Alcohol versus cannabis marketing
Marketing expert Seth Godin examines the post-prohibition parallels between marketing alcohol and cannabis, and the ramifications for America and the wider world
Photographer credit: Bjorn Amundsen
There’s a lesson here for all marketers – legacy brands have clouded our understanding of what marketing can do today.
American prohibition ended in 1933. After that, there was a gold rush that led to the creation of dozens of billion dollar brands.
Some 80 years later, the prohibition against pot is ending in various places throughout North America and then, probably, worldwide.
The question some professional marketers are asking is: Will there be worldwide profitable brands for pot that are similar to Bacardi, Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff for alcohol?
Both industries are regulated. Both have products that are sold in specialty stores. Both use non-proprietary manufacturing techniques.
Here’s the big difference: When alcohol marketing became legal, it coincided with the glory days of magazines, radio and then TV.
The mass marketing phenomenon happened at exactly the same time as these brands were being rolled out – and along with cigarettes, alcohol brands were major advertisers, particularly in magazines (hard liquor) and TV (beer).
The ads supported the media in a fundamental way (and vice versa – Rick’s Cafe anyone?).
But when cannabis marketing arrives, it’s the internet that’s dominant. And the internet isn’t a mass medium. It seems like one. It’s used by billions of people.
But it’s a micro medium. A direct marketing medium. There are three billion people online, but they’re busy looking at 3,000,000 web pages (that’s only a thousand a page).
The other difference is that there’s a 1,000-year tradition of the pub and the bar.
And those facilities offer status games, word of mouth and significant margins that created another marketing engine for alcohol that won’t exist for cannabis.
Sure, it’s possible that the huge demand and profit margins will fund a winner-take-all advertising movement for pot.
But it’s more likely to be more like local espresso or high-end chocolate or whiskey (word of mouth) and less like vodka.
I disagree with Set, and I wonder if his flawed conclusions arise from considering the question from an insufficiently long time frame.
If we look at 10 or 20 year plans, I can see several paths to significant brands and brand value.
For instance, initial brand value may arise – as it has in the past for winemakers focused on shiraz or merlot – by breeding for optimal expressions of the varietal (sativa or indica, for cannabis) overlaid with the varietals’ responses to regional influences, with some cannabis growing micro-regions acquiring a similar reputation to that enjoyed by the Barossa, the Clare, Bordeaux and many others.
This will enable smart growers who focus on the best terrains and select for strain purity to position themselves as the great estate winemakers do now: exemplars of the varietal.
Once you have this reputation, it becomes possible to extend that brand into other areas, and to grow the scale of the business.
I wonder too if product differences will become another element of the branding mix – while some of the effects of alcohol (and therefore the brand experience) depend on whether you’re sipping wine, shooting tequila or slugging beer, the differentiation of cannabis will be grounded to a much larger extent in the nature of the experience.
If breeders can develop and deliver consistent, clearly differentiated mental states (focus vs fun vs introspective vs artistic appreciation, for instance), brands can be built on this.
Credibility established, these brands too have the potential to acquire the economic muscle to fuel the steady year-on-year compounding growth that leads to dominant players.
In fact, there are companies in the US already pursuing the opportunity to build credible and differentiated cannabis brands, although by a third means – a focus on consistency and advanced packaging.
It’s going to be fascinating to see how this plays out over the next 10 – 20 years. But to my mind Seth is wrong, and there are real opportunities to build major brands, and for agencies to help amplify their efforts and accelerate their growth.
alex
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