Pivot: Health tech for smoking cessation

How we reframed smoking, for both smokers and B2B healthcare buyers

Extensive interviews with HR professionals and smokers unveiled two major insights that reframed our fundamental product experience and how we went to market for B2B buyers.

Insight 1: Smokers don't want to quit

The assumption in smoking cessation circles was that people want to quit smoking. It was an easy conclusion to draw, based on the available data: Roughly 75% of smokers say they want to quit, and about half try in any given year.

But when we sat with smokers and behavioral scientists, what we realized was that smokers want to smoke. In addition to the physical addiction, smoking is how they relax, how they kill time, how the bond with their spouse after dinner. They enjoy it. And quitting is incredibly difficult.

They don't want to quit. But they don't want to die.

In terms of motivation, not wanting to die presents a lot more emotional baggage than simply wanting to quit. So we settled on "Don't quit smoking today" as both our product tagline and fundamental rallying cry for the product experience. Where ever smoking cessation program out there forced smokers to pick a quit date on day one, we met them where they were. We weren't after quit attempts—we were after quits.

Outcome

This approach changed everything. And it's why we enjoyed about 400% higher sign-up rates than quit programs that were already in the market.

Insight 2: Employers don't think their employees smoke

Smoking bans are a public health success story. But they also drove smoking underground and out of sight. Employers didn't see their workers smoking, so they assumed they didn't smoke. In fact, in one test we ran with a major employer, we found that the actual smoking rate amongst their employee population was 2.5 times higher than they estimated.

It was clear that we had to market the problem before we could market the solution. So that's what we did. We used public data and published research to explain how much smoking was costing self-insured employers–especially in industries with higher smoking rates. We pushed our "Cost of Smoking" messaging in HR trades, at conferences and speaking engagements, in sales decks, on our founder's LinkedIn channel, in heavily reported white papers, and in ads.

Outcome

This campaign had an immediate impact. It's really what took us from zero to one in terms of commercial traction, helping us secure a series B fund raise and establishing Pivot as a major brand in addiction treatment and employee benefits.