarette or these huge monster rigs that would make these crazy
11:38giant clouds of smoke james and adam really wanted jewel to be seen as a luxurious sophisticated product
11:45that people would not be embarrassed to use unlike some vaping products that have been seen as dorky
11:51and uncool i mean there's a barren wasteland of just awful tacky stuff even the mainstream brands that
11:59were putting out devices were so corny it was just like wow it felt as though we were playing in
12:07amateur leagues
12:11it really struck me that the devices look like stanley kubrick's monolith in space odyssey 2001
12:18the god-like presence of that device in those films and the mystery behind it was a huge inspiration for
12:25me
12:25i also had apple on the mind you know the way that apple markets their products they're beautiful
12:32sumptuous objects to be worshipped but how do you dial up that appeal what does that look like and it
12:38comes from a lot of strategy a lot you know some research and some instincts it's like how do you
12:44get it on
12:48people's radar launch campaigns are arguably the most critical factor in an early stage startup's
12:57existence it's through that launch campaign that you're actually accelerating or otherwise the potential
13:04growth of the company and if you get a launch campaign wrong then you don't really get a second
13:12chance san fran was this e-comm startup hub everyone was setting up camp but from a style perspective
13:19i don't know if i should say this but i mean we've got a bunch of like these zuckerberg type
13:24dudes coming
13:25from stanford and they really were out of touch with being relevant and cool and so if we're using
13:33people in these ads what do they look like who are they where are they you know so when i
13:40started
13:40working with richard i said look vice magazine williamsburg like this is where it's all going
13:46down you know he immediately agreed during this period a huge inspiration to me was terry richardson
13:54he really had his finger on the pulse of what was happening culturally it's the president the next day
13:59it's beyonce you know and then it's rihanna richard gravitated to that approach the big overarching theme
14:08that we just developed was like come as you are by the you know nirvana song right and the whole
14:13idea
14:13is just come as you are you're not going to be styled you don't need to do your hair and
14:17makeup like
14:18be yourself we had a whole bunch of this stuff where the jewel was worked into what you would call
14:23a
14:23lifestyle scenario a lot of folks in advertising think lifestyle is a cheap trick get someone who's
14:29good-looking handsome give him anything it's gonna work but i think it definitely works
14:38richard presented the work to the founders and i don't recall specific feedback there was just certain
14:47different devices that they gravitated towards they liked the color they liked that that design motif
14:53came back to the device everybody signed off on the creative and then we were ready to start going
15:00into production on these shoots you've got adam and james who had this problem they had this technology
15:07they were going to solve the problem but then in walks richard and richard clearly not really
15:13interested in the mission but sees an massive opportunity to drive growth i think it was everyone
15:22was mindful of that mission statement i think once we went down the approved path it just became
15:29something completely different there was no talk of mission statements on the photo shoot and sometimes
15:36when you're bringing a brand's mission statements to life it doesn't work consumer facing
15:42so the direction we decided to take was more focused on the cool factor right their initial idea was conceived
15:52with a particular use case somebody who's already smoking and richard took it into a completely
16:00different demographic based on a lifestyle proposition of urban cool
16:08i was 17 at the time when my friend messaged me about just a random party
16:16so let me have this real quick
16:22also like anything i say about fake ids is like not an issue right
16:25yeah okay yeah i just want to make sure it's an open bar who doesn't love free alcohol obviously so
16:32we
16:32were like let's just go check it out you know but we really had no idea what we were walking
16:36into though
16:38you were greeted by someone with a polaroid camera
16:42the like pink and the blue really set the vibe they definitely had the right ambiance
16:56they had great djs playing and on all the projections they had you know just the jewel
17:02arc on the walls and they all had hashtags on them which kind of give us the cues for what
17:08to put into
17:09our posts so i remember i used the hashtag jewel hashtag vaporized hashtag jewel vapor we were told to post
17:16it
17:16anywhere we wanted so twitter instagram you know we were dancing having fun there was a lot of coughing
17:25going around the room that night my first hit of the jewel
