What would a fresh weed brand look like?
Courier set branding agency Saffron the brief of producing a contemporary cannabis brand in the hypothetical scenario where the drug had been legalised in the UK. Here’s what they came up with:
Words by Sahil Sachdev, senior strategist, Saffron Brand Consultants.
‘Cannabis is an unusual thing to brand. It’s both illegal and everywhere, taboo but almost universally accepted, artisanal and base. At the heart of the challenge was a similar tension: creating a very new brand for a very old product.
Our starting point was trust. Brands started becoming powerful at the turn of the 20th century, when their purpose was to assure consumers of quality and help them avoid knockoffs of dubious provenance. Things have moved on a bit since then, but, given weed’s chequered history when it comes to legality and public perceptions, the new brand would first have to do the same.
Joy and youthfulness
Cannabis isn’t soap, though, and, whilst we wanted to leave behind some of the more hackneyed clichés of weed (Mr. Marley, the leaf, and so on), we also wanted to celebrate it for what it is — a happily psychoactive product that has encouraged some great (and not so great) music, art and conversation over the centuries. It needed to have a certain joy and youthfulness to it.
But it’s also a specialist product; with strains having been perfected over decades, provenance is fundamental. The craft involved in growing the best compares with that employed in some of the oldest French vineyards. We wanted to tread this line: celebrating cannabis for what it is, whilst elevating it to sit alongside wines, chocolate and coffee.
Grown up mother brand
We created a very simple brand architecture to do just that. The mother-brand evokes a sense of polished psychedelia, with surreal photography and modern typography working together in a clean and clear system. The name itself — # — is a tongue-in-cheek play on words and symbols; it brings a bit of levity and wit to a quite grown-up mother brand. Just like cannabis, it’s playful and anarchi It will, we hope, prove memorable.
Visual language
The visual language of the product itself needed to be different to the mother brand as it would carry the cannabis itself. To do justice to the product, it had to have a sense of energy and vibrancy to it. It also needed to help people navigate the number of different strains available. So each strain has a unique, yet coherent personality, with colours and patterns bringing individual strains to life, whilst showing their common brand heritage. It’s graphic and colourful, but also a bit unrefined, reflecting the natural and organic nature of the product.
Billboard posters
Packaging would be a key brand-touchpoint, and the right place to convey a sense of sophistication and craft. Large glass capsules lend it an artisanal feel. Oversized lids are pleasing both to the eye and to the touch, helping form a tactile relationship with the brand.
The stores are clean, uncluttered and sophisticated, with a sense of clinical connoisseurship to it, à la Aēsop. Billboard posters are colourful, and celebrate the flavours and their provenance. The end result is a brand that’s sophisticated and fun, as appealing to the consumer as it is to the connoisseur.
Now we just need to wait for those pesky laws to be changed!’
