This THC Drink Brand Can Teach Marketers A Lot About Pride

Cann, a sales leader and Hollywood favorite in the exploding cannabis-infused drinks category, debuts its Pride campaign this weekend with 11 candy-colored billboards and 20 wild postings in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. The gay-owned startup—which pulled in $3 million in sales in its first year, 2020, and expects to triple that revenue in 2021—purposely selected models, creatives and other artists from the LGBTQ+ community for the project. Cann’s co-founders, Luke Anderson and Jake Bullock, wanted to flip some advertising tropes on their heads with the work, which stars former competitors from RuPaul’s Drag Race in a sassy mashup of vintage Fanta Girls, '90s high fashion and gender role reversals. Anderson spoke with Adweek about the out-of-home and related efforts for June, which include charitable giving to several LGBTQ+ nonprofits, and how those might serve as templates for other brands in their quest for authenticity at a time when many settle for performative "rainbowwashing." “Not only were there queer people in the room when this campaign was born,” said Anderson, whose brand recently hacked the digital ad ecosystem, “there were queer people in every room and driving every decision.” Adweek: Tell us about the inspiration for this campaign.Luke Anderson: The beverage industry has long relied on objectifying women to connect with consumers, and although many successful brands have relied on this tactic to grow, it reinforces toxic masculinity. Also big corporations of all varieties tend to slap a rainbow on something during Pride month and call it a day, without being thoughtful about how to actually support the queer community they are marketing to. Being a queer-owned beverage brand, we had to tackle both of these issues simultaneously and find a way to poke fun at patriarchal culture while elevating queer artists who deserve the spotlight. One day I was drinking a few Canns and thinking about the Fanta Girls, and then the rest just sort of snowballed from there. To quote my co-founder, Jake, after looking at the final assets, "In 2021 the Fanta Girls are drag queens and they drink weed.” How does this campaign fit into your overall marketing strategy?The original mastermind behind Cann, my co-founder, has always said that the most defensible thing about our business would be the brand. So our goal in all things marketing-adjacent is to be brand-forward and leverage our cheeky and irreverent voice to educate consumers about how Cann is a viable alcohol substitute. Hangovers? Cannceled. Fake shit? Cannceled? Alcohol? Cannceled. How can brands avoid falling into the rainbow-washing trap?A lot of companies will look at June on their marketing calendar and say, 'Oh wow, let's throw a temporary rainbow on our logo,' or, 'Let's make a custom SKU that has rainbow colors,' but rarely do these ideas come from queer creatives, and even more rarely do these campaigns help to really advance LBGTQ+ inclusion. Queer people don't want to be tokenized, and we don't want to just be “tolerated.” We want to belong. By deconstructing the rainbow in this pride campaign and highlighting queer artists in every detail, we are making a nuanced statement about the validity of our existence. How would you describe your philosophy on giving back?As a cannabis brand, Cann's primary duty is to give back to communities that have been most marginalized by the war on drugs. So our philanthropic energies go toward supporting organizations that are Black and brown-owned and who work to make space for people of color in the cannabis industry. But because Jake and I are both queer, we often go out of our way to support BIPOC-led organizations that are thoughtful and inclusive of intersectional LGBTQ+ communities. We work closely with Mary Pryor and her team at Cannaclusive to vet and select each of the organizations we support, and over the last year we've donated over $100,000 through give-backs. And yes, that's more than we spent on consumer marketing campaigns in the same time period. Who benefits from your Pride month activities?The BIPOC-led, queer-inclusive organizations Copper House Detroit, Supernova Women and Pot Studios LA: $15—$5 to each organization—from each sale of our limited edition Pride sweatshirts will go toward funding their operations. [The shirts, available on Cann’s website, are a collaboration with queer-owned cannabis brands Drew Martin and Sonder]. What role does out-of-home advertising play for Cann?It’s a very important channel for us because most of Cann's target consumers aren't yet shopping at marijuana dispensaries, the only place we can be sold legally since our products have 2mg THC. Due to cannabis being federally illegal, we also can't do paid digital ads like a traditional CPG company. By getting large billboards in our three biggest cities we hope to achieve new levels of brand awareness, and by partnering with retailers on co-branded assets we hope to drive some people to the dispensary for their first ever cannabis purchase. How did you put the production crew together?I reached out to one of my favorite queer artists, Marko Monroe—Lizzo's stylist and a creative force behind House of Avalon—and he thought it would be great to push the concept further by drawing on influences from Versace and Chanel ads from the ‘90s and bringing in some men in briefs to be kind of objectified playfully. Marko and Grant Vanderbilt from House of Avalon directed the campaign and cast Symone, Gigi and Rosy as the "Cann Girls" and three queer men as "Eye Canndy" with Max Bronner on photography. The result is pretty subversive—a Pride campaign executed entirely by queer creatives and a beverage advertisement where not a single woman was objectified. CREDITS: Models:Symone (Winner, RPDR S13)Gigi Goode (Runner up, RPDR S12)Rosy Thorn (House of Avalon)Vincint (Queer Eye theme song singer)Adam Powell Ken XYCreative Directors:Marko Monroe (Lizzo's stylist, House of Avalon)Grant Vanderbilt (House of Avalon) Photographer: Max Bronner Producer: Luke Anderson Postproduction:Eliza Robson (Cann)Kanako Shimura (Cann)

Alcohol Industry News

This THC Beverage Brand Has a Lot to Teach Marketers About Pride Month Authenticity

Cann, proudly queer-owned, built its campaign with an LGBTQ+ cast, crew and creatives

T.L. Stanley

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T.L. Stanley