Tag Archives: skin

The Secret to Marketing Cannabis to Women

By Jacquie Maynard
2 Comments

The world is changing, and women are the ones changing it. Classic methods of advertising to women just don’t work anymore, and worse, make you seem outdated and out of touch.

According to a 2017 study by BDS Analytics, 45 percent of cannabis users are women and that number is quickly rising. It could be even higher since according to Van Der Pop’s Women & Weed survey, 66 percent of women hide their cannabis use. No one seems to be able to agree on the exact figure, but experts do agree that women are the fastest growing market in the cannabis industry.

Harvard Business Review reported in their 2009 article “The Female Economy” that worldwide, women control nearly $30 trillion in household spending and make the majority of purchasing decisions in the family. If they’re not directly purchasing something with their $18 trillion in collective income, they are influencing others’ purchasing decisions. Often, they are the primary caregivers in their family circles, making them responsible for buying things for their children, or on behalf of their elderly loved ones.

Gender can often be a marketing blind spot, even though it’s the biggest influence on consumer behavior, according to a 2017 report from The Journal of Business and Management. Now that the number of women working in the cannabis industry is at 36 percent and rising, they are using their experiences and perspectives to market effortlessly to women, and it shows. If your brand is ignoring this powerful demographic, you’d better catch up quick.

Why do women use cannabis products?

Women are into cannabis wellness, but like to get high, too.

In Headset’s 2019 report entitled “What Women Want in Cannabis: Shopping Trends Among Female Cannabis Consumers,” some of the most popular cannabis products among women are still classics like flower and pre-rolls, but women are more likely than men to try capsules, topicals and sprays. They are fascinated by the concept of CBD helping them with issues like menstrual cramps, body and muscle pain, and even sensitive skin, but enjoy products with THC as well.

In general, women’s purchases in the cannabis industry end up being more centred towards wellness, but it’s not all about spa treatments and relaxing.

Sex sells, but not in the way you think.

The structure of cannabidiol (CBD), one of 400 active compounds found in cannabis.

There has been a growing interest in using cannabis and CBD for women’s sexual health. Researchers haven’t quite caught up with the science yet, but researchers at the Center for Sexual Health at Saint Louis University think that cannabis and CBD can help women overcome pain and anxiety during sex. Foria Wellness is a brand that sells CBD suppositories and lubricants that help women have a better sex life. Not only are their products seemingly effective, but they provide loads of education to their audience and work with influencers to build their community.

Beauty is Pain.

Being a woman is hard. Or at least, painful. Between walking in heels, getting in an intense workout, and feeling the stress of general life, women end up with quite a few aches and pains. Topicals and bath bombs seem to be leading the way in this area. Celebrity stylists have been using CBD lotions on the feet of starlets before a long night on the red carpet, and more brands are marketing their products to fitness buffs.

Market to specific kinds of women.Skincare is another burgeoning market. Van Der Pop reports that 60 percent of women are interested in cannabis skin care. Again, the science hasn’t quite caught up, but anecdotally it has been shown to have anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties when applied to the skin. Women with psoriasis, eczema and other skin troubles are also finding relief with CBD. A bunch of large retail brands have already jumped on the bandwagon and indie brands are starting to pop up as well.

Life is Stressful.

A report from Spate and Landing International found that there has been a 24 percent increase in consumer interest in anxiety. Young people these days are under more pressure than ever, and they are turning to their products to solve it. The American Psychological Association says that 12 percent of millennials are officially diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, so it’s no surprise that anxiety and depression are the fastest-growing search terms associated with CBD.

Does this make me a bad mom?

Being a mom is stressful, and a lot of moms have been toking since before their kids were born, so after the kids are asleep they relax on the porch with a joint. It’s right for them, but the stigma is still there and they can feel it. Over 70 percent of women believe that there is still a stigma attached to cannabis use. The answer is not only marketing to Mary Jane moms but also using marketing to help end the stigma around cannabis consumption.

What do women look for in cannabis brands?

Women use cannabis for different reasons than men, so it makes sense that they would look for different things in a cannabis brand.

