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RESPECT THE HISTORY OF THE
MARIJUANA INDUSTRY.
Many people spent years in legal battles, fighting for a
substance that they believed was wrongly demonized.
“There is nothing more important than building trust,”
James Kennedy, founder of Apothecanna, tells Co.Design.
“This starts by showing respect for the plant, respect for the
customer, and respect for those who have fought hard to
enable us to have this conversation.”
women buy 85% of all household and consumer products,
according to Adweek.
Shuman calls these successful working women who
smoke pot “stiletto stoners.” But the potential audience
for marijuana-laced products is vast. Medicinal users may
include ill grandparents and, yes, children with chronic or
life-threatening illness. (Twenty-one states and the District of
Columbia already have laws on the books concerning medical
marijuana.) Shuman, who works as Brand Ambassador for
HempMedsPX, a corporate portfolio company of Medical
Marijuana, Inc., credits
medical marijuana with
WOMEN ARE THE helping her through cancer
and injuries from two car
SECRET TO THIS
accidents.
WHOLE THING.
Bienenstock
says
that
marketers will soon realize
that they can openly cater to a diverse set of consumers.
“When it becomes a fully accepted legal product, like beer,
you’re going to see all kinds of branding,” he says, “towards
women, towards the health conscious, and towards the
people who associate it with being an outlaw herb used for
partying.”
That’s good advice for corporate America . To be successful,
it’s smart to get schooled in the work of thought leaders and
cultural experts who arrived before you. Corporations that
think they are going to legitimize marijuana may appear to
be “insensitive and dismissive to people who have risked
their freedoms and put themselves on the line personally,”
Bienenstock says, “the people who built this movement to the
point where we can become a legal industry.”
LUXURY ACCESSORIES IN A
BERGDORF’S NEAR YOU.
There are legions of suit-wearing smokers who are only now
coming out of the closet, and this particular constituency
will create a market for high-end weed products, whether
that means expensive strains of the plant or fancy smoking
devices.
Bienenstock points to the company Diego Pellicer as a
lesson in what not to do. In May 2013, former Microsoft
executive Jamen Shively founded Diego Pellicer, a company
he boasted would pioneer “Big Marijuana” and become the
“Starbucks of bud.” In a press conference, Shively said Diego
Pellicer was already “the
most recognized brand in
ON THE BLACK
an industry that does not
MARKET, A GRAM
exist yet.”
GOES FOR $10 TO
$20. POT-SMOKERS
AREN’T FOOLS.
Shively’s remarks earned
him widespread criticism
from veterans of the
marijuana
industry,
including
Bienenstock,
who called him “The 40-Year-Old Pot Virgin” in Vice.
The industry, Bienenstock points out, has existed in the
underground for decades. Shively’s well-meaning but
uninformed approach to branding could, Bienenstock says,
alienate more experienced smokers. It doesn’t help that he
said he’d sell his product for an overpriced $50 a gram--on
the black market, a gram goes for $10 to $20. Pot-smokers
aren’t fools.
THE TARGET AUDIENCE IS NOT HAROLD
AND KUMAR.
“Women are the secret to this whole thing,” says L.A.’s Cheryl
Shuman, a branding advocat H