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As any experienced vapor retailer can attest, the easiest
way to bring cigarette smokers into the vaping fold is
to educate them on vapor products. Vape shops, many
owned by former smokers with a passion for vaping,
excelled at this. Staffed by vaping enthusiasts informed
about the latest products and trends and eager to share
their expertise, these stores taught legions of newbies
about the category over recent years.
Still, there are some 42 million smokers in the U.S.,
many of whom have yet to try vaping or, worse yet, tried
an early-generation vapor product and found it a poor
substitute for cigarettes.
Converting those consumers of combustible cigarettes
into vapers represents a huge, albeit elusive, opportunity.
But how to realize it?
Enter E-Alternative Solutions (EAS), the recently
formed affiliate of Swisher International, which took the
novel approach of investing in an infomercial campaign
aimed at educating smokers about both vaping and the
company’s Cue Vaping System. The resulting 29-min-
ute infomercial introduces “real people” who share their
stories about how vaping has changed their lives, says Ja-
copo D’Alessandris, president and chief executive officer
of Darien, Connecticut-based E-Alternative Solutions.
“No other brand in this space has ever made this type
of investment in a mass media television infomercial,
not even Big Tobacco,” says D’Alessandris, who explains
that the campaign was inspired in part by the vapor store
channel of retail. “We took inspiration from the success
that vapor stores have had in educating customers about
vapor—not only by showing the product, but by telling
them how to use it and how it can change their lives. We
took inspiration from that and asked ourselves, ‘How can
we do that on a mass scale?’”
Launched on February 27, the commercial intro-
duces viewers to several former smokers who benefit-
ted from the switch to vaping, including a driver of
a popular online ride sharing service who had been
getting panned by customers because his car smelled
like smoke, and a young woman who was a lot more
interested in kissing her boyfriend because he traded
in his cigarettes. In addition to promoting vaping in
general through such stories, the infomercial showcases
the convenience of the low-maintenance Cue system,
which uses a cartridge technology to avoid the mess
and hassle of open-system vaping devices. “The key