Thursday, January 26, 2017

Marijuana Companies Trading Stoner Slang For Mainstream Branding

Have trouble asking for an ounce of Purple Kush or Atomic Haze without feeling like the kind of stoner who would brag to his baked buddies about scoring some dank bud? Don’t worry, corporate branding is coming to save the day with acceptably bland product names.

Like any burgeoning consumer industry — which marijuana is in 28 states that have legalized it to some degree — reputation is everything. And what you call your product has a lot to do with that. That’s why a pot company called 1906 (named for the year the government first went after marijuana) is moving from traditional weed names into more mainstream monikers for its cannabis-infused chocolates, Bloomberg reports.

For example, there’s Go (energy booster), Pause (relaxing), Midnight (sleep aid), Present (for focus), and High Love (for getting busy).

“I think of our competition not as other edibles,” Peter Barsoom, an ex-banker and now the CEO of 1906, tells Bloomberg. “It’s that cup of coffee in the morning, it’s the pill of Ambien to help you sleep, it’s that cup of chamomile tea.”

Whether or not those different variations actually help you focus or get in the mood, it doesn’t much matter, as Barsoom and others are betting on the fact that a new crop of consumers will jump at the chance to buy stylishly named pot products.

That’s exactly the point: Perhaps your grandma would balk at taking a hit of Grandaddy Purple from The Jolly Green Giant — the three-foot bong you’ve had since college — but she might have no problem with a lovely cup of cannabis-infused tea, if it comes in a bag labeled “Unwind” instead.

(Or maybe you didn’t know grandma as well as you thought, and she can still take that bong hit like the college undergrad she used to be.)


by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

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