Please forgive me, I don't mean to laugh at your pain.
Squirrel.
I've seen that before, but it's still classic. It's like it's almost a parody of itself.
I checked with RJR about Revo. Their website said to call them, so I did. It will be test-marketed in Wisconsin starting next February. I asked if it was different from Eclipse and they said it was exactly the same, but with new packaging and logos. Wow, surely that will help them gain market share.
If all goes well, nationwide rollout might not be until 2017.
I'm going to play market analyst and tell them why it will fail.
Dedicated smokers don't like them. I was in a test market for Eclipse and got a carton for $5. I was getting all the nicotine, but I didn't feel like I had just smoked a cigarette, so at first I would smoke an Eclipse and then since I wasn't satisfied I'd smoke a Camel (win-win for RJR). I wasn't very impressed.
Then I got sick and the doctor suggested that maybe I shouldn't smoke for a couple of weeks. LOL, doc. If I could quit smoking for a couple of weeks, maybe I could quit smoking forever. Or was that his intent? Anyway, I took his advice under consideration and started smoking Eclipse instead. I adjusted to them, but I had to get so sick I felt I was dying one day and it hurt to smoke regular cigarettes to make me do that.
Then there was the ill-fated and extended business trip to Detroit back about 10 years ago. I ran out of Eclipse and couldn't find any more and resorted to smoking regular cigarettes again. I coughed for a week after I got back to the Eclipses. I hope I don't sound like a shill, because I think I'm starting to sound like one, but this is a product that isn't sold anymore and I hate RJR and not because they downplayed the dangers of smoking. Everyone knows smoking is bad. I hate them for the way they played with prices. They figured out that a few people might quit if prices go too high, but most people will just keep on paying and will more than make up for those quitters. Think back to 2009 when Obama took office and announced cigarette taxes would increase. The prices shot up by about 50% (about $25 per carton for me) immediately even though the tax wouldn't actually take effect for another couple months and the actual tax increase was only about $2 per a carton.
I'm not trying to make this political, but the
tobacco companies sure did. They saw an opportunity to raise prices and shift all the blame to Obama at the same time. Many people also like to say most of the cost of a pack of cigarettes is taxes, but if you look into it that's simply not true. Taxes are high, but that doesn't account for the price increases I've seen since I bought my first pack years ago.
Lawsuits are probably partially to blame too, but I think the lawsuits are baseless. Everyone knows smoking is bad and if some day I'm dying of emphysema, lung cancer and COPD I can't blame Big
tobacco. But still I think the suits at RJR and PM and BAT just started raising prices in a drunken frenzy of greed. "Oh look, most people still buy smokes at $3 a pack. Let's try for $4". And they saw that most people just kept on paying so they kept upping the price to where they got to a $2 tax per carton translates into a $25 per carton price increase.
Revo will fail though. Smokers don't like them. I had to get deathly sick before I switched to Eclipse. By any sane standard, I should have just quit altogether and that was before e-cigs were a thing. Now a motivated nicotine addict who wants to reduce the health risks of smoking while maintaining a nicotine addiction is just going to pick up an e-cig.
Premier failed (I never even saw those), Eclipse failed and so will Revo. In all my time smoking Eclipse I only ever convinced one other person to try them on a regular basis and she went back to her Merits or Kools or whatever it was she smoked. One of the worst things about smoking Eclipse is having to explain to people how to light them when they bum a cigarette off of you. They look at you like you're crazy because of course they know how to light a cigarette. Ha ha.
IME giving out Eclipse to those who were either social smokers and only smoked OPC (other people's cigarettes) or regular smokers who just ran out, it was the OPC smokers who liked them the most - not really a big market for tobacco companies I would imagine. They don't buy cigarettes in the first place.
They can't really market it. TV ads aren't going to happen. One of their big mainstays in the '70s and '80s was magazine ads, but who subscribes to magazines anymore? They can't even put up signs in sports stadiums anymore. They can do direct mail, but that's probably not very successful and even if it is, how is getting someone to switch from one RJR brand to Revo really going to help them much? Not to mention that only a small percentage of smokers will ever contact them so they can get their address in the first place. They know me from Camel Cash, but that's been dead for at least a decade.
The only way I can see this even having a snowball's chance in hell is if they push it in e-cig stores as an alternative that's somewhere between conventional cigs but not quite as different as e-cigs. I would like to offer RJR some free advice. That's your only hope, but if a customer is already in an e-cig store they're probably going to get an e-cig.
apologies for the ranting and long-windedness. I'm in one of those moods.
