Context
Story Listening
Story
Telling
Story Making
Results
Category Plateaus, Private Label Dominates, Vaping Emerges
Nicorette was already losing share before vaping utterly confused and disrupted the category. Vaping initially positioned itself as a smoking cessation alternative, but quickly became just smoking. Exacerbating the commercial pressure, those who were open to traditional smoking cessation forms (gum, patch, lozenge) opted for cost savings through private label because Nicorette had a weak brand narrative.
“I love cigarettes, they’ve been there for me when all else fails. But in my heart, I know it’s time to break up.”
Our teams walked streets, trolled chatrooms, and combed data to learn the real story. Previous campaigns showed an idealized version of perfect quitters. This pissed off smokers because it failed to capture the unprecedented existential struggle of quitting. The truth was this: smokers loved cigarettes, but hated smoking, and quitting was f*&#ng hard.
The End of a Twisted, Toxic, Codependent Relationship
The brand declared a new purposeful positioning driven by a deep human truth: celebrate progress not perfection. The tagline Start Stopping evoked the idea that you don’t need to stop smoking (yet) you just need to start building your self-esteem. The brand create a menagerie of messaging that showed truth of the struggle and helped rebuild people’s sense of self.
The Opposite of Addiction is Connection; The Brand Created a Connected Suite of Communities To Support
The brand created MyQuit, a social platform to help quitters support other quitters, and partnered with celebrities on social channels to ‘shout out’ to people who were quitting. They also created a connected app that used behavioral data to nudge quitters, and an entirely new form factor (spray). Finally, the brand started a partnership with Berklee and Spotify to explore more ways for music to support the quitting journey.
11% sales increase; 50% of buyers are new to the category; 289 New Retail Placements; Over 1 BB Earned Impressions