HUMANS are visual creatures: We process the world based on what we see. On encountering something new, our first response is to evaluate its appearance, then use our other senses to fine-tune the impression. The behavior represents instinct in the service of survival: If something looks dangerous, we avoid it unless we have no choice but to interact or force our conscious mind to overcome instinct. Conversely, vision also plays a role in attraction: A pleasing appearance convinces us to approach an object or creature. Mating behavior is the classic example: The most-impressive-looking males and females of any species attract the opposite sex.
That’s why product packaging can make or break a sale. Although factors like previous positive experience, personal recommendation, clever advertising, and price also play a role in purchasing decisions, consumers’ first visual impression of a product sets up expectations that are difficult to overcome. Consumers may be swayed to try a product packaged in a bland or unattractive wrapper if they’re allowed to touch, smell, hear, or taste it, but regulations make that virtually impossible for most cannabis merchandise.
Packaging is important and will become more so as competition increases. Long gone are the days when presenting flower or edibles in plastic baggies was sufficient. Manufacturers, distributors, and dispensaries constantly reshape the market by redefining the ways in which they speak to consumers’ emotions, values, and aspirations. Colors, textures, graphic design, printed messages, package shapes, and even the materials used to produce the container all make subliminal—and sometimes overt—pleas for attention.
Though the cliché “you can’t judge a book by its cover” is true, to a point, the fact is many people do judge books by the image on the jacket. (I’m looking at you, romance novel readers. That hyper-masculine, shirtless guy on the front gets your attention every time, doesn’t he?) Consumers make snap judgments about merchandise based on the way it looks on the outside. What’s inside may not live up to expectations, but the expectations packaging creates are what convince shoppers to give the product a try.
No one can or should expect consumers to buy a disappointing product simply because they like the container, but all else being equal, packaging can elevate a product above its competition and significantly impact the bottom line.
Is your packaging up to the task?
Kathee Brewer Kathee@cannmg.com
PRINTING & PACKAGING
Supplemental Issue: mg Magazine, Q4
DIRECTOR OF CONTENT: Kathee Brewer
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Angela Derasmo
COPY EDITOR: Erica Heathman
CONTACT: editorial@cannmg.com
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Duke London, Joanne Cachapero, Nathan Liddell, Liz Kost, Rob Hill
ADVERTISING & MARKETING
CLIENT MAGAGEMENT
Brie Ann Gould: Brie@cannmg.com
Meghan Cashel: Meghan@cannmg.com
General Inquiries: sales@cannmg.com
PHOTOGRAPHY
James Banasiak, Aanush, Arigato, Ariwasabi, Johan Mateo Silva, Rednex, Midiwaves, Thomas Andreas, and Bystrov
OUR DO NO HARM MANTRA IS THE CORE OF OUR BUSINESS VALUES. We all share the common goal of working smarter to reduce our carbon footprint with suppliers, customers and employees dramatically reducing waste to landfill, significantly cutting paper and material usage complying with environmental standards and programs that helps us achieve this mission. We only use recycled papers and soy based inks on our printed products WHENEVER POSSIBLE.
(Photo: Canndescent)
ALL DRESSED UP
Innovation, regulations, and competition are inspiring stunning packaging designs.
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28 PROFILE
What Jakprints’ Dameon Guess learned from skater culture and life in a punk-rock band.
10 | UNPACKED
Tips and information you need to know.
12 | OPINION
Sustainable packaging has a positive impact on consumers, forests, and even family farms.
26 | TRENDS
What next season’s well-dressed products will be wearing.
36 | MARKETING
Liz Kost of Purple Line Media provides a roadmap for marketing to women.
42 | DESIGN
Hippo Packaging CEO Kary Radestock offers unconventional wisdom.
5 Hot Consumer Packaging Trends
Smithers Pira, a market research firm for the printing, packaging, and paper industries, defined five packaging trends that affect consumer purchasing decisions.
