BrandKnew September 2013 June 2014 | Page 37

brandknewmag.com 36 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