“Traditionally, marketing weed to men has either been about projecting fantasy, or appealing to the everyday guy that men feel like they could smoke a bowl with,” Mary Pryor, CEO and co-founder of Cannaclusive, told AdAge. “But women want to know what gets the job done without having to do too much work to know what we’re going to get.”

That means lots of education and support at the customer level. Women are used to a higher level of customer service and will most certainly take their business elsewhere if they feel they aren’t being heard or served effectively.

Women buy things that make them feel good, or items that help them express themselves, so aesthetic is important, too. There was a time in cannabis culture when most cannabis accessories had flames, or skulls, or aliens, and while that may appeal to some women, the majority want a more feminine and streamlined look. Brands like Van Der Pop offer modern designs that will readily fit into the consumer’s decor, and Lord Jones packages their CBD oil with an ornate style that invokes more of a luxury perfume brand than a cannabis product. Women are looking for a product that will look good on their shelf or in their homes.

The Secret? Know Your Audience

The first rule of marketing to women is: don’t market to women.

The absolute best way to reach women is to create authentic content for women, by women, addressing their specific concerns.At least, not women as a mass, general group. Market to specific kinds of women. Like cannabis, women come in many beautiful and exotic varieties, each one more interesting and lovely than the last, and each with their own values and shopping habits. For example, the wellness guru will have different needs from the sun-weathered gardener, who will have different needs from the stressed-out mom with a sore back.

Here are some time-tested generalizations that could help you out, though. The Journal of Business and Management reports that women are more likely to appreciate finer distinctions and enjoy more of a conversational style dialogue. When it comes to problem-solving, women care more about how a problem is solved, and like sharing and discussing it. Similarly, shopping is also a process where women tend to enjoy more interaction and take more pride in finding the best bang for their buck and the best product for them.

According to Bloomberg, you should study women as if they were a foreign market. All groups of women have their own culture, values and even language. The key here is to get to know each and every one of these personas so that you can create a targeted strategy to reach them specifically.

The absolute best way to reach women is to create authentic content for women, by women, addressing their specific concerns. Create a community for them. Formulate products for them that actually work. Hire them, listen to them, hear them and they will choose your brand every time.

The Great European Cannabis Cosmetics Confusion

By Marguerite Arnold
3 Comments

If the “recreational” discussion is off the table for now except in a few local sovereign experiments (Luxembourg, Switzerland, Denmark, Holland), and the medical discussion is mired in “efficacy” and payments (Germany, UK), where does that leave this third area of cannabis products?

Namely cosmetics.

The answer? Because this conversation involves cannabis, as usual, the discussion is getting bogged down in confusion even as industry groups press for clarification and guidelines.

The Problem

Cosmetics, including externally applied creams, lotions and potions, are of course subject to regulation and testing beyond cannabinoids. Think of your favourite cosmetic product and the notices about no animal testing (et al). Yet when the conversation comes to cannabis, of course, even of the hemp kind, the current discussion in the EU is mired in confusion, and of course ongoing stigma. Not science. Or even logic.

The structure of cannabidiol (CBD), one of 400 active compounds found in cannabis.

According to the EU Working Group on Cosmetic Products earlier this year, ingredients containing CBD (even derived from hemp) should be banned from cosmetics production because of the ban on cannabis as an illicit substance under the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Guidance under the Cosing Catalogue (a database of allowed and banned ingredients)  gives individual EU member states a framework to set national rules for cosmetics.

To add to the confusion, the EU also added new entries to the EU inventory of cosmetic ingredients which outlaw CBD derived from extracts, tincture or resin. But – in a bizarre bureaucratic swerve, they did approve “synthetically produced CBD.”

Opponents of the ruling – including the European Industrial Hemp Association (EIHA) have of course opposed the newest guidelines on regs. CBD, as the EIHA has mentioned repeatedly, is not referenced specifically in the 1961 Convention.

The EIHA wants the EU to treat cosmetics like other CBD products – namely requiring that they have less than 0.2% THC.