SUSTAINABILITY: With concerns about global warming and dwindling resources sweeping the world, consumers demand not only environmentally friendly products, but also waste-free, recyclable packaging made from renewable materials. Making sure shoppers know a company’s practices align with their values can increase sales.
HEALTH AND WELLNESS: The health-and-wellness market has exploded, and standing out on crowded shelves in the sector can be challenging. It’s imperative manufacturers find succinct, innovative ways to present their bona fides on product labels (while not violating market regulations).
CONVENIENCE: Smaller, lighter, and more easily disposed-of packaging is attractive to consumers on the go. Resealable packages and integrated applicators are especially important, according to Smithers Pira’s research.
AUTHENTICITY: Health scares and fraudulent or mishandled products have made consumers wary. Provide pertinent details about testing and ingredients right on the package to set their minds at ease.
PRICE CONSCIOUSNESS: Cost has always been and will continue to be a primary consideration when making buying decisions. It turns out packaging can convince consumers a product is a “deal” simply by appearing unabashedly “cheap.”
Trigger consumers’ passions.
Offer one striking environmental or health fact, or promote awareness of social or economic issues. Make buyers feel your company cares about more than making a profit.
60% of consumers are more likely to buy products that tout a guarantee.
(Source: KISSmetrics)
Let products speak for themselves.
If you’ve got a great-looking product, don’t hide it inside an opaque package (unless regulations mandate). Give consumers a sneak peek at what they’re buying.
Hemp is more durable than paper and more beneficial for the planet.
BY NATHAN LIDDELL, HEMP PRESS
“SUSTAINABLE” isn’t the word that comes to mind when one drives through certain areas of the Pacific Northwest, seeing firsthand the swaths of clear-cut landscape devoid of trees. Although we live in a digital age, more than a third of trees harvested are used for paper production. Forests serve as important carbon sinks, creating solid matter from carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere. The destruction of Earth’s forests is responsible for 20 percent of total emissions as carbon is released back into the air, making deforestation the second leading cause of greenhouse gases.
This wasn’t always the case. Tree-based paper didn’t appear until the 1830s, but fast forward to today and the paper industry is the fourth-largest producer of greenhouse gases, cutting down 7.5 billion trees each year for paper alone. With the rising popularity of singleuse packaging, global paper consumption has risen 400 percent over the past forty years. The United States has been the primary driver of the trend.
As the second largest consumer of paper after China, the U.S. uses approximately 30 percent of the international paper supply, or 700 pounds of paper per average American annually. Although recycling rates have increased, American recycling plants are struggling to find markets for their products. Changes in Chinese import laws have diminished that market, allowing U.S. stockpiles to grow. If not sold, that material is destined for landfills.
Even if American mills can find buyers for their stockpiles, paper has a finite recycling lifespan. Each time it undergoes the process, the fibers are shortened. When the fibers have been shortened past their point of usability, they are disposed of as waste. Biodegradable materials like paper and other organic matter cause anaerobic digestion when buried in a landfill. This creates methane, a greenhouse gas approximately thirty times more damaging than CO2
While the circumstances may seem dire, there is a sustainable solution: Hemp. More durable than its tree-based counterpart, hemp paper is composed of 25 percent hemp fiber and 75 percent post-consumer paper waste. Similar to the way rods of rebar strengthen concrete, the hemp fibers merge with paper waste to create a material stronger than the original product. Combining paper waste with hemp not only keeps tons of material from
producing harmful methane, but also doesn’t require the forest devastation seen in paper production. Hemp paper can be recycled just like any other paper.
While printing on hemp has yet to go completely mainstream, the largest sector of growth is in packaging. Recycled paper isn’t strong enough on its own to package most products, but the addition of hemp creates the structural integrity necessary to manufacture high-quality boxes.
While plastic pre-roll tubes commonly found in dispensaries meet state legal requirements, they certainly aren’t sustainable. Single-use plastic packaging makes up about 50 percent of all plastic waste, a majority of which ends up either in landfills or oceans. Consumers increasingly hold companies accountable for such environmental effects. Since printing costs are generally a fraction of a product’s overall budget, a growing array of products, including joints, vape cartridges, and tincture dropper bottles, already are packaged in hemp paper.
