A Chinese company is seeking FDA approval for a battery-powered cigarette that delivers nicotine without the toxins, reports Business 2.0 Magazine.

It feels like a cigarette, looks like a cigarette but it isn’t bad for your health.   A Chinese company marketing the world’s first “electronic” cigarette hopes to double sales this year as it expands overseas and as some of China’s legions of smokers try to quit.

Golden Dragon Group Ltd’s Ruyan cigarettes are battery-powered, cigarette-shaped devices that deliver nicotine to inhalers in a bid to emulate actual smoking.

“The nicotine is delivered to the lungs within 7 to 10 seconds,” said Scott Fraser, Vice President of SBT Co. Ltd., the Beijing-based firm that first developed the electronic cigarette technology in 2003 and which is now controlled by Golden Dragon.

“It feels like a cigarette, looks like a cigarette, it even emits vapor. In many ways, it is like an actual smoking experience, and that’s what makes us different,” he told Reuters.

Golden Dragon’s competitors include global giants Pfizer and Novartis AG, which sell more familiar nicotine replacement products such as chewing gum, patches, and inhalers.

Prescription: The next time you read a story in a newspaper or online, be sure to look at the source. You could be reading the The New York Times but the actual story may have originated or been picked up from a newswire like the Associated Press or Reuters.

Successful public relations campaigns are fundamentally based on how many times your  person, product or company are mentioned in the media and where.  That said, using newswires like Associated Press or Reuters can be an invalueable tool since particulary these two newswires are picked up all over the world and in most cases the stories are used word for word, unedited.

Such is the case for this new e-cigarette. The story was seen on Reuters and also in Business 2.0 magazine and was picked up by CNNmoney.com and a few other business sites.  It was probably smart not to blanket the media with this story at first but rather pick the media outlet to cover this that would be the most strategic for the company–a media outlet that would probably avoid negative trigger words like: addition, cancer, death and kids, among others.

Business 2.0 is a great magazine  for the E-Cigarette brand. Their focus is the business aspect first and foremost of any company so the risks to health whether minimal or great are really not a focus in its reporting on Golden Dragon Group. That is what makes this a great media placement for the E-cigarette.

I have to jump straight to the quote given by Scott Fraser, Vice President of SBT Co. Ltd. on what this product is and does.  If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck it probably is a duck especially if really want vegetarian duck. His quote really sums up all the qualities that many say make smoking enjoyable.

The last part of this PR equation inlcludes Golden Dragon’s competitors which include any company that produces a pill, patch, gum AND even cigarettes themselves. Because, what if one could promote the E-cigarette so well it obliterated the “patch” solutions to the quitting of smoking and took over the cigarette industry as a whole! ( cue theme from Superman)…. perhaps, there is far more money in trully safer cigarette than trying to cure the addiction. Just a thought. 

Their online video commerical messaging addresses all the issues that smokers face, with the E-Cigarette being the healthy, socially acceptable option, perhaps making the viewer consider all the places smoking is banned and inconvienent for smokers and those who would be exposed to second hand smoke.

One might say, the companies who make cigarettes, the patches and the gum should come out swinging and rev up thier own PR machines. But, that would only promote the E-Cigarette further, no?

All they can do is sit, wait and watch and see who catches the vapors.

Do you think they should market this as  “THE SAFE” cigarette or a new way to smoke with a healthy twist?

See the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz2CFa4I2DM

The links to these stories here:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/09/magazines/business2/electronic_cigarette.biz2/index.htm?postversion=2007081306

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSSP23039020070509