17:32was different from others because i didn't cough the first time so that's what kind of turned me on to
17:37it me and my best friend used to smoke newports i realized it was way stronger it had a different
17:44effect and i do remember thinking like oh is this what a cigarette is like supposed to be like
17:50you know or if maybe i've been smoking cigarettes wrong or something one thing i liked about it was
17:55the sleekness did remind me of the sleekness of an iphone
18:01the first flavor i tried was the fruit flavor but flavor of choice was mint
18:08i remember a lot of my friends saying that they didn't like it but i took two devices home
18:17they wanted a small takeover at times square i walked down there with a couple cameras
18:25i was just like wow
18:34the way the whole thing was orchestrated the way the animation sequences went around the corner
18:39was incredible what a platform to see your work displayed in right so it was really exciting
18:47after the launch party the strategy was really just to get jewel in front of as many people as possible
18:52jewel needed to be successful to satisfy the board and investors and people at the company but the
18:59challenge was that they didn't yet have the budget to put together a huge elaborate launch campaign
19:05part of their strategy was to get boots on the grounds and have these pop-ups in key cities to
19:11get the device out there in the world our mind state was getting them in places where we knew people
19:17of
19:17influence were around or were going to we had like little sampling tips and we were treated almost like
19:23a hookah lounge sampling became a very integral part of all of the campaigns that we did and i'd literally
19:32see these big burly guys doubling over wiping the tears wow can i have another the vaporized campaign
19:43was exquisite at getting the coolest kids to promote the jewel product on their own social media you
19:52started to see these booths pop up at parties where you would basically take a moment away from the
19:55party hop into the booth create content that would then be shared on social media jewel was trying to
20:00associate itself with like these young internet savvy cool kids to ride that boom in influencer marketing
20:11like people that are known as like it girls and it boys people like luca sabat and tabby gavinson they
20:19were associating themselves with tastemakers at the same time people at jewel were sending out free
20:24products to a long list of influencers and celebrities like leonardo dicaprio and bella hadid
20:31every startup was using this tactic selling way of life is the most effective way of selling a
20:36product and if you run a company and you want it to grow that was the way to grow it
20:40jewel throws a
20:41party invites a bunch of people with a lot of followers on instagram gives them jewels and then
20:45gives them cool things to take pictures in front of it just looks like all the cool people you know
20:50are
20:58the launch campaign was very much targeted towards millennials which struck some people as a
21:04strange decision because smoking wasn't terribly popular with millennials
21:10i never saw a single proposal by marketing ever be pushed back on there was never any no let's not
21:19do this
21:20you know i'm not a born marketer either so if they said this is what's necessary to get this thing
21:25going and here's what we'll promise in terms of results the board went ahead with it the investors
21:32are investing in the launch campaign and they're expecting to see signals that this business has
21:39huge potential growth ahead of it among the board one person in particular was concerned
21:45an investor named alexander assaley alex assaley was the only voice of dissent as the campaign went to
21:54market he felt that it was way off strategy and he understood that if this strategy was to succeed
22:01the organization might never be able to walk back from it we did the vaporize campaign you know bottles
22:08dancing you know holding a jewel in their hand i've seen like this is going to be the coolest thing
22:14in the
22:14world probably a bad idea you know i felt like it was effective in terms of what we were trying
22:21to achieve
22:22but the initial response to the campaign we immediately got negative feedback e-cigarette makers
22:29are allowed to advertise to anyone on tv which has led to ads like this one for jewel vapor
22:42yeah yeah something about inhaling poison steam just makes me want to dance in a way that doesn't
22:47require much lung strength ultimately the problem with jewel's early marketing was that while they
22:53had sat down and read thousands of pages of tobacco industry documents about nicotine salts they
22:59apparently hadn't read the thousands of pages of documents about tobacco industry marketing if you
23:04were starting a startup putting out a nicotine product why reinvent the wheel jewel and its
23:12advertising faithfully followed the playbook of big tobacco companies and their cigarette brands
