The Perils of Using Social Media For Marketing
At one time, Juul was one of the hottest youth-oriented consumer brands, advertising its vaping products to young social media users. But it now looks like this emphasis on reaching the nation’s youngest and most impressionable social media users has backfired spectacularly. As part of a massive $300 million class action lawsuit brought against Juul, vaping customers around the nation are receiving cash payouts.
Of course, Juul users won’t see the full $300 million. According to some estimates, only $202 million will be available to pay users. Obviously, the lawyers need to get paid. And users, of course, will need to provide receipts or some other form of proof to show that they paid for and used Juul products.
As a rough estimate, say experts, over 842,000 clients are eligible for payouts. So, a little back-of-the-envelope math suggests that the average payout could be in the neighborhood of $250. As NBC pointed out in late 2024, some Juul users are actually getting thousands of dollars in payments.
The Netflix doc about Juul
That’s nice, but this cash won’t compensate for a lifetime’s worth of health problems. And, if you’ve watched part of the Netflix documentary on Juul (“Big Vape: The Rise & Fall of Juul”), you’ll know that the health damages are truly horrifying. Kids thought they were puffing on safe, harmless e-cigarettes. Instead, they were consuming poison. As one member of Congress scolds a top Juul executive in the documentary film, “You’re the marketer of a poison… And your target is young people.”
Maybe vaping does not cause the same sorts of debilitating health problems as traditional cigarettes, but the marketing for Juul was arguably more insidious. Even if you’ve never used a Juul product in your life, you’re probably aware that the vaping e-cigarettes were marketed as beautiful products, and all of the branding was designed to appeal to young social media types. If you were young and cool, you vaped with Juul.
What’s particularly sickening in all this, of course, is that Big Tobacco was involved. At one time, Altria - the former Philip Morris - owned 35% of Juul. It knew how to market products, it knew how to cover up health effects, and it had the big bucks to launch splashy new ad campaigns. If it was going to lose money from lower sales of traditional cigarettes, then it was sure going to make up for it by getting involved with vaping.
Lessons learned
Obviously, there are some lessons here if you are a social media marketer. Everybody wants to market to a young demographic, but if you do so, you need to do so responsibly. If there are potential health effects involved, you need to make that very clear. And you shouldn’t attempt to glamorize any activity that might cause harm later.
With that in mind, it’s easy to see how some sorts of marketing and promotion commonly found on social media is going to run into trouble soon. Sports gambling comes to mind. The marketing come-ons are seductive. Play for a few bucks, get a few bonuses and sign-up incentives, and you’re going to get rich quick. Nice business model they’ve got going, right? Someone please warn Kevin Hart, Jamie Foxx, and all the other celebrities or influencers who are trying to glamorize gambling.
The Netflix doc on Juul is certainly instructive. As the film makes clear, the team at Juul thought it could do no wrong. They thought they had discovered the key to billions in riches. They were wrong. Let’s hope that this experience can be a warning to advertising and marketing executives everywhere: If you harm our nation’s youth, you’re going to pay the price later.