If the U.S. made the switch tomorrow, 58 billion pounds of hemp would meet the country’s current paper demands. Growing that much hemp would require nearly thirty million acres of farmland, an obvious boon to American farmers presently forced to rely on subsidized corn and soybean crops. Unfortunately, American hemp production is nowhere near that level, with fewer than 40,000 acres licensed to grow hemp in 2017.
The number appears destined to grow, though, if we can believe provisions included in the 2018 Farm Bill now inching its way through Congress. States that have legalized cannabis are reaping the economic benefits of maintaining a regulated industry and have paved the way for future legislation.
The cannabis industry is devoted to sustainability at every other step from the farm to the store. Why not adopt sustainable packaging as well? Consumers, and the planet, would welcome the move.
The “Dwight Schrute of hemp,” Nathan Liddell serves as account manager for Hemp Press, an exclusively hemp paper print shop. Liddell earned a Permaculture Design Certificate from Midwest Permaculture. Hemp.press Photo: Hemp Press
Cannabis packaging increasingly rivals the sophistication and innovation seen on mainstream shelves.
is a delicate blend of art, science, and technology. Not only must the container protect consumer goods during storage, shipping, and distribution, but most companies also use their packaging as a sales tool, marketing medium, and brand identifier. Sometimes, as is the case with cosmetics, packaging must function as a product applicator long after the sale. In highly regulated industries like cannabis, product packaging also must serve government-mandated purposes like consumer protection.
For all its functions and potential commercial value, packaging receives little respect. It’s often an afterthought during the development cycle and, as such, receives the least time, thought, and budget.
That is a mistake.
Consider this: In a global survey, Nielsen discovered 52 percent of consumers base at least part of their purchasing decisions on a product’s package. Forty percent of consumers say they share packaging they find attractive or interesting on social media. Ninety percent of consumers reuse product packaging for another purpose (think shopping bags and cigar boxes), making brand messages outlive the products themselves by years, in some cases.
Need another reason to pay attention to the box? In one study, 30 percent of businesses reported significant sales increases after a packaging refresh, even though the products inside hadn’t changed.
Regardless how good a product, it’s going nowhere without good packaging. Though what constitutes “good” product attire is extremely subjective, perusing eye-catching, purposeful designs can be both educational and inspirational.
Take a look.
NEWIMPROVED
UTOPIA CANNABIS
tapped Hippo Packaging to create a regulatory-compliant, interactive consumer experience from the outside in. The boxes are sturdy enough to protect the flower and concentrates inside without compromising the elegant, sophisticated brand image Utopia wanted to convey. Consumers are drawn inside by the intriguing designs printed on interior surfaces.
THE HIGH EXPEDITION wanted packaging that conveyed its sustainable, Earth-friendly ethos. Hemp Press designed a custom hemppaper box, allowing High Expedition to display its pet supplements in a container composed of the same regenerative plant material from which the
THE TRIBE COLLECTION is a conceptual brand and product line of accessories and flowers. The Kind Creative team intentionally designed the packaging—including vape pens and cartridges, tins, jars, and bags—to be bold and masculine, using contrasting effects and custom dielines for a luxurious, high-end package. Paper stock is of matte finish with gold foiling and a suede interior for a tactile object on the shelf.
JUDGING A PRODUCT BY ITS COVER
Regulatory revisions and consumer desires have given rise to innovative new packaging paradigms.
BY ROB HILL
TWO THOUSAND eighteen was the Year of the Package for the cannabis industry, for several reasons: Packaging compliance in many states changed radically, product competition in dispensaries escalated, and the brand wars heated up. Seizing upon all the activity, many well-established and startup packaging companies took their wares to myriad expos, showcasing what they could do to improve industry standards.
