10/31/2018
At a recent Canadian Bar Association seminar, attorney Sara Zborovski (with Norton Rose Fulbright) urged the branding and marketing communities to collectively try to “get rid of the stigma and increase the credibility of this [cannabis] industry by not using silly words.” She correctly noted that “we don’t reference alcohol like ‘booze’ or ‘moonshine’ anymore,” and expressed her hope that “when we are talking publicly and about the industry. . . [that] we as an industry and as branding professionals will use [words such as] ‘cannabis’ and ‘ma*****na’ and not words such as ‘pot, dope, MJ, weed’.” She said, “let’s try to increase the level of discussion such that we can increase the credibility of the industry,” and added that she thinks this “will go a really long way towards protecting our kids.”
She is 100% correct and we encourage the branding community to apply her advice and suggestions. We do believe this should extend to other words such as indica, sativa and hybrid, since such terms have no actionable meaning to customers or relationship to outcomes and should not impact a purchase decision. Additionally, we hope that the branding and marketing communities encourage efforts to characterize cannabis products by their objective chemistries, which directly translate into effects. By focusing on properly characterized chemistries, the industry can explore the use of structure/function claims to educate consumers and distinguish products.
