There's a lot of talk these days in international economic law -- both in disputes and negotiations -- about the marketing of traditional tobacco products. My sense is that this issue is on its way out, and in the coming years the big issue will be the marketing of e-cigarettes, but also marijuana. This is from The Atlantic:
Two more states, Oregon and Alaska, have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, and several others may soon have the opportunity to join them. But the people who sell the drug are facing a predicament. In a legal market, cannabis—the plant from which pot is derived—comes to resemble many other farmed products: One grower’s plant looks and tastes a lot like his neighbor’s. (Some pot connoisseurs with sensitive palates can differentiate among strains of cannabis—and even among brands—but they’re as rare as the coffee drinker who can guess his beans’ origins.) John Kagia, the director of industry analytics at New Frontier, which studies the marijuana business, is convinced that pot is becoming commoditized. In Colorado, the supply of marijuana flower is going up, and its cost down, partly because of technological advancements and larger, more efficient operations—just the kind of forces that have turned other products into commodities.
Pot businesses are, above all, businesses, and they’re responding as businesses do: with marketing aimed at convincing longtime pot users that their brand is better than the others—and, just as important, at increasing demand by encouraging curious nonusers to try their product first. In other words, marijuana companies would like to sell a lot of pot to a lot of people. “Now that marijuana has been legalized, we have the opportunity to market it to a mainstream audience,” Olivia Mannix, a co-founder of a marketing agency called Cannabrand, told me. But making good on that opportunity has required changing the way people think about the drug. In this regard, the early associations between pot and medicine—and hence harmlessness, even wellness—were helpful. Since then, the tactics have gotten more sophisticated.
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Marijuana businesses are now focused on making their brands seem distinct from one another, but still inviting to the general public. LivWell Enlightened Health, one of Colorado’s largest dispensary chains, publishes ads featuring some of the diligent-looking farmers and scientists it employs, to communicate professionalism and trustworthiness. Cannabrand, meanwhile, has rebranded one client, a dispensary originally called Verde Wellness Center, as Verde Natural, to suggest a rustic, sustainable, back-to-the-earth vibe. The ads that Cannabrand designs typically use lifestyle-oriented images: young people hiking, frolicking with friends, sitting around campfires. “You connect with a brand that you can relate to,” DeFalco told me. “If people are doing activities that you’re likely to do, you’re more likely to connect with that brand.”
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What’s interesting about this evolution—from wellness ads to mainstream, lifestyle-oriented ones—is that it’s happened before, and not just once. David Courtwright, a historian of drug use at the University of North Florida, notes that a similar progression took place with mass-produced beer and cigarettes, two other products that were stigmatized in their early years. In the late 19th century, technological advances made it easier to sell both goods to a wide market. Drinking and smoking picked up, and people panicked about the social problems that might ensue. Breweries tried to distance their product from hard liquor by marketing it as a safer, healthier, more acceptable alternative. Before Prohibition, one beer merchant in Detroit created an ad featuring a toddler in a high chair toting a mug of beer about the size of his head; a caption read, “The youngster, ruddy with good cheer. Serenely sips his Lager Beer.” Cigarette companies used similar tactics. A 1916 ad for Helmar Turkish cigarettes featured a doctor pointing a stern finger at the reader and declaring, “My best professional judgment prompts me to recommend them.”