Perhaps the biggest packaging trend was sustainable materials. Companies like Sana Packaging, which uses 100-percent plant-based hemp plastic made in the USA, and STO Responsible, which uses oxygen-driven degradable plastic, claim their products can restore the natural order of nature. STO co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Sandra Elkind, a longtime medical marijuana patient, noticed many of the products she used not only were unattractive, but most also were not functional. Almost all of them were made of unsustainable materials. Elkind embarked on a mission to create a company that met the needs of brands and environmentalists while complying with strict childproofing regulations enacted by state agencies. She went even farther, creating pet-resistant packaging.
“We had a clear focus: to create packaging that
was sustainable while also eye-catching, unique, and fashionable for brands,” Elkind said. “I always thought it was silly that retailers and manufacturers had to choose between what’s good for Mother Nature and what is good for their bottom line.”
For their part, retailers have been very pleased with the improvements in packaging they’ve seen. Aaron Heisler, head of marketing for Oregon dispensary Jayne, pointed out new regulations provided an excellent opportunity for brands to step up their packaging game. “I’ve been impressed with the everincreasing quality of Oregon’s cannabis packaging,” he said. He finds new options for sustainable packaging particularly intriguing. “As the industry develops further, increasing the overall sustainability of our packaging is something that should be on peoples’ radar,” he said.
Heisler opined Wyld gummies provide a good example of how packaging can help a product stand out on crowded shelves. While the imagery is simple and clean, the unique shape of the boxes—they look like fruit-splashed diamonds—catches consumers’ attention. Heisler, who spends a lot of time behind the counter, said many customers comment, “We love those gummies…and that box.”
Dameon Guess’s MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR
Once defined by skateboarding, toking, and punk rock, Jakprints’ co-founder now runs a multimillion-dollar printing and packaging giant.
BY DUKE LONDON STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES BANASIAK
WITHOUT access to a time machine, it’s impossible to go back and tell your younger self a fiery love for skateboarding, performing music, and smoking weed can lead to a successful career generating tens of millions in annual revenue.
But that’s exactly what set Dameon Guess on the path to his Jakprints empire.
To be honest, the business didn’t appear out of a cloud of smoke with punk rock blaring in the background, although Guess may want to consider that route for the biopic. Creating the printing-andpackaging giant took an innate ability to sniff out an underserved market and decades of learning on the fly to shape the entrepreneurial marvel.
Guess grew up in small-town Kirtland, Ohio, home of the first Mormon temple. The area wasn’t exactly a major hub for counterculture, but that didn’t stop the intrepid Guess, who outsourced that part of his education to the likes of Cypress Hill. “I was a music, art, and skateboarding kid, so I grew up reading Juxtapoz magazine and buying records,” he said.
Though he hasn’t moved far from where he grew up, Guess operates in a whole different world now.
Jakprints pulled in more than $25 million in sales in 2017, printing stickers, flyers, banners, T-shirts, and almost anything else customers dreamed up. The company serves more than 60,000 clients ranging in size from a SoundCloud rapper funding recording sessions by selling merchandise to AT&T.
The deeper Guess became immersed in skater and music culture, the more he gravitated toward the imagery of it all, teaching himself how to create art by trial and error.
“As my passion grew for those things, I found myself drawn to graphic design,” he said. “At the same time I was playing in a band, and as an independent musician you need a lot of printed promotional materials. From flyers to spread the word about a tour to the merch we’d have to sell to make enough gas money to get to the next stop, it was a constant need.”
What started as a hobby began to consume more and more of Guess’s time, but the early grind would pay off a hundred-fold in an industry that weeds out the imitators and champions vision and originality.
“This was around 1998 or ’99, and as my band’s graphic designer I was always scrambling to figure out how to get things made,” he said. “It wasn’t like today with the internet where you can just hop onto a site like Jakprints, upload a graphic, and get all your shirts, stickers, and posters done in the blink of an eye. I kept finding myself sourcing all my different products through completely different channels; getting my stickers one place and having to call another place to get my T-shirts printed. It was quite a learning curve. Many places back then didn’t even accept digital files. So, as my band continued to grow, I ended up learning a ton about the printing business and the entire process of turning an idea into a tangible product.”
