Cannabis firms get creative on marketing
TORONTO — At a gallery in Toronto’s west end, people sip champagne, dine on canapés and listen to a panel discussion on mindfulness. The product they are here to fete is nowhere to be found, but brand elements are peppered everywhere, including mugs held by the panellists.
“Did you ever think that you would be at a cannabis brand launch?” said Linda Burlison, director of digital marketing and commercialization for licensed producer MedReleaf at the launch of its newest recreational brand, AltaVie, last week.
“Fifty years from now, you can tell your kids, your grandchildren, that you were right there at that very moment that was at the cusp of when prohibition ended in Canada.”
It may be mere months before adults will be able to walk into a store and score legal weed, but the strict rules for marketing and advertising mean it is far from a free-for-all. While deep-pocketed producers ink contracts with celebrities, other marijuana companies are exploring creative tactics to generate brand buzz, such as the use of augmented reality, branded mindfulness sessions, mobile promotional campaigns and cannabis-flavoured products — minus the active drugs (for now).
Advertising medical cannabis is essentially banned in Canada, with some exceptions. And while recreational pot rules are expected to be less stringent, the federal
government has proposed strict restrictions, akin to those imposed on tobacco.
That means cannabis companies cannot rely on a blitz of broadcast ads, billboards and flashy packaging often used to promote new products, prompting some innovative strategies to get marijuana brands in front of consumers.
Health Canada’s guidelines for cannabis packaging require packages to be a single, uniform colour without images or graphics other than the logo and a health warning.
The recently outlined packaging rules forced MedReleaf to reassess its strategy, Burlison said.
“That made us sort of stop and go: OK, so we’re going to have these restrictions in place for packaging,” she said in an interview. “How can we continue to
get the word out to people without perhaps featuring the packaging we might have hoped to have had out there?”
Marijuana bill C-45 is not yet finalized but the proposed rules stipulate, among other things, that it is prohibited from publishing, broadcasting or otherwise disseminating promotion of cannabis or related accessories or services “by presenting it or any of its brand elements that associates it or the brand element with ... glamour, recreation, excitement, vitality, risk or daring.”
The use of a person, character or animal, real or fictional, in any manner that could be seen as appealing to young people is also forbidden.
Still, companies have been signing up celebrity investors to sing their praises, but limiting their endorsement to the stock, not a cannabis product or brand.
Last month, Vancouver-based licensed producer Invictus MD brought on KISS co-founder Gene Simmons as “chief evangelist officer” and investor. Simmons, who maintains that he has never smoked cannabis in his life, said he is “bullish” on Invictus.
“I have $10 million in stock in the company,” Simmons said during a recent stop in Toronto. “Bullish is the only way to talk about it, because it’s one of the few words that I can use that is legal... I’m trying to be careful about what is acceptable language.”
Some have signed on figures more closely associated with cannabis culture.
In December, Hamilton-based cannabis producer Beleave Inc. signed a brand licensing agreement with filmmaker Kevin Smith and actor Jason Mewes, better known as their on-screen stoner characters Jay and Silent Bob in films from the mid-’90s and early 2000s, while Canopy Growth Corp. has a partnership with “Smoke Weed Everyday” rapper Snoop Dogg.
Other companies are looking to tactics already used by other regulated industries, such as alcohol and pharmaceutical sectors.
Toronto-based marketer Snipp Interactive last month launched a Cannabis Marketing Resource Centre. More than 20 producers, most of them based in Canada, have signed up to learn more, according to Snipp’s founder Atul Sabharwal.