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LOS ANGELES (AP) – On April 20, Potheads celebrated its love of marijuana, but the celebration of the once-centered counter-culture of being screwed up now is so dominant that Corporate America is starting to rally.
No, Hallmark still has no card to mark "420". But many other multi-billion dollar businesses in the cannabis industry use April 20 or 4 to broadcast marketing messages and social media aimed at connecting consumers to this booming market.
On Saturday, Lyft is offering a $ 4.20 one-way credit to Colorado and some cities in the United States and Canada. Carl's Jr. uses a Denver restaurant to market a hamburger infused with CBD, a non-intoxicant molecule found in cannabis and which, in the opinion of many, is beneficial to health.
On 420 last year, Totino's, a frozen pizza maker, tweeted the picture of a microwave oven and oven with the following message: "To be honest, pizza buns are better when they are cooked."
"I think brands that badociate with cannabis make that contact at the top, in other words, they're simply considered colder by badociation," said Kit Yarrow, a consumer psychologist at The Golden Gate University. "As the pot becomes more legal, more discussed, more interesting for people, more widely used, the 420 also becomes more common."
The normalization of marijuana has snowballed since 2012, when Colorado and Washington were the first states to legalize the use for recreational purposes. Eight others followed, including California, Oregon and Michigan. Marijuana for medical purposes is legal in two-thirds of states, Utah and Oklahoma with conservative tendencies as recent additions.
Meanwhile, the CBD market has exploded. CBD oil is found in sweets, coffee and other foods, drinks and dietary supplements, as well as in perfumes, lotions, creams and soap. Proponents say CBD helps relieve pain, anxiety and inflammation, although limited scientific research supports these claims.
In the United States, retail sales of cannabis products jumped to $ 10.5 billion last year, a three-fold increase from 2017, according to data from the Arcview group, a market research firm and investment in cannabis. Figures do not include retail sales of CBD products derived from hemp.
Ben & Jerry's was one of the first major brands to establish a connection with marijuana cultivation through marketing. The Vermont-based ice cream company presents Cherry Garcia and Phish Food, honoring Jerry Garcia, a member of the Grateful Dead Dead, and the Phish Group. Both groups are favorites of the crowd that smokes marijuana.
To mark 420 in recent years, the ice cream sandwiches inspired by the taco and burrito have been launched by Ben & Jerry's. This year, the company partnered with a Cannabis retailer in the San Francisco Bay Area to offer customers who place delivery orders on Fridays and Saturdays a complimentary pint of Half Baked biscuits and fudge brownie.
"We have a lot of fun, we never show ourselves openly, but we are really playing at the moment 420," said Jay Curley, Global Head of Integrated Marketing for the company.
Last year, Ben & Jerry's also took a more serious turn by asking consumers to ask lawmakers to cancel their previous marijuana convictions and to ask pardon or amnesty to anyone arrested for having smoked marijuana. This year, society is taking advantage of this holiday to demand a reform of the criminal justice system.
"We take this opportunity not to tell a stoner joke like what we have done in the past, but to raise what we consider to be a much more serious problem in the area of justice," said Mr. Curley.
Marijuana market players are also preparing approximately 420. The bulk of the marketing of cannabis or related products is in the form of online advertisements, emails, SMS and social media. The stores usually offer discounts. Some organize parties with food and entertainment. The 420 most important events can attract thousands of people.
Verano Holdings, whose businesses include cannabis stores, sponsors street festivals in Chicago and Tulsa, Oklahoma, where attendees can learn more about marijuana products, listen to music and eat a piece. The company hopes that this year's Chicago festival, now in its third year, will attract more than 4,000 people. Last year, it attracted 1,500, said Tim Tennant, Verano's marketing director.
In the Golden Gate Park of San Francisco, Hippie Hill will once again be the site of a celebration of the 420. Last year, more than 15,000 people attended the event, which from a small informal gathering is became a full-fledged festival of sponsors and commercial kiosks selling smoking devices, t-shirts and food.
Roger Volodarsky, whose Los Angeles-based company Puffco makes portable vaporizers, has been celebrating 420 years since his teenage years. At that time, he said, "Day 420 was the day you planted yourself and you raised yourself in an interesting way.This is the day you made a bang with gravity and coughing your brain. "
Volodarksy likes the fact that some Main Street brands are getting into the industry and the holidays.
"What's important to me in these advertising campaigns is that they go to people who are not users and that they normalize the space reserved for users." people who are not users, "he said.
Even as popularity grows, some companies will stay away from 420 as a marketing tool, said Allen Adamson, co-founder of Metaforce, a marketing consulting firm.
"If you are talking about a great brand that should please everyone and that is highly risk-averse, then probably not," he said. "I do not think you'll see big financial institutions do it."
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