🔥 Everyone loves the smell of their own brand

I want to talk about building a brand in cannabis, because it seems downright difficult, and that’s interesting to me. There are also some macro trends that will make 2022 The Year of the Big Brand, and we’ll get into that.

But first - what is a brand, anyway?

“Brand” is an important word that gets thrown about willy nilly in cannabis. Yes, in our context, a “brand” usually refers to a producer of cannabis products - but there is so much more wrapped up in that medium-sized word.

This ^ is David Ogilvy, aka “the Father of Advertising.” He offers a definition; he says a brand is:

That is intentionally broad, and it means that a “brand” is everything about a product / service / person - not just trade name, not just packaging, not just intended value proposition, and certainly not just price point. It’s all of these things, and, more generally, it’s how these things contribute to an overall perception of a product - or how people come to see (and indeed, feel) about it.

I’ll frame it more simply:

That’s simpler, but honestly, it’s worse - it means that your “brand” is an aggregation of every single touchpoint that every single potential customer has ever had with your brand. Every ad, every purchase, every email - and it’s different for every person. That’s impossible to control, right?

Difficult, yes. Impossible, no.

🗣 Rising above the noise

The massive proliferation of cannabis retail licenses has resulted in a massive proliferation of cannabis brands, with a massive spread of form factors. There are about 5,500 cannabis brands in the US, and they play in all different categories: flower, vape, extract, chocolates, candies, gummies, tinctures, beverages, suppositories, etc. They all have different value propositions. It’s a lot.

How do cannabis brands - or any brands, for that matter - rise above the noise?

🎯 Identify a target consumer

First thing’s first. Who does your company exist for? Men in their 20s that like high-THC flower? Women that prefer a low-intoxication complement to their cocktails? Is it Baby Boomers, who need gentle topicals for all their aches and pains?

💡 Build your brand with a primary focus on delighting the human being that is going to purchase and consume your products. That’s important.

🤩 Develop your value proposition

A value proposition is a statement of the functional and/or emotional benefits delivered by the brand that provides value to the customer. It’s why customers would choose you over a competitor - why should they care?

💡 Wyld’s value proposition is discretion, great taste, and precise dosing. Cann’s is sociability, providing a substitute for alcohol, and guilt-free imbibing.

🔨 Tailor your product to deliver on that value proposition

Your “product attributes,” in Ogilvy’s parlance, should flow from your value proposition. In other words, everything about your product should play a role in delivering your value proposition.

Form factor, brand name, messaging, packaging, pricing - all of these decisions should line up with your value prop.

📦 Relentlessly, consistently deliver

Consistency is key. If your brand is combination of every touchpoint you ever have with any person, that means you must be on your A-game at all times. Messaging should be consistent, always. Same goes for product experience.

Delight your target consumer. You can measure their delight with sales numbers. 

🚚 A note on distribution

Awareness and brand affinity don’t mean much if your product is not on shelves. Cannabis brand-building is still in its infancy - much of the success of current hot brands is attributable to simply being in stock. If customers can see you in-store (digital or brick and mortar), you have a higher likelihood of getting purchased - duh.

This is why it is particularly compelling for small brands to partner with large retailers - give up some equity in exchange for many, many immediate points of distribution (not to mention marketing support).

Btw, this is also why in-house MSO brands are the top performers in the country (both volume and market share). They have immediate distribution - no salesmanship necessary.

💡 When a cannabis brand does get into stores (congrats!), it should take full advantage of the real estate it has been given, or that it has purchased. That means a heavy focus on trade marketing (in-store displays that educate and ‘push’ product) and digital trade marketing (digital merchandising, aka priority placement on online menus).

🍰 Slices of Pie

There are about 4,000 beer brands that sell their brewskies in taps or on shelves in the US. However, 4 brewers make up 75% of total US sales. As noted above, there are about ~5,500 cannabis brands in the US, the vast majority of which are teeny tiny. The ones that do carry weight are probably familiar to readers:

• Wana

• Papa and Barkley

• Stiiizy

• Cookies

• Kiva

• Raw Garden

• Cann

• Phat Panda

• All MSO in-house brands (there are a lot)

Even though there are some heavy hitters, this pie still has many, many slices. Imagine, though, that the US legalizes on a federal level tomorrow - all of a sudden, interstate commerce is no longer an issue. Cultivation and manufacturing supply chains can be optimized, regardless of state lines. It becomes easier for big brands to open up new markets and scale quickly, resulting in major consolidation.

In a hyper-condensed timeframe, the cannabis brands landscape will start to look more similar to beer, where there are thousands of hyper-local brands and ten huge ones.

📚 tl;dr

• A brand is what comes to mind when a customer hears your brand name

• To build a cannabis (or any) brand, 1) identify a target consumer, 2) develop a value proposition, 3) tailor the product to deliver against that value prop, 4) relentlessly deliver

• It helps to have retail friends - if you’re not on shelves, you’re not in lungs or mouths or skin

• 2022 is The Year of the Big Brand (TM)

• It is Wednesday