My wife works for a major tobacco company and when they introduce a new product they start with a test market. Usually one or two cities. From there they gather data and if worthy move forward making changes to packaging, advertising, and product. It's a long process and most products never make a national launch.
Tobacco users are extremely brand loyal and getting them to try something new is possible, getting them to change over full time is very difficult.
Based on the advertising I have seen Penn marketed the Cobb tobacco and gave it a go in the Augusta area. If it wasn't going to succeed there with the Cobb name it was probably not going to sell anywhere.
Given we have no evidence of an attempt to sell it outside of Georgia it was a flop.
Whether Cobb pulled out not wanting to be associated with a failing product, or Penn pulled the plug (no pun intended) we may never know.
How the cards factored into the brief production of the product I have no idea.
Last edited by Abravefan11; 04-13-2010 at 07:49 PM.
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