Even though people may think “oh they’re just stoners,” these creators are all about hitting the mark and succeeding in this space. They’re building sales teams, they’re going to trade shows, they’re doing pop-up customer appreciation events. It just seems very motivated and functional.
Cannabis is a fresh, new industry, and we’re just starting to see the potential of what it can do. Everyone is motivated by wanting to get it right, and we try to lead with quality and consciousness. You want to work with purpose, and that’s what we’re seeing: a lot of companies working passionately to accomplish something great. A lot of the other industries we work with, people are just working a job.
The cannabis industry is homegrown, and you can feel the innovation and passion immediately. When you love what you do, it shines through. And we love what we do. I couldn’t imagine working in a better time in this movement as cannabis comes out of prohibition.
HAVE YOU FACED ANY CHALLENGES IN THE TRADITIONAL WORLD AS A RESULT OF YOUR CANNABIS-RELATED BUSINESS?
About four or five years ago there was a real concern. We were worried about how we’d get paid by [cannabis] clients, as in would we be able to accept funds that were generated by a product that’s technically illegal? We didn’t normally get paid in pillowcases full of cash, for example.
We just tried to be selective about who we worked with, choosing upper-echelon brands that we felt represented where the industry was going in the future. We did a lot of boxes for Bhang Chocolates in the beginning. We were never touching actual product, just consulting about design and marketing around the branding. Our play was somewhat easy in that sense, and we knew our risk was minimal because our other clients in the music, video game, and skateboarding industries, for example, wouldn’t care that we supported the weed movement.
Where we do run into a little bit of overlap is we work with some nonprofit institutions that rely on grants and government support, as well as schools and churches. So, we’re careful not to market the same services to both groups or keep the weed products in their faces. We keep our marketing materials different for whichever client base we’re targeting. We serve big brands like AT&T and Fanatics, and sometimes people are surprised we’re able to work with mainstream companies like that and ones in the cannabis space, so we’re trying to merge them a little more. We know that early adopters sometimes catch a little flak, but we want to be on the forefront.
It’s great we’re able to engage in this business without having to create some sort of shell corporation, because we still deal with plenty of vendors who refuse to work on cannabis-related projects. They’ll reference religious beliefs or their political views, and they will not work with us on a project. This is an industry that’s emerging, not going anywhere, and it’s only going to get bigger, so there will be lots of work and we’re happy to do it.
HOW HAS ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS AFFECTED THE PRINTING BUSINESS, AND HOW WILL IT INFLUENCE SHIFTING TRENDS GOING FORWARD?
I wish I could say [environmentally friendly practices are] going great industry-wide or at least getting better, but it’s been a little bit of a smoke-and-mirrors kind of thing, honestly. I found far more alternatively sourced and recycled materials being used when I first got into this business than there are available now. A lot of the sustainable options I found when I was starting out twenty years ago—like hemp, kenaf, and cotton-based papers—are more rare than ever, and I don’t know why that is besides consolidation in the industry. There used to be dozens of large paper companies, and now there are about five. They seem to be making less and less paper, which means they’re also making it increasingly difficult to get 100-percent or even 50-percent recycled materials.
Consumers and the buying public have to be more influential in the decision about what we make things with and what kind of paper we’re using. We want our paper and our consumables to be more responsibly sourced, or else we’re just getting what they’re selling us. At this point, I cannot buy kenaf paper or hemp paper anymore at a price point that even affords me the opportunity to be competitive. Furthermore, there’s so much paper coming into the country with no chain of custody or accountability for environmental impact—a lot of operations around Asia are just clear-cutting whole forests. People buy it because it’s cheaper, but it has no recycled content in it at all.
