An Open Apology to Swedish Match

I published an article yesterday on the new Camel SNUS ads and marketing campaign praising Reynolds for having the courage to push the FDA tobacco advertising limits by encouraging cigarette smokers to completely switch to snus. I stand by everything I wrote in that article and the previous ones on the Camel Snus “Take the Pleasure Challenge” campaign.

Later reading the the followup discussion thread of this article in our Snus Forum, I realized praising RJR’s marketing plan over 2011 had somehow evolved into denigrating Swedish Match. I thought about it for a while and re-read some of my earlier articles. To be honest, I’ve been thinking about this phenominon a lot since the April Snus Summit with Swedish Match in Chicago.

We’ve never been shy about calling out any snus manufacturer, Scandinavian or American, when we felt the need. Swedish Match in particular has never asked that a story not be printed and never offered any “editing suggestions” to me or anyone I know. That can not be said of certain other manufacturers and is noteworthy for that reason alone.

What had changed was not the validity of our comments and criticisms, but the tone of them. I think the reason the tone changed can be summed up in a single word: frustration. As Americans, we are prone to become frustrated when reality doesn’t meet our expectations. Sometimes frustration warrants a harsh tone, like when trying to reason with FDA or figure out why our President is thowing an extravegant nation-wide birthday party/fundraiser for himself while the country is plunging full speed back into recession.

Other times as in this case, frustration generates a “what have you done for me lately” mentality which dismisses years of good over the immediacy of the moment. On behalf of myself I apologize sincerely to Swedish Match for the tone this frustration among some American Swedish snus enthusiasts has taken.

Why the General Snus “Not All Snus is Created Equal” Inititive Will Work

With regards to the September convenience store pilots of General Classic and Nordic Mint, I’m pretty optimistic about the success of the pilots and their expansion. I detailed this in my article on the Chicago Snus Summit but in reading some of the forum posts, I want to bullet-point responses to certain points raised. If they seem out of context to you, read my original article on
Not All Snus is Created Equal first (if you have the time to kill) or the forum thread in question.

• Swedish Match has made no secret of the fact that they have been letting RJR do all the heavy lifting over the last 5 years on introducing the concept of snus to the American market. RJR has given away more Camel Snus than they’ve sold over the last 5 years to make the word snus somewhat recognizable to Americans. Simply stated, RJR could afford that large of an investment; Swedish Match couldn’t and can’t.

• Swedish Match recognizes that Reynolds has succeeded in getting the word out to the point where it makes sense for SM to make their move now.

• Swedish Match are using chillers because they believe RJR has mainstreamed the “sold cold for freshness” position which snus consumers in Sweden demand. Do snus chillers also help product visibility at point of sale and marketing? Of course they do. The new SM chillers are cooler looking and with the LED lighting, more eye catching than the Camel coolers. They are better insulated than the Camel coolers and consume 30% less power than the Camel ones. This is a big selling point, not to potential snus users, but to c-store owners who have to count every penny to make a profit. Should Swedish snus with its higher moisture be refrigerated prior to sale? Not enough space here to explain it but if you are interested, I explain why I think so in the article.

• C-store clerks aren’t trained to engage customers in long conversations on the value of Swedish snus over American snus or cigarettes. Quite the opposite, their job is to keep the lines moving and get as many customers through the store as quickly as possible. General Classic and General Nordic Ice are in oblong cans because RJR has shown with Camel Snus that American smokers like them better than round cans. Each can contains 15 portions because their Camel, Marlboro and Skoal counterparts contain 15 portions.

• By making the decision for a customer to try General Snus as uncomplicated as possible, Swedish Match is counting on the taste and the “tobacco satisfaction” (code for the superior nic hit) on driving repeat purchases. The discount coupon in the catch lid rewarding them for trying a second can reinforces this.

• After a couple of cans of General Classic or Nordic Mint, going back to Camel, Marlboro, or Skoal snus is not going to be so easy. At least that’s the theory and I think it’s a good one since it worked for me.

• Like many of you, I never heard of snus and had no idea what it was until I received a coupon for a free can of Camel snus.

• Like many of you, I discovered Swedish snus and Swedish Match because of Camel Snus.

• Most importantly, like pretty much all of you, once I tried Swedish snus, I never went back to Camel or any other American snus….and I am still an ex-smoker.

At Swedish Match’s secret preview of the c-store campaign in Chicago, I was as frustrated by the much too long timelines and the P&L corporate mentality as everyone else who attended. Like the others, I was very vocal and strident in expressing that frustration. Like the others, I also stand by everything I said that day.

Some early operational fumbles by SMNA after Chicago further frustrated and disappointed all of us.

However, of this I am certain: Without Swedish Match, a tobacco store in Frisco, Texas called Up in Smoke, and that first can of General Original Portion in 2007, I would be at best a dual-user of Camel snus and cigarettes today. At worst, I would still be smoking 1 1/2 to 2 packs of cigarettes a day or be dead from doing so. General Snus and Swedish Match literally saved my life.

The folks at Swedish Match in Stockholm were the only people that paid attention to lowly American bloggers like me back then.  They were excited by and embraced the enthusiasm of born-again snusers in America while to RJR, Altria, and especially Lorillard, we were never even people; just number of sticks sold.

I used to blog about a lot of things five years ago. My humble blog, The Unloading Zone, was, as it said in the site mission statement, a place for me to talk about what interested me at any particular time. When I started writing about snus, RJR and PMUSA read my articles: I could see their visits in my site analytics. It wasn’t until a year or so ago that anyone of significance at RJR reached out to me. I litterally dropped the phone when they identified themselves.

Swedish Match on the hand, baffled me with their enthusiasm. They were and still are the largest Swedish snus manufacturer in the world. Why were they reading my blog? Why were they sending me pre-release cans of snus to review? [their lawyers put a stop to that once PACT and the Tobacco Control Act were ratified. Thank you, Obama, Waxman, and the now politically deceased Anthony Weiner.]

Was it possible that my writings were actually significant? I guess they were in the context that there were only about 4000 Swedish snus users in the USA at the time and I was one of a very few enthusiasts who wrote about snus. None the less, I was inspired to create SnusCentral.org in part because Swedish Match was excited that I was excited about Swedish snus.

More and more snus-oriented websites began appearing. It is because of Swedish Match, not RJR or Altria, that the American tobacco consumer in 2011 can Google “snus” and have access to almost 5 million results from thousands of sources. SnusCentral.org remains one of the most important of these sources, but I may be a little biased.

My disappointments with the new campaign center more around execution and lack of passion by many at SMNA. Most there don’t use snus. Of those that do, most are Wintergreen and Mint fans. The only big exception to this that I know of is Joe Teller, who is Director of OTP for SMNA (the snuff and chew brands). Turns out, like myself, Joe is a huge fan of General Ekstra Sterk Portion.

Sadly, Joe has to buy his Ekstra Sterk for himself. SMAB will not ship (or their lawyers will not allow them to ship) any snus products to SMNA employees except for the very limited selection of General Snus which is sold in the US.

Here’s where I had an empithany. How can the folks at SMNA/SMUS be expected to share our passion for snus when most have never even heard of, let alone tried, Ettan, Roda Lacket, Goteborg’s Rape’, Grov, and the rest?

I say without pride but as a fact that we attendees of the Chicago 2011 General Snus Campaign preview had collectively forgotten more about Swedish snus than the Americans present who worked for Swedish Match knew. In fact, that is exactly why we were invited….because of our passion/obsession with Swedish snus as Americans and for our love of Swedish Match snus.