23:20the vaporize campaign it has direct roots from the way the tobacco industry marketed to youth
23:28take a bunch of 20-somethings and you have them dance around
23:32many of the thematics look like newport ads social groups of teenagers ones and twos doing fun things
23:41playing dancing around the themes that are put forward with vaporize of individuality and adventure and
23:49glamour those were older themes that had been developed by big tobacco look at the hair
23:56look at the faces look at the poses employing glamour sophistication and youth and cool
24:08they gave away tens and tens of thousands of free jewels
24:12well that's an old trick of drug dealers everywhere right the first one is always free
24:17they took the very worst elements of tobacco marketing cigarette makers could no longer advertise on
24:24television jewel could cigarette makers could no longer have a billboard on times square
24:29jewel could shortly after the vaporized campaign came out adage ran a story about the campaign
24:37and within that article somebody was quoted as saying that the advertisements looked
24:41very similar to old big tobacco ads this was a bombshell within the company
24:49mubbie's team leapt into hyperdrive and started redoing aspects of the vaporize campaign even though
24:55it had just come out
24:58jules knew from day one children smoking jules was a disaster there was no doubt about that james actually
25:06came out of the office one day because guys this is a smoking product and we've got to start thinking
25:11that way and i remember that was quite a shift for them because i think you know there was always
25:17this little kind of valley mentality of get as big as you can as fast as you can figure out
25:23the rest later
25:25they got caught in a sense and you end up with a kind of an apology tour or a retreat
25:31when we launched
25:32jewel uh we had a campaign that was um arguably too uh kind of lifestyle oriented too flashy it lasted
25:40less than six months adam bowen said well it was too lifestyle oriented well that's kind of a tepid
25:45way of saying it was in fact very youth oriented there's a saying in silicon valley move fast and break
25:52things this vaporized campaign was conceived pre-produced and executed in less than a month that's
26:01really really quick it was wildly irresponsible for the creative leadership to have no knowledge of
26:09what was responsible marketing of the tobacco product i want to be clear stephen bailey was hired
26:16help to execute a playbook that he was known for young smiley happy sexually provocative people having a
26:24great time it's really not stephen's responsibility to set the strategic direction for the brand bailey and
26:33mumby you know they took the marching orders from the senior leadership of jewel and they created the goal
26:40of getting the cool kids
26:44so um one of the things i wanted to talk about was that that stackler professor from stanford
26:50it's jackler stackler it was like kind of shocking that he was a professor i'm not like
26:55here to take shots at him but this idea that we went through the like hallowed hall of bad tobacco
27:02advertising you know and sort of extracted elements as if we even had the time for that you know it's
27:08just
27:08kind of you know it was comical in a sense because you know of the time it actually took to
27:13do this
27:13whole thing and i don't think it would be physically possible to do what he was suggesting you know if
27:19i could take credit for creating this thing that was like a cultural phenomenon you know maybe i mean
27:26you know i'd be like the most wanted creative professional on the planet but it didn't really
27:31work out like that it was you know my name was getting thrown around the press and uh it got
27:37really
27:37scary you know i'm coming out of it i mean i like i just feel weird being like wah wah
27:43i mean i'm a
27:45i'm a grown man if i have to drive an uber fuck it you know what am i gonna do
27:55i remember what the first day was like they had just shipped the samples to my house i was super
28:00excited i had a list of stores i was going to go visit i was like i'm going to hit
28:05the ground running
28:05this is going to be awesome i get to my very first vape shop and they're like no we don't
28:09want it
28:10i'm like well let me see if i can change it up and go to a smoke shop no we
28:14don't want it and it was
28:16like that no one wanted it no one wanted it at all juul was starting to spread on social media
28:23people were posting about it after the sampling tour but in real life things were not looking as good
28:29sales people were really struggling to convince retailers to stock juul products i don't think people
28:34got what we were selling they just saw pretty people holding what looked like a usb stick
28:38like are we selling the models or are we selling the juul this guy he calls us and he's like
28:46hey is
28:46this uh juul i'm like yeah it's like you the person that sent me all those uh juul pods yep
