At FocusedBrands, we’ve helped build three cannabis brands and just began work on a new CBD brand. Over these past few years, we’ve been monitoring and adjusting strategy based on consumer sentiment, regulations, packaging trends, and other factors that affect traction and loyalty. If you can walk into a mainstream store and buy it, you know the market is maturing, and we are entering a new phase of CBD marketing. 

Walgreen, Sephora, Kroger, Neiman Marcus, and your local coffee shops all carry CBD potions promising healing & tranquility. However, if you bring out your dropper or serve CBD cocktails at a dinner party, there’s still a hushed, “Hey...do you want to try it?” Almost as if it was still illegal or some foreign contraband. But it’s not, and CBD products sold at retail like this do not contain any THC (the part that could get you high).

You’re not imagining it, 70% of respondents believe there is some stigma associated with CBD products [kline]

To help bridge the market maturity, the stigma, and the opportunity, you have to be better at branding and marketing than almost any other category.

Let’s start with your logo and packaging, often the first place someone encounters your actual brand and decides if it’s worth the emotional and financial investment. While the marijuana leaf is shorthand for “we’ve got the hot ingredient,” reliance on this 4:20 culture icon isn’t helping the category move into the mainstream spotlight. 

Many entrepreneurs and brands are (thankfully) migrating away from the marijuana-leaf tropes and logos and demystifying the dosing and buying of CBD by providing education and premium packaging designed to increase both understanding and acceptance of these products and CBD as an ingredient. There is still room for improvement here. Normalizing CBD products for the fastest-growing purchasers of CBD products, our parents/Baby Boomers, can mean faster growth and retail velocity.

Baby Boomers are one of the fastest-growing segments in CBD usage, increasing by 25% over the past year.

Cannabis products are used for a variety of wellness applications: overall, 71% of consumers reported they reduced (53%) or stopped (18%) their over-the-counter (OTC) pain treatment, and 60% have reduced or stopped their alcohol consumption. It’s no wonder that CBD-infused elixirs and dry bars (not the hair kind, non-alcoholic bars) are due for their moment in the spotlight. The conversations surrounding “dry by choice” and “wellness cocktails” are spreading as this trend extends beyond the coasts to the rest of the country.

92% of respondents state they know what cannabis is, but awareness drops sharply once asked about the various compounds. Adding to this confusion is the incorrect use of the terms’ cannabis’, ‘CBD,’ ‘hemp,’ and ‘marijuana,’ which are often used interchangeably. [kline]

While consumers may be quickly adopting the benefits of CBD, regulators and ad platforms are not so quick to change. Hemp-derived CBD brands are under most of the same regulation as cannabis/THC products, which means pretty much all the traditional advertising is off limits. Only recently has Amazon allowed brands to include the letters CBD. Here are some creative (and legal) ways to build your brand and market your products without being dependent on the winds of regulation. It’s no question this industry is on fire and growing rapidly. It’s going to be the Wild West for some time to come. CBD brands are going to have to be creative in their brand development to utilize features that aren’t regulated. 

The big ad platforms are beginning to see the light and are easing up on their regulations of hemp-derived CBD (Cannabis CBD is a whole different ball game). Shopify now allows CBD brands on their eCommerce platform, and Square opened up their payment processing just this past week.

As of June 26, 2019, you can use Facebook ads for ingestible CBD. Now, Facebook has relaxed its outright ban on CBD products, according to an agency source with knowledge of the matter. Advertisers are allowed to run ads for topical hemp across Facebook. Advertisers can run ads that direct to landing pages featuring ingestible hemp and topical CBD. However, the ads cannot specifically feature those products. Facebook is still prohibiting ads for ingestible CBD, including ads that direct to landing pages with those products.

FocusedBrands Guide to
Hemp-Derived CBD Marketing

• Brand Name, Logos, and Communications

  • Lean into naturals, origins, and your source/s of ingredients.

  • Use simple and easy to understand dosing and less about 4:20 tropes.

