Talia Eisenberg - My Experience Starting an Ecigarette Company: Alan AtKisson's Amoeba of Cultural Change

Discovering Atkisson's Amoeba metaphor while taking a course on Sustainable Implementation, I realized that product innovation is a giant social experiment won out by the amoeba “arm” that is most relentless and convincing. It is most interesting for me to analyze why the new innovation ought to be (the intention behind it is important too, especially as a sustainability advocate: "is the innovation environmentally or socially innovative?") and then I ask myself, "What is the strategy for social acceptance of this innovation? In order for a new innovative product or service to be adopted one must understand the organizational structure and various motives behind the conflicting desirous "arms" involved. If the innovative concept is viable, it seems that whomever has the most effective “pull” whether it be persuasion skills, money, political power, or ability to organize and achieve strength in numbers wins out. 

An example that immediately leapt to my mind was when in 2011 a few partners and I started an early ecigarette company to help spread the idea of harm reduction related to tobacco use. Vaping i s way cleaner because it eliminates tar and the thousands of carcinogens that a cigarette contains when burned, and that gunk is what causes cancer. Contrary to popular belief, inhaling nicotine, water, vegetable glycerine and natural flavoring is pretty benign compared to smoking. At the time, vaping and ecigarettes were virtually unheard of in the US and it became our mission to develop and market vaping devices and “nicotine e-liquid.”

As part of the company mission at Henley Premium Vapor we advocated for the public's transition from smoking to vaping. Many sides of societies amoeba/organizational structure spoke up and didn’t want this product to exist. To facilitate acceptance, we attempted to change mental models by using research on nicotine and harm reduction discussions to convince the public that this was a way cleaner method of nicotine delivery. As we began to mobilize "change agents" to spread the idea (athletes, celebs, bloggers etc) we also needed to get "transformers" (cultural gate keepers) on board (large media publications - Fast Co, Ny Times, Cool Hunting, Vice, NY Mag etc). We met with dozens and dozens of reporters who became believers and wrote stories. We did this by creating a culture of vaping at a public “lab” space we opened in SoHo with hundreds of different flavors and nicotine strengths, showing reporters studies, demo’ing the product with reporters and bringing them examples of success – a 30 year smoker who had finally successfully quit by switching to ecigarettes etc. These reporters published these real life stories humanizing ecigarettes as a harm reduction tool. Working with "transformers" helped us reach American "mainstreamers" who aid in the tipping point. Once they are familiar with an idea enough, it is normalized and they take part. There were mainstream “laggards” who liked the old way of smoking even though it would eventually kill them, and they resisted change. There are always laggards. 

Harm reduction activists like the DPA (Drug Policy Alliance) and others helped us by advocating to change public policy and help rally scientists/universities/experts to change perception. We attended and spoke out at NY public policy Town Hall meetings where agents from Big Tobacco ("reactionaries" and "iconoclasts") and other resistance groups would show up trying to battle us by convincing government how harmful the products were. The reactionaries and iconoclasts used and sometimes paid the same media we had befriended to fabricate false stories. An example is a story printed in USA Today about a consumer who lost part of his face from exploding ecigarettes (when I tried to call this person in Florida, it turned out to be a fictitious name). Another strategic route the tobacco industry took is to put scientists on payroll to create studies using bad statistics claiming kids were getting hooked on ecigaerettes or that it was a gateway to smoking weed and then heroin. This use of fear as a tactic to spread nonsense is typical. See the movie Merchants of Doubt which according to the article "profiles many of the charming and always smiling professional deceivers who work for the tobacco, chemical, pharmaceutical, and fossil fuel industries. The tobacco industry knowingly and successfully deceived the public for 50 years about the connection between smoking and cancer, the 1988 tobacco lawsuit settlement revealed."

The tobacco industry was trying to protect their own self interest because they feared the surge in consumer usage of “vaping” would impact their cigarette sales revenue. Many "mainstreamers," unwilling to do more research and scratch beneath the surface, believed what they read and stayed away from vaping as a result. This was very disappointing. Especially because, corporations from Big Tobacco were secretly courting us. Their executives would show up at our NY flagship store, watch what we were selling and engage the staff and myself in conversation. They wanted consumer data and information to build an effective product and brand in the space. Eventually, a few small ecigarette companies sold out to them and the cigarette industry later reversed its general opinion on ecigarettes by forming their own ecigarette divisions. Their strategy all along was to discredit the "innovators" and then swoop in with their own products marketed as higher quality than ours (their products are made in China, our eliquid was made in the US in lab with strict quality standards). Their paid for media scare tactics and acquisitions to enlarge the market share had destroyed sales and future innovation of new products by the original innovators/entrepreneurs. We couldn’t compete with Big Tobacco’s marketing dollars and stories. Today they own the ecigarette industry and you can find their ecigarette products at every major convenience store chain across America.