I’ve seen it change for the better in terms of digital allowing us to use a lot less waste on the production front. We’re not doing film or using cameras. We’re writing our digital files directly to recycled aluminum plates. We recycle everything, and we do the best we can with the machines that we purchase to cut down on the amount of pre-consumer waste. There’s still a long way to go, though, and it has to come from us, the consumers, saying “this is what we want.” But it’s regressed from twenty years ago, for sure.
Photo:
At Purple Line Media, we applied brand personification to the Dogwalker pre-roll design. Knowing 54 percent of female cannabis consumers prefer to smoke their weed, the goal was to create an approachable pre-roll brand targeting urban millennial females age 25 to 35.
looks like a teenager’s tampon box. If your product proposition is about healing, quality, consistency, and effectiveness, then the design should be elegant in its approach.
We started by featuring a normal woman in the logo. Women in cannabis branding and advertising routinely are shown as voluptuous and scantily clad and are objectified to sell product. We wanted to break this stigma, so instead we featured a woman of proportional stature smoking a pre-roll and walking her dog. We call her Carolyn. Through personification, Carolyn became an approachable person to whom other women can relate. She normalizes cannabis smoking, so women don’t feel uncomfortable buying the product. The combination of sans-serif font and neutral colors helps keep the design from looking gender-specific so as not to alienate other potential customers.
WHY DO WOMEN USE CANNABIS?
Another component of brand personification is understanding why someone would use the products. A recent BDS Analytics survey conducted in four states where cannabis is legal found 37 percent of women consumers feel “consuming marijuana gives me a sense of personal control over my health.” The survey also discovered 49 percent of women cannabis users feel “marijuana is medicine for me,” indicating a nearly half-and-half split between medicinal use and recreational use. Also, according to the survey, menstruation, menopause, and sex are listed as the top reasons for female cannabis self-care.
Given so many women are attracted to cannabis as medicine, it’s important a brand’s design communicates medicinal legitimacy. Don’t make packaging pink and splatter flowers all over it so it
Om Edibles has been a female-centric brand since 2008, and the company takes pride in creating highquality edibles, tinctures, and topicals for women’s healing. When Purple Line Media was approached to redesign the Om Edibles brand in 2017, we wanted to give it a medicinal feel with approachable luxury. We went with all-white packaging, as the color white signifies cleanliness, sterility, and peace. White is also a color used often in cosmeceuticals, so it’s familiar to the female consumer. Our addition of gold elevates the offering so the consumer feels she’s getting something special. The crown over the gold logo incorporates an infinity symbol, representing timelessness of the Om brand. Beyond basic brand elements, we used a spot gloss Sri Yantra pattern in the background to add further visual appeal. The result is timeless medicinal packaging that communicates quality and subtly appeals to all women.
CONSIDER FORM AND FUNCTION
So, now you know who’s buying your products and why, but have you considered how a woman incorporates your product into her daily life? Does she smoke it or eat it? Does she consume at night or during the day? Does she hide it from her kids or her friends?
Van der Pop recently conducted a survey to better understand the motivation of female cannabis consumers and found 70 percent of women believe cannabis consumption carries a stigma; 66 percent hide their use for fear of being judged. From a packaging perspective, this means discretion is critical. Think about putting your product in a small, sleek package that can slip into a woman’s purse.
Women also tend to have smaller hands and features, so when you are researching hardware, look for items that would fit nicely into a woman’s palm.
A great example of this is a product we designed for Vive Cal. The company’s products are micro-dose tablets created for light daily use. For the packaging vessel, we went with a small, child-resistant pill vial that easily fits in the palm and can be slipped into a pocket or purse. The creative is bright, fun, and gender-neutral. It also doesn’t scream “cannabis!”
Even though Vive Cal’s target market is primarily women, the packaging was created to appeal to a mass demographic—anyone can discretely enjoy the product.
