Why Just Build A Cannabis Brand When You Can Find Its Soul?

Shawn Gold (CEO Pilgrim Soul) on what to expect in the oncoming wave of cannabis brands

Shawn Gold is founder and CEO of Pilgrim Soul, a mission-driven cannabis brand focused on optimizing human creative performance. Prior to Pilgrim Soul, Shawn was Chief Marketing Officer at Lowell Herb Co. and has advised other leading cannabis brands, including MedMen and Charlotte’s Web. His deep marketing experience spans roles at TechStyle, Inside Studios, MySpace, Weblogs, and other major international brands.

“There are very few professions where creative thinking is not a competitive edge that separates the good from the great.”

You left Lowell, one of the most successful brands in the California market. What’s driving the change? What are you working on now?

I left to build a company focused on cannabis for creative thinking. It was an opportunity that spoke to me from both a product-market fit and a mission-driven perspective. When that happens for me (and it’s not that often), it’s hard not to follow that instinct.

My thesis from working with Lowell, MedMen and Charlotte’s Web is that the next wave of cannabis brands will be vertically focused, mission-driven, and built around a strong belief system — where cannabis is just a portion of the total brand package.

For my new brand, Pilgrim Soul, it’s about helping people unlock their innate creativity through cannabis, curriculum, content, and community. It’s all engineered to optimize human performance around creative thinking.

So, is this a brand just for artists and other creatives?

Well, yes and no. Cannabis has certainly been a tool for writers and artists for centuries, but that is actually just a small subset of my target audience. I’m building this brand for anyone who is paid to create and innovate.

Those could be educators, scientists, engineers, or computer programmers — as well as people who are paid to be creative problem solvers, like finance-focused people and attorneys. There are very few professions where creative thinking is not a competitive edge that separates the good from the great.

There are a lot of cannabis brands currently out and emerging today. What’s the opportunity for cannabis brands in 2020 and beyond?

When I said that I see brands going vertical, what I mean is that you will see new cannabis brands focusing on more specific use cases.

Today, you have brands like Dosist that take a “macro” swipe at various states, such as Bliss, Sleep, Calm, Relief, and Passion. Moving forward, you will see brands that develop deep expertise in just one of these states, establishing themselves as the industry expert and the category king for new cannabis categories that they create. They will do this with products that go beyond just cannabis — their products will enhance the efficacy of cannabis in that particular vertical of expertise.

From this next wave of brands, you will also see more definitive missions and belief systems. Today, most cannabis brands are merely packaging. Because, for most of the cannabis brands out there, you don’t know what they stand for. That’s a problem when they all pretty much do the same thing — get you high.

People buy products from companies that believe what they believe. The best brands are an extension of who we are and what we stand for. To build a successful cannabis brand (or any brand really) you need to think about how you keep score other than money. How does your brand enhance someone’s life and create a promise for a better tomorrow?

Given the legal restrictions, how can brands effectively build awareness and loyalty with customers?

Building Lowell into the #1 pre-roll brand in California, we focused cannabis marketing around four pillars — retail, social, content, and publicity. As far as advertising goes, you can’t buy cannabis ads on Facebook, Google, or Instagram, which are currently some of the most effective and efficient conversion media.

With 70–80% of sales influenced by budtender recommendations, the most important marketing you can do is in-store — that consists of point of purchase displays, education programs, promotions, great packaging, and a simple differentiating story around efficacy and mission. Brands are stories, so it is essential to have a concise story about your brand that budtenders can easily understand and convey.

Content is also important for storytelling. You may be restricted from advertising on Google, but you can certainly use Google to tell your story and optimize SEO, the natural search taxonomy around your brand.

Social content platforms like Instagram are essential and a big part of how Lowell reached such notoriety. They are built for short, shareable stories, that is where the people are, so they are the most efficient opportunity for earned media.

However, it’s technically illegal to have an account promoting a cannabis brand, so brand accounts are deleted all the time by Instagram. So, the most effective thing you can do on Instagram is to have other people promote your brand. This is also why mission and belief systems are so important for cannabis brands. When someone on Instagram promotes your brand, they are essentially positioning their own personal brand. When someone promoted Lowell on their Instagram page, they were sharing their own personal respect for heritage, craftsmanship, and sustainability.

Lastly, in a world without efficient advertising, publicity is even more significant. Lowell Herb Co. arguably had more publicity than any other cannabis brand, and that was no accident. We mapped and scheduled our publicity around our core values, and we always had a new storyline going each month that was about elevating the integrity of the cannabis industry. We created a Green New Deal pack to promote sustainability. We partnered with CJ Wallace, the son of Notorious B.I.G, and the California Prison Arts project to raise awareness around social justice issues. We created the Coachella Cannabis Crown and applied for sponsorship, and then promoted the fact that we were the first cannabis brand rejected from Coachella, to promote the normalization and acceptance of cannabis at festivals.

What do you think about celebrity brands?

I am not a big fan of celebrity brands. However, I love celebrity collaborations and celebrity endorsements. There are several reasons why celebrity brands are not really taking hold, but the main issue is that people don’t necessarily buy into the idea that the celebrity has anything to do with the actual product. Does Willie Nelson have the expertise or the time to get involved with cultivating a cannabis product?

Some have positioning that just doesn’t make sense to me. Take Leafs by Snoop, for example. I am certainly curious to know what Snoop is smoking and what his favorite strains are, but I, for a minute, don’t think he is actually cultivating his own product (nor would I want him to). I think a big part of Snoop’s audience is still part of the 80% of California cannabis buyers who are buying black-market weed. So Snoop came out with a premium brand, when, if I were him and wanted to sell a lot of product, I would have come out with a more competitive, value-based brand like Old Pal.

Take the Grateful Dead as another different (but interesting) example. At first blush, it seems like a great idea for the Grateful Dead to come out with a weed brand — they are synonymous with weed. But… that is actually the problem. Grateful Dead fans have typically been smoking weed for decades; they are sophisticated buyers who know what they like.

I personally love the Grateful Dead. I might buy some Grateful Dead weed product once as a keepsake or collectible, but I would not pay a premium to smoke it on an ongoing basis, nor would I think for a second that the boys have any involvement in cultivating it. I do like the Idea of Grateful Dead paraphernalia.

There’s great buzz around Pilgrim Soul even before launch. When can we expect to see it in the marketplace? Did you take on investment? Any opportunities to get involved?

Sure, we plan to launch in California in May with our partner, Abstrax Tech, and have licensing deals in the works to launch in multiple states throughout 2020, which is typically unheard of for a pre-launch brand.

In our pre-seed round, it is mostly entrepreneurs — the founder of Soothe, the founder of Skip-Hop, the founder of Fabletics, the creator of the Lowell Smokes brand, along with entertainment executives, a family office, and well-known celebrities who use cannabis for creativity.

Soon, I’ll be looking for a COO, some marketing talent, and setting up the next round of financing. Anyone can ping me at info@pilgrimsoul.com.

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