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Sunday, October 7, 2012

A Case of Collossal Failure - Premier Cigarettes, $325 million "burned"

Up until the 1950s cigarettes were not generally deemed to be unhealthy - during the Second World War, soldiers routinely received cigarettes as standard issue...

But by the late 1970s and early 1980s, the outcry against smoking, led by US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, was reaching new highs daily... (interestingly Dr. Koop sported his own failure in the dot.com boom days of the late '90s with "drkoop.com," one of the first decent sites to provide health information to the masses - sold for fractions of a penny and now part of healthcentral.com, but I digress...). In his most controversial commentary Dr. Koop actually compared the addictiveness of cigarettes to heroine and cocaine!

Needless to say tobacco companies, not knowing yet that smokers will continue smoking even when death stared them straight in the face from the packaging, nor aware of the vast opportunities awaiting them in eastern Europe and in Asia - well, they panicked. And panic makes the smartest people do the dumbest things.

In 1982 RJR began research on a new type of smokeless cigarette - Premier. The idea was to quiet the outcry by eliminating second-hand smoke - Premier was supposed to burn discretely based on an internal heat generator, and therefore produce no smoke if at all (see picture, and for greater detail visit "Premier - The 'smokeless' cigarette").



The device was "based on a superheated piece of carbon. Sucking on the cigarette pulled hot air from the glowing carbon through a filter of tobacco and around an aluminum "flavor capsule" that released nicotine and smoke taste, which then passed through a regular filter and into the smiling, satisfied mouth of the consumer." (Steinberg, 1994, A Complete and Utter Failure, p. 23).

As Steinberg delineates beautifully in his entertaining treatise, Premier was very problematic or several reasons:
  • Premier couldn't be lit with a regular match or even with a regular lighter - one needed to purchase special butane lighters, not typically readily available
  • Enjoying Premier required reading through and understanding a 4-page instruction booklet...
  • Even when properly lit, it was extremely difficult to draw anything out of the cigarette, which required Herculean sucking capabilities
  • They tasted bad...and smelled worse - as reported by users, who said it reminded them of burning plastic...
  • They presented a fire hazard...since it was difficult to tell when the Premier stopped burning, it was dangerous to discard...
  • Premiers cost more...
  • Perhaps the biggest problem was that, since RJR - or any other tobacco company, really - could not and would not admit that smoking represented any kind of health hazard whatsoever... - it could not advertise that it was "healthier," or indeed that it lacked the smoke that causes cancer... (RJR repeatedly used the word "cleaner" hoping that smokers would subconsciously substitute "healthier...")

    The product was introduced in October 1989. Surgeon Koop immediately pounced on it as a "drug delivery system" sending the FDA after RJR... Reportedly RJR executives were hoping that "health advocates would embrace Premier as a healthful alternative to real cigarettes." (Steinberg, 1994, A Complete and Utter Failure, p. 25)

    Premier was discontinued in February 1990, barely five months after their introduction, leaving RJR with a $325 million bill...

    Did RJR execs, or anyone for that matter, learn anything from the Premier failure?

    A last quote from Steinberg, because it's too good to leave out: "Maybe they (RJR exeutives) learned that consumers might be interested in a cigarette that wouldn't kill them, provided it didn't taste like shit and you could light it with a match." (Steinberg, 1994, A Complete and Utter Failure, p. 26)

    Read more about the Premier fiasco and other entertaining and educational consumer product failures and flops in Steinberg's excellent and often hilarious book, A Complete and Utter Failure: A Celebration of Also-Rans, Runners-Up, Never-Weres & Total Flops
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