🌱 CPG...but better

A consumer packaged good is a non-durable item sold at relatively high frequency for relatively low cost.

Here are some familiar CPG categories and their growth trends from 2020-2021. Lots of COVID tests, bacon, and ice cream (we’ve all been paranoid and then stress eating, apparently):

An effective CPG company is consumer-obsessed. They identify a target consumer (often naming it and assigning demographic attributes and a whole personality to make it real - like here’s Jake, he’s in his 40s and he likes to golf, he had knee surgery last year, has twins with his wife who was his high school sweetheart, etc. It can get weird but it seems very effective in relentlessly delighting a specific niche. We did it a lot at Anheuser-Busch when rolling new products out, and that persona served as the North Star for all brand touchpoints), then a specific need or problem that Jake has, then a need-state in which Jake might find himself, then a differentiated product that will solve Jake’s particular problem, then relevant and delightful packaging that Jake will resonate with, then appropriate marketing campaigns via appropriate channels for Jakey Poo, and so on.

This doesn’t always happen sequentially, but that’s the gist of what CPG brand teams are doing. Is the over-arching intent truly to solve consumer problems? Maybe. But it’s certainly also to sell Jake as many things as humanly possible.

Dudes Wipe with Dude Wipes

My favorite traditional-but-very-non-traditional CPG play over the last few years is Dude Wipes.

Procter & Gamble is a massive, nearly-200-year-old company with a brand stable that your grandma, you, and your kids probably all find super recognizable:

• Tide

• Pampers

• Gilette

• Crest toothpaste

• Febreeze

• And…Charmin

Charmin was kicking butt in the butt wiping category for decades. But the folks at Dude Wipes identified, rightly, that there was a segment of the population that wasn’t being served by existing products. And the results speak for themselves:

Great case study in identifying your target consumer and obsessively serving them.

Broad strokes, the point of any consumer good is to solve a specific consumer problem. Don’t know if you have COVID? Take this test. Need clean hands? Liquid soap! Hungry for cheese? Here’s some…cheese.

Are you a dude that needs to wipe? Dude Wipes.

(I’m making myself laugh on a plane)

But! There are a specific subset of consumer packaged goods that I place in their own category. These are the items that either 1) you know you shouldn’t consume, or items that 2) have been stigmatized to death over many decades, and now you aren’t sure if you should consume them. 

I’m here to clear it up for you. 

👨‍🎤 The Sinful CPG

Guess what? You should definitely not smoke cigarettes.

Guess what? You should probably not drink alcohol.

Guess what? You should probably not eat too much crappy food.

But, guess what? You should absolutely consume cannabis.

📦 Cannabis as CPG, and why it’s still different

I get pushback when I characterize cannabis as a consumer packaged good; I think because it makes it sound like I’m putting cannabis into a box, like Charmin or Crest or whatever.

But all of the dynamics are at play. It’s a high-velocity product and it is literally a packaged good for consumers. I don’t know how else to describe it without being inaccurate.

I once characterized it as follows:

I still like that: cannabis = CPG + community. But I want to add to it.

Out of the sinful CPG (or any CPG for that matter), cannabis has the best chance to drastically improve the daily lives of its consumers. Pain relief, stress, anxiety, appetite, creativity, connection, and on and on and on. To call it a CPG product does feel somewhat unfair, because its applications (and implications) are limitless.

So, yes - it’s CPG. But it’s also much more.

📚 tl;dr

• Consumer packaged goods (CPG) are the shit you routinely buy yourself, like toothpaste or cosmetics or cannabis

• CPG brands (try to) identify a specific consumer, their problems, their need-states, their packaging preferences - and then market to them so they buy more

• Dude Wipes is fighting P&G’s Charmin by relentlessly focusing on dudes that need to wipe

• “Sinful CPGs” (either bad for you or stigmatized to be bad for you) are tobacco, alcohol, crap food, and cannabis

• Cannabis is CPG + community, and it is even more than that. It stands the best chance of drastically improving the lives of its consumer base

• It is Thursday and I am on a plane