Smoke Without Fire - New York Magazine

[Poeia]

Has NJOY Resolved the E-Cigarette's Image Problem? -- New York Magazine

A friend told me about this article. I got bored quickly but, apparently njoy is the future of e-cigarettes because they are making them look and feel more and more like real cigarettes.

The lesson is that as much as cigarette smokers crave nicotine, they yearn for other things, too: the hand-to-mouth motion, the primordial pleasure of sucking on something, the organoleptic experiences of flavor and mouthfeel and “throat hit,” the visual cue of exhaled smoke, the ritual of ignition, the embattled/defiant camaraderie of the smoke break. These vital accoutrements of nicotine addiction were the promise of e-cigarettes, but early models had failed to deliver on it.

And NJOY is going to recreate that experience.

The physical business of vaping is different than that of smoking, but there is hand-to-mouth motion, vapor, etc. It's just as satisfying.

This is nothing against NJOY. I thank them for taking on the FDA. I thank them for putting money into publicizing e-cigarettes. But, in my mind, an NJOY is an introductory PV, for someone who has never vaped. And some people will be satisfied with that permanently, just as some people are still drinking wine that comes in a box, just as they did in college. Others will move on the the wide, wide variety available.

And, as to the writer's question of whether James Dean would have vaped,

They [early e-cigarettes] were, in other words, a long way from <snip> the visual accessory so integral to the silver-screen images of Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, James Dean, James Bond, and Audrey Hepburn. Whatever glamour cigarettes have possessed, there has always been a tar-to-cool correspondence: Camel unfiltereds were badass; Merit Ultra Lights weren’t.

“It’s hard to feel like James Dean while sucking a plastic glow stick,” Business Insider recently noted.

Maybe it's the people attracted to ECF, but the vapers I know are trying to get away from burning tobacco. We know smoking doesn't look cool and we're long past caring about that.

 

[Placebo Effect]

My favorite part

If NJOY is to cross over—reaching all the people, men in particular, who have been resistant to the category—it will need to pull off something like what Marlboro did nearly 60 years ago. “Mark Twain said history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme,” says Anise. And so, as four successive groups of six self-identified smokers sat for 75 minutes each in a room in Phoenix one day last summer, Anise and other NJOY executives watched from behind a two-way mirror, looking to see whether they had succeeded in creating a bridge to familiarity. Two of the focus groups consisted of smokers who’d never tried e-cigarettes, and one man, asked what it would take for him to try one, said, with his arms crossed and a look of enormous skepticism on his face: “$75 and a focus group.”

 

[CES]

I liked the humor

Even though it was primarily about marketing, the article hit some very important points

E-cigarettes have few constituent chemicals (mainly nicotine plus propylene glycol, which is commonly found in cough medicine), unlike the thousands present in tobacco and multiplied when it’s combusted, and they don’t produce secondhand smoke. The scientific consensus, so far, boils down to “these are a lot safer than regular cigarettes,” says Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health. But the likely healthier-ness of e-cigarettes, which could be a huge selling point, is the one thing NJOY and its competitors can’t talk about, since making health claims would justify an FDA crackdown. The company routinely deletes any health-related product testimonials (“NJOY helped me quit”) posted on the company’s Facebook page.

oh, BTW, is this ECF's ocelot?

Most of all, they were just weird-looking, resembling ballpoint pens or cigar cases or, as a fan named the Ocelot noted in a “vaping” chat room, “a cross between a marital aid and a light saber.”

 

[DC2]

oh, BTW, is this ECF's ocelot?

In another thread about this article a few days ago someone said that it was.

I got bored quickly but, apparently NJOY is the future of e-cigarettes because they are making them look and feel more and more like real cigarettes.

In all fairness, they really are getting very close with the NJoy King disposable.

 

[ClippinWings]

oh, BTW, is this ECF's ocelot?

Yes it is and I believe that was stated here on ECF, not in a "Chat Room"

I literally choked on the coffee I was drinking when I read it here a while back... LOL

 

[ClippinWings]

LOL... OK, I looked it up... here it is:

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/new-members-forum/366482-e-cigs-hipster.html#post8233798