Your Famous Cannabis Brand Doesn’t Mean S#!%, Consumers Avoid Celebrity Marijuana Items, New Data Says

If you’re a regular follower of Cannabis.net, you know we’re constantly beating the drum how branding and marketing is relatively useless when it comes to cannabis, with a few exceptions here and there. The general idea is that consumer surveys dating back to the time Canada legalized marijuana at the federal level show that three things matter to cannabis users. How did the product work and did you get the desired effect, how much did this product cost and how far did you have to go to get this product? The color of your packaging and the font of your print is irrelevant to a post-purchase cannabis survey.

Now comes an update from Bloomberg entitled Celebrity Star Power Has So Far Had Limited Impact on Cannabis. Guest author Kevin Simauchi examines how celebrities like Martha Stewart and Mike Tyson have dipped their toes into cannabis and CBD marketing.

As Kevin points out, Martha and Mike have had some moderate success, but I’d argue that Martha’s foray into CBD with Canopy Growth at this point came from a galaxy far, far away. A very different time and place than Bruce Linton led Canopy Growth to become the largest weed company in the world when Canada first legalized recreational cannabis. If Martha were to introduce a new line of CBD, even after the recent FDA announcement on CBD in edibles, would it even make headlines today?

Mike Tyson is unique in the sense that he is a cultural icon and a heavy cannabis user. The Tyson brand performed so poorly at launch that they had to revamp it and attract new investors to launch what is now called Tyson 2.0. The creative marketing of the “ear-bite” gummies references a famous boxing match in which Mike Tyson actually bit off an ear of Evander Holyfield. If Tyson 2.0 released a regular cannabis gummie called Tyson’s Treat and it was a small square, are we talking about it and is there a hype about it? This win can be attributed to creative marketing, not necessarily Mike Tyson’s name.

Aside from these two examples, the prominent brands don’t sell very well or stand out from the crowd with consumers. While Simauchi mentions the likes of Jay-Z, Justin Bieber, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Rosario Dawson, the data and pharmacy owners say celebrity brands don’t catch the eye of consumers on a crowded pharmacy shelf.

As the article says:

Daniel Firtel, who runs TRP, a cannabis retailer with 18 dispensaries in eight states, has noted that consumers “don’t necessarily care that much about celebrity relationships.” The vast majority of his company’s top-selling brands are not affiliated with celebrities, he added. Statehouse Holdings Inc., a cannabis company with 14 California stores, also found that celebrity lines haven’t turned the competition upside down.

Interestingly, two brands are mentioned as successful and they carry no celebrity endorsements.

Some retailers in states where marijuana has been legal the longest say celebrity-linked brands are struggling to compete seriously with bigger labels like Jeeter and Pacific Stone.

A good point raised in the celebrity brand “why” articles is the restrictions on cannabis advertising that are currently in place without state legalization. The fact that a celebrity can’t use their full marketing power to influence a cannabis brand and create buzz could hurt its launch and continued growth. The idea is that you might be a celebrity with a lot of social media followers, but you can’t go out and blast your cannabis brand as you see fit since Canada and the US have severe restrictions on marijuana advertising.

Part of the failure can be the sense of “fake celebrity weed endorsements,” which ask questions about whether the celebrity is “all in” on cannabis or if it’s just another endorsement deal like water, shoes, or clothes acts.

For Firtel and TRP, celebrity-backed products simply don’t have the capital or scope to grow to the level of their mainstream counterparts.

“A rapper or any kind of musician or celebrity, they’re going to put out a variety and then it kind of launches and there’s a little bit of hype, but then there’s really no follow-up,” Firtel said. That’s because “because they don’t have the infrastructure, the team, and really the level of commitment that it takes to do cannabis.”

The moral of the story is that if you want to create a great and enduring cannabis brand, don’t waste your money on the hottest newest musician or movie star, instead put your budget into the real influencers among consumers, the budtenders and people who do advise the consumer face to face.

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