JUUL: Leading the Vaping Revolution

Cold Call

In his case, “JUUL and the Vaping Revolution” (co-authors: John Masko and Sarah Mehta), Harvard Business School professor Mike Toffel discusses the controversy surrounding the exponential growth of JUUL Labs in 2018, in particular the success of its e-cigarettes with teenage high school students who had never smoked. The company’s success had thrust it into the spotlight, with some advocacy groups and public policy makers speculating that the company had purposefully marketed its products to minors — an allegation JUUL Labs’s executives strongly denied. The company now faced an FDA probe and investigations by at least two state attorney generals. It needed a strategy to deal with its mounting regulatory and public relations problems.