VALIDATE YOUR DESIGN
Once you clearly identify your female consumer and invest time and money in design and product development, the final piece of the puzzle is to validate the design. Don’t throw money into sales and distribution before validation and then wonder why you don’t attain shelf velocity. You need to ask a woman why and if she would choose your brand over the competition. This is called market research. One of my favorite ways to conduct market research is through Survey Monkey. You can upload your imagery along with the competition’s imagery, customize survey questions, and then choose the age, gender, and even geographic location of survey participants. If you can’t afford Survey Monkey, you can create your own informal survey and email it to connections on LinkedIn, your sister, your aunt, your
grandma, and any other women you know. Receiving direct feedback from your target consumer is worth the cost and will help improve brand performance.
ONE MORE THING
There is no doubt women are starting to play a key role in cannabis consumption, considering the gaining popularity of weed and the growth of women’s portion of cannabis consumer spending. However, in general, women still feel undervalued in both the marketplace and the workplace—which brings me to my last point. If you truly want to reach female consumers, the best thing you can do is hire female executives. If you want to reach more women, you need to have more women in leadership and decision-making roles. People don’t want to be designed at ; they want to be designed for . That key conceptual difference will give your brand true authenticity and brand loyalty across any market.
an active role in the regulatory process. PurpleLineMedia.com
ELIZABETH KOST is co-founder and chief executive officer of Purple Line Media, a boutique creative studio for cannabis graphic design. Previously, she worked for ten years in packaging design for the alcohol industry. Kost also serves as Purple Line Media’s compliance officer and plays
Photo: Purple Line Media
- Herbert J. Buddington III
HIPPO PACKAGING’S KARY RADESTOCK Gets It All Wrapped Up
BY JOANNE CACHAPERO PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES BANASIAK
HIPPO PACKAGING’S Kary Radestock isn’t only about designing pretty packages. She and her team create consumer experiences.
With attention to detail, innovative packaging and branding technology, and forward-looking concepts, Hippo is a one-stop for cannabis company branding. Integrated services start with container design but also include promotional materials, website coding, and trade show displays.
The company even has in-house counsel to advise about compliance— an absolute necessity as regulations for compliant packaging, branding, and messaging are still evolving state by state in the U.S. and nationwide in Canada. Creativity, vision, consistent quality, and commitment are of paramount importance for cannabis companies as they establish profiles consumers will remember and embrace, Radestock said.
She said plenty more, too, in a wide-ranging discussion about the latest trends, the importance of an integrated strategy, child-resistant packaging, and much more.
WHAT TRENDS DO YOU SEE COMING?
The trends in cannabis packaging today are child-resistant and quick. There are a lot of child-resistant packages out there, but maybe not as many as we would like.
A lot of people are trying to take the guesswork out for the end consumer. They’re naming their products based on effects. We call it “effect-based naming,” which is quite popular. They’ve also been doing this for a long time: color-coding by strain, or “versioning.” It’s very popular. A lot of people like indica, sativa, and hybrids, [which are easily defined] with three different colors. Even versioning edibles by flavors and things like that.
those mistakes. This packaging back-and-forth does cost millions of dollars and it costs a lot of people’s businesses.”
The regulators really need to be conscious of the decisions they’re making and the impact those decisions have on this industry. We’ve been working with them to try to get there. We feel it’s moving in the right direction.
WHAT ELEMENTS OF BRANDING DO ENTREPRENEURS AND BUSINESSES SOMETIMES OVERLOOK?
Great packaging starts with great graphic design, and a lot of people forget that part. You’re not going to have beautiful packaging without it. I tell people, “When developing your brand, hire the best graphic designer you can afford, because it is worth it.”
I suppose another thing I would tell people about developing a brand: Leave enough time to produce it right. Really, packaging—changing your packaging—is about a nine-month process. Nobody really leaves that time. We have so many people who call up and they want a logo design, they want packaging design, and they want to be in retail in sixty days. There’s just no way that’s going to happen. Packaging itself takes six weeks, and that’s domestic. If we go overseas, double that lead time.
So, I have to disappoint people a lot, because they’re very enthusiastic and ready to go. But packaging takes time. And great packaging takes a lot of back-and-forth—with the client and with the factories. To allow the proper amount of time just helps everyone not stress out during the production process.
