Audience and purpose drive cannabis sales: Q&A with Kanha Global’s Angela Cheng

Targeted marketing plans that align with local and cultural values are essential for cannabis companies seeking to expand reach and maximize sales.

With more than two decades of experience in brand marketing, Angela Cheng, chief marketing officer at California-based cannabis brand Kanha Global, has earned a Clio Award and recognition as an Asian-American leader in the marijuana space.

She will share the keys to establishing an authentic brand and building lasting consumer connections on Dec. 3 during the MJBizCon Marketing Forum at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Cheng recently spoke with MJBizDaily to offer a preview of her session.

What should companies consider when creating a new brand?

If you’re creating a completely new brand … the first thing is understanding who the audience is: Who am I speaking to? What’s the demographic? What’s the psychographic?

That allows you to develop a product that speaks to that audience.

The second part is your purpose and values.

(Kanha’s) CEO and founder was in the Amazon jungle investigating plant medicine, and that’s where he felt he could make an impact in the world with launching Kanha.

I’ve always believed in plant medicine and traditional Chinese medicine, so I think understanding the purpose and values of what you’re trying to create is important when creating new brands.

There is that authenticity and emotional connection.

You can’t be everything to everybody all at once, but you’re going to be something to somebody if you’re very clear who you are, what your product is and what your brand is about.

How do you know when it’s time to rebrand a product?

It’s not something you jump into lightly.

We’ve all heard stories about Coca-Cola rebranding and large CPG brands rebranding, and then consumers are in an uproar.

What consumers don’t know is, probably on the back end, these brands have seen a dip in sales.

When it’s time to rebrand a product, it’s typically sales, and it’s time to look at a refresh or potentially a vision change.

As I’m adopting the message for Kanha, we’re going from “woo-woo spiritual” to empowerment: We want to empower people on their journey of doing what they love through our products.

Telling that story sometimes requires rebranding because your packaging and your overall brand doesn’t match what your brand once was.

This is common in consumer packaged goods: Every few years, there’s usually a slight adjustment to the logo.

Typically, it’s not a huge shift – like what Coca-Cola did years ago – that surprises everyone and doesn’t feel familiar.

It’s important to do it mindfully and make sure it’s not too much of a departure from your current brand, otherwise, consumers don’t recognize it.

What are some of the best practices to ensure brands stay compliant across states?

We set up every-other-month meetings where I have my entire marketing team in the room (with the director of compliance), and we go through state-by-state rules and regulations as a refresher.

When I develop things like in-store displays, I try to develop it in a way where it’s all compliant.

We create packaging and labels that can easily adapt to varying rules.

What are some of the marketing challenges created by state regulations?

A big push of cannabis marketing is winning over the trade, which is winning over the budtender.

Recommendation of products is really important.

For years, I couldn’t advertise on Meta, and I still can’t run a regular ad on Facebook.

How do you build a brand without using digital tools?

We have to depend on closed tools like a Jane Analytics or a Weedmaps to reach our consumer.

We have also just recently launched kanhalife.com, which is our hemp line.

That reaches 30 states that we’re not in from a license standpoint.

It’s important to be hyper local.

I’m a California brand, but people from Illinois care to the extent that it’s a brand they can trust.

It’s important to see what’s happening in Illinois and make sure we develop programming that speaks to that consumer.

We develop stickers that show the Prairie State, (and) we look at events, we adjust our marketing and our message to speak to the Illinois consumer.

Instead of people in a nightclub, which speaks to high energy and fast-acting in Nevada and California, that doesn’t really speak to the Illinois consumer.

They’re more about, “How does this product help me in a wellness way?”

What are the latest marketing and branding trends for cannabis?

From a product standpoint, what we’re looking at is higher-strength products and products that are strain-specific.

The cannabis community has gotten a lot more mature.

When I first arrived on the scene, there wasn’t very much marketing: It was maybe a popup, maybe some trade marketing in-store.

We’re seeing a lot more partnerships with athletes and sports organizations.

Cannabis is pretty normalized, and that means that sports organizations and fashion brands are more open to partnering with cannabis.

Cookies just partnered with the University of Southern California Trojans football team, and more traditional sports organizations are allowing that partnership.

What are marijuana companies doing right?

The ones that are at the top of their game are getting a lot more CPG-oriented: They’re developing commercials, running Meta ads and really telling the story of the brand.

One thing that has changed a lot is every brand is working on building a consumer email list so they can talk to the consumer one-on-one.

When we first started out, no one had a CRM – customer relationship management tool – to reach consumers.

As a marketer, I’m seeing emails coming in every week, and they speak to what the product is about: They romance the story of where this flower was sourced and give a lot more information around the product.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

To learn more about the MJBizCon Marketing Forum, visit mjbizconference.com.

Margaret Jackson can be reached at margaret.jackson@mjbizdaily.com.