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Although the leading e-cigarettte company Juul has recently announced that they will delete all social media accounts in an effort to reduce teenage e-cigarette use and engagement online, a recent CNN investigation has shown that Juul was paying for “influencers” to promote their e-cigarettes to thousands of followers, a portion of which were underage. The company received outrage over their marketing strategies, which experts say have mirrored Big Tobacco’s previous strategies of marketing to the young in order to “gain lifelong customers.” A Juul spokesperson said the “paid influencer program, which was never formalized, was short-lived”, and that the company only targeted “‘fewer than 10 paid influencers, who were all smokers or former smokers’ 28 and up, and who were collectively paid less than $10,000.” One of the influencers who participated in the program said 5% of her followers were 17 and under, an albeit small percentage. However, as Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, points out, “Social media works differently than other stuff. You don’t need that many people…A small number of people who are popular and get reposted can reach a very large number of people.”
Dr. Robert Jackler, founder of the Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising, believes that Juul didn’t intentionally target teens but that “its appeal to kids was obvious early on, and the company didn’t take early steps to prevent that…The company claims that they didn’t know that the product appealed to underage kids who began using it in large numbers…I don’t believe that, not for a minute, because they’re also a very digital, very analytical company, they know their market. They know what they’re doing.” Juul CEO Kevin Burns argues that the social media impact on underage e-cigarette use is not due to Juul’s contributions, saying “more than 99 percent of all social media content related to JUUL Labs is generated through third-party users and accounts with no affiliation to our company…There is no question that this user-generated social media content is linked to the appeal of vaping to underage users.”Jackler continued his comments, pointing out that although Juul’s advertising is now geared towards a population of former smokers, their early advertisements were “manifestly youth-oriented…it showed 20-something models dressed in fashionably casual clothing…they’re the exact kind of young adults that teenagers find appealing and wish to aspire and be like.”
For more information from CNN’s Juul investigation, click here.