The Wall Street Journal gives front page treatment to Reynolds' moves in the smokeless tobacco market. Here's a lead paragraph that'll grab you:
During board meetings, Reynolds American Inc. Chief Executive Susan Ivey likes to suck on dissolvable smokeless-tobacco strips to get her nicotine fix.
That visual just doesn't conjure up the same, well, sophisticated image as the execs on Mad Men sucking on Camels, which I'm thinking is going to be a marketing challenge for Ivey and her cohorts. I mean if we're going to be honest with ourselves we have to admit that smoking looks a lot cooler than sucking on something, even if it does make you smell like a wet goat.
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Befuddled 
RAI is also into smoking cessation with the recent purchase of Swedish based Niconovum. The new RAI is “a total tobacco company” not just a cigarette maker. Yes it is a marketing challenge and yes cigarettes are also an even greater marketing challenge in today’s world.
If you are sucking on a “dissolvable” stick or snus in a restaurant you are not delivering secondhand smoke to your neighbor. In fact the last time we all had coffee at Simplyyummy I was using Camel Snus the whole and no one had a clue.
Hey YD,
Yep, I know a few people are into Snus and I agree that theyre
definitely preferable to cigs. The article mentions all the points you
made too, but I just got a kick out of that opening paragraph and the
image it conjured. It made it sound like she was working that stuff
like a lollipop in the boardroom which is why I thought of the
contrast with the image of execs in the early 60s smoking away in
the boardroom. Different world.
Jon
The image had to be different than if she had been either chewing or dipping – I’m guessing it’s both smokeless and spitless? While chew or dip might not produce 2nd hand smoke, but the spitting isn’t the most neighborly.
It is spitless. I’ll also add I miss the smell of secondhand smoke myself.