• Packaging

  • How does it look on a shelf? At an event?

  • How important is eco to you and your brand?

  • Is it safe and easy to use?

  • Is it easy to read?

  • Does it look good on IG?

• Trial Packs & Kits

  • Make products easy to understand and use by providing a trial kit that can be dissected in the comfort of consumer’s homes where they have time and attention to understand isolates vs. full-spectrum, your mission, micro, and low-dosing, etc.

  • Think about how you deliver trial/sample sizes -- how will they remember your brand vs. the 100s of others? Remember, you’re not just competing with other CBD brands, you’re competing against all of the brands your consumers use.

• Website

  • Create a look that has trust cues such as people living ordinary lives, high-quality imagery, clear communications, and a streamlined experience.

  • Utilize many of the proven templates provided by Shopify and SquareSpace that have proven out the UX on mainstream consumer products.

  • Educate visitors about the differences between all the nuances. Providing them value is a quick way to gain their trust.

  • Utilize diverse imagery (Boomers, athletes, parents; not just white millennials) so that visitors can see themselves participating with your brand.

• Email Marketing

  • This is considered ‘owned media’ which means your audience has opted-in to receive your message. Email is a great place to provide education, promotions, and even a referral program. An easy way to get email addresses is a form on your website and at events.

• Social Media

  • It’s a moving target, set up a Google alert about “advertising CBD on social media”

  • Generally, you will have to focus on lifestyle, sources, education, light claims, founder stories, etc.

  • Use Influencers to talk for you in a way that you might not be able to

  • Use video on Instagram. You might be able to on Facebook or Google, but you can on IG. See above for topics.

• Brand Ambassadors

  • Recruit, educate, track, promote, and create relationships with people who are natural influencers and thought leaders in the right spaces.

  • Load them up with education, support, swag, product, and probably some financial remuneration.

  • Support them and keep them in the “insider’s loop” about how your brand and products are growing

  • Solicit product feedback from them

• Marketing Events

  • Because CBD is considered ‘over the counter’ you can provide samples at events. Find out what interests your audience and show up there. It might be sporting events, concerts, markets, or even wellness-related events. Of course, always check the local/regional restrictions before showing up.

• Trade Shows

  • This is an excellent time for CBD brands to make themselves known at traditional food and beverage trade shows. Consider shows such as Natural Products Expo East/West, Speciality Food Association Fancy Food Show (Summer or Winter) or even NACS (National Association of Convenience Stores). Every retail channel has plenty of trade shows available. It just depends on your audience and product niche.

• OOH, “billboards”

  • Analog tactics are typically a CBD brand’s best friend; more importantly, these “old school” marketing tactics can be highly effective in a saturated, digital world.

• PR

  • Whether you’re a local or national brand, PR can help you get noticed. Something that writers are always looking for is unique ingredients, founder stories, or data. Consider creating a survey (with your email marketing database) and publish the data you discover. Shopping patterns, adoption, and growth are just a few of the possible topics.

Additional thoughts provided by Matt Pesce, a fellow Blackstone Entrepreneur’s Network Advisor shared with us after the original publication of this post:

1. Transparency is increasingly important. By that, I mean that retailers/distributors and end consumers have a desire to know the sources of CBD (both where the industrial hemp was grown and where/how it was extracted) and lab results (potency of CBD, absence of pesticides and heavy metals, etc.) along the way. This is an opportunity for reputable brands to stand apart from the many poor quality products out there.

2. While the FDA's stance and plans regarding CBD are not entirely clear, we know this much: brands cannot make medical claims of any sort regarding products that contain CBD. As you pointed out, brands should leverage lifestyle imagery to connect to target buyers and convey a healthy lifestyle.

3. Brands need to stay closely connected to their target consumers as the marketplace will continue to evolve quickly. Consumers are becoming more and more educated. New types of consumers (new demographics and psychographics) are interested in CBD. Your strategies and messaging will need to adapt as the marketplace matures.