David H. Freedman

San Francisco startup Ploom has a high-tech spin on smoking tobacco (and certain other plants). It also has a huge marketing challenge.

From my article in the May, 2014, issue of Inc. Magazine

There are two big factors that favor Ploom’s James Monsees and his co-founder Adam Bowen in their quest to make tobacco cool again. One is that their devices let users pull from tobacco most of the nicotine and flavor of cigarettes in the form of vapor, without taking in the cigarette smoke–thus removing many of the health risks, according to some experts. And, as a major bonus, one of their devices has become the darling of the pot-smoking world, which is steadily converting to vapor even as that world swells with growing legitimacy.

But two big factors are also working against Ploom. One is predictable: fierce competition that’s likely to stiffen as both startups and tobacco giants invade the “e-cigarette” market–already worth nearly $2 billion a year and growing fast. The other is a bit less typical in the business world: Ploom can’t market on its strengths. That’s because making health claims and wooing drug users cause all sorts of problems for a company that’s trying to remain squeaky clean in the face of widespread disdain for, and the threat of regulation of, anything linked to tobacco.

That leaves Ploom with a burning problem: How do you expand a company when you can’t really talk about what your products are good for? Read more