Marketing e-liquids: targeting young people or returning to childhood?
We are seeing more and more brands of liquids adopting “sugar or energy drink” marketing codes…
While already the simple flavours that appeal to the tastes of childhood (vanilla, candy, cakes…) make the hair of many critics of vape, isn’t this tendency detrimental to its image? Worse still, wouldn’t the manufacturers’ objective be to really seduce young people and encourage them to vaporize, even those who don’t smoke?
Let’s think about it. What is the main vape kits market? Millions of smokers who wish to quit or millions of young people who have not yet put their lips on the slightest (real) cigarette? From this point of view, what is the easiest target for doing business?
Honestly, if I were a manufacturer, I would certainly choose the smokers’ market. This is obviously the best potential, immediately captive. Above and beyond the liquid, vape is a constraint of equipment and maintenance which requires a real effort. So at the young people’s level, the evangelization of the practice is a barrier, or at least a retarder, to rapidly develop the sales of my products.
So the manufacturers are idiots, do they have the wrong target?
Doesn’t this “candy” marketing simply appeal to the regressive side of the adult, who is not content to stop smoking,”having fun” with an alternative to smoking, where the notion of pleasure has completely replaced the guilt of smoking. The search for pleasing and original flavours is fundamental for steamers, and open competition (unlike tobacco) stimulates manufacturers’ creativity. There is not only the delicacy atmosphere, but also many other “universes” among the manufacturers: cooking / pastry, perfumery, spirits, cocktails, fruit, menthols, breakfast cereals, tea, coffee, tobacco / cigar (inevitably…).
Yet the tobacco industry has just been banned from adding attractive flavours to avoid seducing young people. This satisfies the anti-tobacco frightened by e-cig, which also asks the actors of the vape to completely banish the reference to tobacco.
No pleasure, no tobacco, would the future of a “reasonable” vape be without aroma, at the risk of seducing no one?