28:52what'd you think first off i got a whole bunch of juice in my mouth so i'm not thrilled about
28:57that
28:58even after juul launched people were still reporting this juice in mouth problem one employee
29:05tested this huge batch of juul pods and almost one in five leaked i think the expectations on how the
29:11successful juul was going to be were rapidly shrinking in fact at one point we stopped production for two
29:18weeks because we had ordered too much they expected juul to be big but then when the juul came out
29:25james
29:26was in a panic because he thought the product he should have failed terribly
29:35to get the juul device to a point where it could be sold widely was a huge undertaking
29:39we were doing these things manually and they were extremely expensive to hand assemble and hand
29:47fill we were selling but essentially at a loss i was trying to get some automated equipment and me and
29:54james got into the argument that filled in the parking lot over 500 miles
30:03james wanted to call the shots even if it wasn't his area of expertise
30:09he wanted to be the one in charge
30:12big changes are coming to the e-cigarette market the fda released new rules today
30:19on top of all of these problems the fda was finalizing its rules for regulating e-cigarettes
30:25the food and drug administration regulates most of the foods all the drugs and since 2009 tobacco
30:31products when i became center director e-cigarettes were not under fda regulation it took the better part
30:39of seven years to finally begin to regulate e-cigarettes the industry has never been regulated or
30:45taxed by the federal government but today a whole new set of rules came out that includes banning sales
30:50to anyone under 18 requiring packaged warning labels and making all products subject to government
30:57approval instead of it being the wild wild west and the companies being able to do literally anything
31:02that they wanted if they wanted to bring a new product to market if they wanted to make a claim
31:07for their products they had to come to fda first e-cigarette makers could keep selling any vaping
31:14products already on the market but they couldn't introduce any new ones so for jewel to be told
31:19basically to freeze in place and say you will grandfather in this thing because you did it before
31:26we were really paying attention but now we're paying attention if you try to do anything else
31:30you're going to get the full scrutiny and wrath of the fda i think it just left them feeling sort
31:35of static
31:39it was literally right in the middle of the morning
31:43there was tension in the air for sure because we knew that there was been some rumblings about you
31:48know some of the numbers were really bad in terms of jewel but anyway we're hanging around uh but normally
31:55the board was pretty insulated from the company this is the first time this guy in print square
32:00ever it's spoken directly because you know we're having a immediate all-hands meeting he was very blunt
32:07not happy at all with the way things are going i see a lot of stupid decisions being made
32:12they marched james up to the front um the guy from the board got up there says i said immediately
32:17james
32:18no right like that right in front of the whole company he was sitting on a table he was looking
32:26down he wasn't looking up um his feet were swinging in the air and uh bam i was so angry
32:37at that board
32:37because he had built that company and he didn't deserve to be treated like that
32:44and then all of a sudden the board stepped in took a very very active role
32:50james being demoted didn't really surprise me but it did surprise me that the board would come in and
32:55say we don't have a ceo we're just gonna run this company for the foreseeable future board members
33:02suddenly de facto running the company is basically unheard of james and adam had lost control of
33:09their company by then because they gave away too much of it that's when jewel started to become a
33:15company driven by profit and this desire to become a corporation rather than a scrappy little startup
33:22because of the waning revenue and the lack of performance from
33:28jewel there was discussion about killing jewel altogether it was a lot of fear that what have
33:36we done have we just wasted all this energy and time and resources and creating this
33:41but sometimes you get a lucky hit
33:55so after the party i think that my relationship with cigarettes definitely changed
34:05i carried the jewel with me more often so when my friends saw me vaping that summer they were just
34:11like
34:11what is that i started college in august of 2016 because i carried it around with me so often
34:21i did have a big influence on jewel in our college campus
34:28i remember my roommates would make fun of me for it too but they eventually got one
34:33you felt like you were almost a part of a secret club that no one knew about yet
34:38but i would say around my sophomore year of college everyone had one