The EIHA Proposal

The EIHA has its own proposal for setting guidelines under Cosing. Namely that extracts from industrial hemp and pure CBD should only be prohibited from use in cosmetic products if they are not manufactured in compliance with laws in the country of origin.

Further, the EIHA has also pointed out that the seeds and leaves of industrial hemp and any products derived from the same are also clearly excluded from the 1961 Convention.

However, and herein lies the rub – even within the EU, there is not yet harmonization on these standards between countries. So, what may pass for “legal” in the country of production may also not pass for products that are then exported – even within the EU and or in Europe.

EIHA also has proposed new wording for the definition of Cannabidiol based on the International Nomenclature of Cosmetics Ingredients (INCI), the most comprehensive and widely recognized international list of ingredients used in cosmetics and personal care products.

Where Does This Cross With Novel Food?

Of course there is also the confusion in the room about cannabis extracts as “novel food.” Cosmetics of course are designed for external application, but cannabis tinctures and extracts containing “CBD” are being put in that category right now by regulators in the EU. The fact that novel food is also in the room may in fact be the reason that regulators are apparently sanguine about synthetic CBD in cosmetics, but not that derived from the actual plant.

The cannabis discussion is going to be in the room for many years to come and on all fronts – from medication to food to cosmetics.Bottom line? There are, at present, no easy answers. This leaves the CBD industry in the EU, at all levels, as the planet barrels into the third decade of this century, in basically a state of limbo. If not absolute confusion.

What Is The Outlook?

While it may not be “pretty” right now, the industry is clearly moving through channels to pressure and challenge regulators at key international points and places.

What is increasingly obvious however, is that the problem with cannabis – at all levels – will not be solved soon, or easily. Even calls for “recreational reform” or even “descheduling” will not cure them.

Cannabis as a plant, if not a substance used in everyday living has been so stigmatized over the last 100 years that a few years of reform – less than a decade if one counts the organization of the industry since 2013 globally – will not come close to fixing if not ironing out the bugs.

The cannabis discussion, in other words, is going to be in the room for many years to come and on all fronts – from medication to food to cosmetics.

Swiss Cloud 9 Begins Importing Cannabis From United States

By Marguerite Arnold
2 Comments

For all the success of the cannabis market in the United States, there are two big issues that still confound the industry because of a lack of federal reform. The first, of course, is national recognition of an industry that still struggles with banking, insurance and selling products across state lines. The other is international trade.

However, it appears that one Colorado-based company, United Cannabis, has now successfully begun to navigate the complex regulatory and standards puzzle, and further, has set up trade and import agreements in both France and Switzerland. Even more interesting? It managed to do the same before the passage of the Farm Bill.

At present they are exporting to Europe from Florida – but the fact that they are exporting in the European direction at all is a feat still unmatched by many other American firms all looking to do the same thing.

Francis Scanlan, founder of Cloud 9 Switzerland

In Switzerland, they are also partnering with an equally intriguing firm called Cloud 9 Switzerland. We sat down with Francis Scanlan, founder of Cloud 9 Switzerland, to talk about what they are doing and how they are doing it- and from the European perspective.

The First Compliant Swiss Chocolate Maker

Cloud 9 is a start-up that is going head to head with the larger Canadian firms in innovative ways and in several directions. That includes the creation of food and beverage products. It also includes pharmaceuticals.

As of January 22, 2019, Cloud 9 also received approval from Swiss authorities to proceed with production of what will be, as Scanlan describes it, “the first EU-compliant hemp chocolate bar.” The hemp they are using contains a full spectrum hemp extract, which does not fall under the rubric of a so-called “novel food” because hemp has been a product in the consumer market here for a long time.

The product will be on Italian shelves as of the end of Q1 this year. Beyond the regulatory approvals necessary to get to market, it also took him about a year to find and convince a chocolate manufacturer in Switzerland to work with him.

Scanlan describes his year and a half old firm as the “value added” between suppliers, manufacturers and distributors. With a background in the corporate food and beverage industry including a stint at Nestlé, he and his team create the formulations and commercialize new products. And they keep a sharp eye on the regulatory bottom line in Europe.