WHAT WAS ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE PROJECTS?
Utopia. Because they were our first, I feel like they’re my firstborn. We developed their brand identity, their logo. I just love to see how that brand has developed layers over the years. We started with just a logo, and then we did an ad showing the new logo. Then we launched flexible packaging and a point-of-purchase display. Then labels for their flower and concentrate jars, and eventually they were able to add overwrap boxes for their flower and their concentrates, which just upped the brand’s image. It really set them apart as a premium brand. And they used some really beautiful papers. When you can use a specialty stock like that, it really sets the brand apart as a premium brand.
We’ve been working with [Utopia] for two and a half years, and we’ve just gotten to grow on so many levels with them.
WHAT DO YOU ADVISE FOR COMPANIES THAT ARE JUST STARTING?
We recommend you start small and grow. Packaging is expensive, and each product is going to be expensive. But all companies, big or small, need basically the same thing.
Job one is going to be your website, your business cards, and your packaging. That’s job one. And then, if you’ve got more budget, then hopefully you can do a table drape and a retractable banner, so you can get out and do shows, demo days, and things like that in retail stores. All the events that are going on—festivals and things. They just need to grow from there.
You need an online presence. A lot of businesses just have an Instagram set up. “I’ve got an Instagram and a retractable banner”—that’s where a lot of people start. But to be honest with you, your website is your digital online presence and very, very important. So, I would say to really focus on those things to start.
The Hippo Packaging team consults with clients throughout the design process.
Utopia’s business cards make visual and tactile statements.
Herban Extracts’ packaging is luxurious outside and inside, creating a consumer experience.
Every event you go to, collect email addresses because you’re going to want to have a direct conversation with your customers. And you’ll want them to know about product launches and that type of thing. A lot of businesses don’t do that. They don’t collect anything, and [contact information is] really critical for success.
WHAT ARE SOME INNOVATIVE BRANDING TOOLS FOR COMPANIES WITH BIG BUDGETS?
Augmented reality—that’s a new technology. Not that new; I learned about it over ten years ago, but it wasn’t widely used.
There is a wine brand called 19 Crimes out of Australia. They put this technology front and center as a real brand-enhancer. They produced several different bottles of wine with different labels on each one. The labels linked to augmented reality profiles of convicts and what their crimes were; they were playing off how the colony of Australia was founded by Europe sending convicts there. So, each bottle had a little bit of a story to it, and you’d have to collect all of the bottles. You’d put your phone against it [to access a link code], and then that face would come alive and start talking to you, right on your phone, telling you the story.
Mainstream’s using [the technology], and it’s a great thing for cannabis companies to start thinking about, especially the ones that have a little more budget, that are a little bigger. It’s a great way to tell the brand story, to engage with the consumer, to bring them in, and to create brand ambassadors out of your consumers. It’s a great technology.
“ Your brand is your reputation. It’s how people think about you. It’s what they say about you when you’re not there, and everything you do is part of building that brand.
You could do a drone flyover of the farm, you can talk about the process, you can meet the founders, or if the brand was created using Aunt Betty’s recipe and she had cancer and this helped cure her, then we have interviews with her and see her. Whatever it is.
The point is, good branding means you really connect with the consumer, and you have to do it on every single touchpoint that you can. To have your packaging be able to come alive and really tell a brand’s story is pretty exciting. I think we’re going to see [augmented reality] being used over the next few years in cannabis.
BRANDING AND PACKAGING REALLY ARE VISUAL STORYTELLING, AREN’T THEY?
In its most simple form, your brand is your reputation. It’s how people think about you. It’s what they say about you when you’re not there, and everything you do is part of building that brand. Everything you say. It takes years to build a brand. It can be destroyed in an instant by making a mistake, so you have to be really careful with everything you do as you’re building a brand. It’s your reputation.
Consistent color coordination allows at-a-glance effect recognition across Theory Extracts’ product lines.