34:43or at least everyone knew about it and they'd be like look can i hate your jewel
34:51june or july of 2016 we're just blew up
34:56jewel orders just took off out of nowhere we are just flying through product you know when the sales
35:02started rolling in all of a sudden i'm realizing wait a minute this is really going somewhere
35:08the only thing that i can guess is somewhere in new york somebody asked the question what is that
35:14and then we just got hot
35:18i think it was just word of mouth more than anything i ended up telling a lot of my friends
35:22about jewel
35:2330 something people who were smokers all switched over to the jewel a friend saying i tried this and it
35:30really is great that's the best marketing and advertising you can get you can't beat that
35:36but that kind of word of mouth takes time a marketing campaign that you do in 2015 you might
35:41not see those sales numbers until 2016 but a year to mass adoption is actually extremely quick
35:47jewel took a product that was previously considered like cringy and made it into this cool aspirational
35:54awesome thing that everyone had to have this party accessory almost
36:01yes i would say the draw from this is as close to a cigarette as you are going to get
36:04from something
36:05that's electronic being influenced is easy especially if you tell someone this is cool and then they
36:10see it's like oh you're right it is cool and then you just start using it and then it just
36:13kind of
36:13spreads like wildfire from there
36:19for me it was when i walked around the streets of silicon valley and san francisco and it felt like
36:26two out of every three people you passed were dueling and then pretty quickly it started to be truly
36:32everywhere everyone saw dave chapelle stand up and he was using it they didn't reach out to him
36:39they didn't pay him he was just using it all on his own you want to hit my vape pen
36:43oh sorry
36:45nigga i'm trying not to get herpes my bad there were a bunch of celebrities posting about it on
36:51instagram in a way that felt genuine which is like the dream for a company like that that if you
36:57can
36:57just get into the right handful of places you're good we were thrilled when we saw that people that
37:06were influencers were loving jewel it's amazing how little of that it takes from the right set of
37:15people to make a campaign like that take off because as soon as a handful of celebrities do it
37:20that means you've now exposed your product and your idea to everybody
37:28the vaporized campaign i think it's brilliant marketing it's textbook marketing you know you seed
37:35the conversation and you seed the influencers and you sit back and you watch the masses take notice
37:45but jewel's first impression will forever be known as a brand that tried to recruit the next generation
37:51of nicotine addicts jewel ran ads that looked exactly like what you would do if you're apple and you're
38:01making a vaporizer they had people who looked cool doing cool stuff with jewels it wasn't a deep serious
38:11dive into how they improved the experience of ingesting nicotine it was lifestyle ads what your life
38:16could look like if only you had this in your life they did not go into this with regard for
38:23the side
38:24effects of that sort of marketing they saw this as just another tech product and it's not another
38:30tech product it's a nicotine product had jewel decided to hire somebody from the tobacco industry
38:36that person likely would have immediately sent up red flags and said no with 2020 hindsight what i would
38:43say to them is take the marketing plan that you learned how to do when you were in business school
38:50and throw it away because you don't make widgets you make a product that has nicotine in it james and
38:58adam didn't totally understand that i've been conflicted about my role in all of this over time
39:07i wrote an article a lot of people read saying this was the iphone of e-cigarettes which is not
39:12a small thing to say i think i was right in retrospect but did i help that be right
39:18probably and i think as a tech reporter it would have been easy enough for me to
39:22leave it alone and say this is not fundamentally a tech product this is somebody trying to make
39:27tech out of something else and i think i didn't realize at the time that i wish i had was
39:33their
39:33goal was not to make people quit smoking their goal was to make people start jeweling and i never asked
39:41the question and i wish i had what if this works what if everyone does start jeweling then what
39:48i don't think anyone could have anticipated how many children would want this product
39:57first impressions are everything on the internet so when you put something like the jewel campaign
40:02out into the world it's like releasing a genie from a bottle there is no going back
40:06i don't think anyone would want this to be the world for you
40:35and i don't think someone could have a great idea
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