Cloud 9’s corporate mission, Scanlan says, is to improve the quality of life and wellness of their customers. “We are not in the opportunistic marketing business” he says. “We want to create products that really benefit people. Our motto has always been Win-Win for both our partners and consumers.”

Bringing A Glaucoma Drug To The EU Market

However do not mistake Cloud 9 or even Scanlan himself as a kind of cannabis Willy Wonka one hit wonder. Or a firm that is solely operating in the wellness space. They are also now working to bring a Glaucoma drug into the EU where they will begin with medical trials to start the approval process. That said, Scanlan is confident about the success of this product as well. “It has a great dossier in its home country,” he says. “And that has also already caught the interest of doctors in Italy and Switzerland.”

Beyond that, there are other plans in the works, including the introduction of a transdermal patch that delivers cannabinoids through the skin. “The great thing about this kind of approach,” Scanlan says, “is that it allows people to get over their fear of orally ingested drugs. They don’t like the effect, they can just take it off.” He also noted that the patch uses a patented technology that allows a far more efficient delivery mechanism, which creates a time-delayed medication approach and allows for a 90% transfer of cannabinoids.

In other words, this small, privately funded start-up, using innovative approaches to a market Scanlan knows well, is absolutely in the ring and going to market. And further doing so with a European mindset and operating philosophy that incorporates not only hemp exported from the American hemisphere, but is mixed with a large dollop of good old “American” entrepreneurial gusto and inclinations.

Disclaimer: Cloud9 is a sponsor of the MedPayRx pilot to market program in the EU.

New Drug Delivery Mechanisms For Cannabis Products

By Aaron G. Biros
No Comments

Next Frontier Biosciences announced the launch of their new product line, Verra Wellness, in the Colorado market this week. The products are designed with relatively new concepts for the cannabis market, including nasal, sublingual and topical administration.

The company claims their product is the first-ever cannabis nasal mist. Co-founded by biotech executives Marc Graboyes and Dr. Paul Johnson, Ph.D, Next Frontier Biosciences is developing this product line with three formulations, each with a different ratio of THC and CBD. According to a press release, Next Frontier Biosciences is focused on developing cannabis products with these new drug delivery methods, and even offering a microdosing option.

“We believe that leveraging science and research is the key to optimizing product development,” says Dr. Johnson, one of the co-founders. “With the introduction of our Verra Wellness line of products, we are reshaping the cannabis industry by offering trusted products that provide uniform composition, formulation and dosing in highly consistent modes of administration.”

Their topical salves in the Verra Wellness product line are “designed to permeate skin and muscle tissue deeply without penetrating the blood stream or causing psychoactive effects,” reads a press release. In addition to the nasal mist and topical salve, they also launched a sublingual spray.

Marc Graboyes, chief executive officer and co-founder of Next Frontier Biosciences

According to Marc Graboyes, chief executive officer and co-founder of Next Frontier Biosciences, drug delivery mechanisms like a nasal mist are superior to smoking, vaporizing and edible administration. “Nasal administration is among the most effective delivery technologies due to the extensive vascularization and large surface area of the nasal cavity, allowing for rapid uptake and reliable results,” says Graboyes. “The cannabis nasal mist is a novel technology that other brands have not yet tapped into.”

He says this drug delivery mechanism is efficient, fast acting and a healthy alternative to smoking. “For many, nasal delivery is a desirable alternative delivery mechanism because it does not present the health risks associated with smoking,” says Graboyes. “In addition, as previously mentioned, the large surface area of the nasal cavity permits high drug absorption, and the fine-mist sprayer allows for accurate, consistent dosing and an excellent safety profile. Further, nasal delivery avoids first-pass metabolism by the liver, where a large fraction of orally delivered cannabinoids are inactivated.”

While the Verra Wellness product line is available in Colorado starting this week, the company has plans to expand into a number of other states as well. “We are executing a multi-state expansion, with plans to move into the California, Oregon, Washington and Nevada markets in the coming year,” says Graboyes.