Lilli Keinaenen - Sustainable packaging and branding designer for cannabis and hemp companies is the founder of Changemaker Creative. Changemaker Creative helps cannabis and hemp companies stand out with unique custom branding and packaging design – and attract a cult following of customers. With a focus on sustainable packaging for product brands with a soul, Lilli Keinaenen is deeply passionate about saving the planet through better design.

How Cannabis Marketing Connects With Consumers

The best cannabis branding is the kind that is clear, and catches the right person’s eye in the split second they’re looking at the selection on the store shelf or online. The right look will attract the right person on almost a subconscious level, we all just like what we like. The most successful brands tap into that feeling – we’re selling more than the product with a specific amount of THC. We’re selling feelings, aspirations, solutions to life’s problems. And that’s what branding and marketing do. Some of the best brands don't really talk about the product. Coca-Cola is just brown sugar water in the end. Instead, they talk about opening happiness, sharing a Coke with someone you love, and how opening one will make you smile. With cannabis, we need to resist the urge to talk about only the features – milligrams and growing technologies and medical jargon and remember to also talk about the problem in people’s lives that this particular product will solve. Whether it’s about getting some me time in your busy day or sharing some laughs with a friend, or simply waking up refreshed and energized after a good night’s sleep without aches or pains – that’s the magic we’re supposed to be selling.

Examples of Cannabis Branding (pics attached)

Green Bee Botanicals

Luxury, and classic elegance for farm-to-face skincare that celebrates herbalism and natural sciences.

Green Bee Botanicals products

Harvey & Herb

The concept for a manly brand giving homage to both the herb and Harvey Milk, simple and sleek for a stylish modern man. 

Harvey & Herb product

Next Level

Bringing Betty Crocker energy with sugar cookies, and spice and everything nice – freshly baked cookies are the ultimate comfort and joy.

Next Level edibles: Cannabis-infused Brown Sugar

Discover your company's “secret sauce” to get your product to stand out. What questions should one ask themselves to discover that?

I have several exercises I go through with my clients – each project is different, but here are a few examples:

More X than Y exercise, where you use other things – things like cars, or foods, or stores, or musical artists to describe your company. More Bruno Mars than Kanye, more like a hipster burger and fries than fine dining. More Subaru than Porsche. This helps with the positioning on high-end vs budget and helps me understand how you want it to feel like and also just the overall vibe. It's not always so easy to use words, but we all know brands that we like.

To work through the “buzzword bingo” that many of us industry insiders fall prey to, I ask clients to explain to me what it is they do like as if I was 5 years old. Or explain it to me like I’m their 95 years old neighbor.

That helps to cut through the industry speak, and truly explain the WHAT and the WHY. Instead of saying "premium light deep with insane pinene and humulene terps" you might say "carefully cultured to have the most exhilarating scent of a redwood forest after the rain".

Beyond the exercises, mostly we just talk about the “why” behind the company. Dig deep enough, until you find something true and meaningful, beyond the surface level “we want to sell excellent products to people who like excellent products to make excellent amounts of money”. As an example, a company I was working with didn’t think they were doing anything special, that they were just like anyone else, that it was just great weed and they wanted to sell it to make money and people should buy it because it's good shit. 
During the workshop, a very clear theme emerged: this brand was for explorers and collectors, people who weren't afraid to try new things, in order to be the trendsetter who can brag to their friends about the coolest new things they had discovered – simply, they wanted to collect them all. So the idea of including trading cards with tasting notes inside the packaging came to be. And a connoisseur brand was born.”

Which brands are connecting with consumers emotionally via their package and how can brands tell their story better?

Cannabis companies are still mostly very generic and not memorable. When everyone says their product is premium or luxury, the word loses all meaning. 
Connecting to consumers emotionally can happen through the packaging and branding, by utilizing color or style that creates an emotional connection;  fun, or nostalgia, or coolness. One good example is the brand Sonder – they're unapologetically weird and quirky, very much a stoner brand. That package will either speak to you and make you smile, or it will be completely off-putting to you. Either way, it makes you feel something! On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, a brand like Dosist is clean and medical because that's the audience they're trying to reach, as the original microdosing brand (their vape buzzes to notify you've gotten an exact dose). For some people, it will read as dull, but for others, it will read as trustworthy. Both of these brands expand on that brand story, whether it's giggles and fun, or precise and reliable medical solutions, through their social media and marketing, events, swag, etc. When you have a clear "thing" you're known for, it will be easier to speak using that voice all over.

Tips for brands to listen more to their consumers and adjust their package and branding. How can they do this?

There are companies that will run focus groups for you. If that is not feasible for your brand, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t run some kind of testing on your own. The thing is, you, the company owner, aren’t always the target audience. What you like doesn't matter, if you're not the target audience. So to get it right, you need to listen to the audience.

Don't ask only your mom or your friends – they’ll tell you what they think you want to hear.  A simple way to get anonymous and candid feedback is to build a survey, then ask friends of friends (who are in the target audience) to respond to the survey in exchange for a free product or a small gift card. And then you have to truly listen to what they say. Ask a lot of “why” questions. If the product is aimed at moms, ask if they’d feel comfortable recommending this product to a friend, and if not, why. They might say they’d feel embarrassed because the packaging has a huge pot leaf on it and the neighbors might see it getting delivered – or because they hate grapefruit flavor. The earlier you can get this level of feedback, the more easily you can change course. If you have time, follow up for another test with the changes applied and see if it scores better.

Many times I've asked newbie cannabis consumers what they have tried, and equally many times they tell me they grabbed this really cool gummy brand, but they don't remember the name or the flavor... So I ask, is it the one with the fun-shaped box? And they say yeah! How did you know? It's not that Wyld's gummies are that special as edibles go, but people go wild for them because of the geodesic-shaped box. So for your brand, think about texture and shape, and how to make yours into a beautiful keepsake object – make it tactile, utilizing things that look and feel handmade, uncommon materials, shine, and textured surfaces can all act as differentiators.

If nothing else, remember this bit of advice: your target audience isn't everybody. If you're marketing to everyone, you're marketing to no one in particular. Anyone can buy your product, but you should always target a specific person in mind. That's how you pull their heartstrings and make your brand feel like their friend, someone who "gets them". And that's the magic of a good brand.

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