Building a Successful National Cannabis Brand - Branding Bud Live - Episode 3
THE SUMMARY
Flavor, form and function are just the tip of the iceberg. We sat down with the Ben Gaines, Director of Marketing at WYLD - the nation's biggest edibles brand. Find out how they parlayed the wilderness and lifestyle culture of Oregon into a memorable brand experience for the entire U.S.
THE CO-HOSTS
David Paleschuck, Adriana Hemans
THE SPECIAL GUEST
Ben Gaines, Director of Marketing, Wyld
THE FULL TRANSCRIPT
David Paleschuck
Greetings and welcome to Episode #3 of Branding Bud Live. The weekly live stream that's 100% THC | 0% WTF. I'm David Paleschuck, founder of the Branding Bud Consulting Group, and author of "Branding Bud: The Commercialization of Cannabis", the first book on cannabis branding. I'm joined by my co-host, Adriana Hemans, a consumer insights and cannabis expert. Hi Adriana. How are you?
Adriana Hemans
Hey, David. If you're just joining us, for the first time, our show is highly interactive. So please feel free to drop your comments or questions in the chat. It doesn't have to be always with our interactive game, if you just want to tell us what you're up to today or what your weekend plans are, please feel free. It's about networking and building community. So excited to be here.
David Paleschuck
I'm super excited about guest today. We have Benjamin Gaines, the Director of Marketing at Wyld. Wyld is one of the best-known cannabis edible companies in the country. They're in multiple states, and known for their unique flavors, which create an interesting and modern sort of cake on gummies and candies, but yet there's something familiar and comfortable about their packaging as well. We'll talk to Ben about the gummies that are really off the charts right now, across the country. So let's, let's welcome Ben Gaines.
Adriana Hemans
Let's do it. Hey, Ben. Welcome.
Ben Gaines
Yeah, thanks for having me. Wonderful to be here.
Adriana Hemans
We're super excited to talk to you super appreciate the time, I know that you must be incredibly busy with everything you have going on over at Wyld and we'll get into a little bit about a new brand that you're launching in a minute. But just to kick us off. Let's learn about you a little bit. What are you passionate about? What's your story, Ben?
Ben Gaines
My story is pretty diverse and varied background, I come from Los Angeles in my adult lifetime and moved up to Portland about 11 years ago. I've been working in my career with premium brands a lot, usually in an independent business environment and working closely with owners focused on the consumer and you know, the quality experience that we can build through retail and other touch points. And here in Oregon, most recently, I was working with an outdoor lifestyle brand called polar, prior to Wyld got the opportunity to come over to Wyld as they launched their Wyld CBD brand ended up being a director of operations as we scaled that brand nationally, and built out gummy and beverage line for the first time in the CBD space. And now have transitioned into director of marketing role here at Wyld, which is super fun, very excited to work and support the work of very talented team here who is working on brand operations for you know, America's largest edibles brand. So it's exciting stuff. When I'm not working, I like to, you know, recharge in solitude, experience, silence, go outside, walk in the woods garden, things like that. So I tend to turn it off and, and walk away, you know, in my off time, and do things that Oregonians like to do, which is get muddy, and wet, grow little moss behind your ears, that kind of thing.
David Paleschuck
So the company is based, based in Oregon, you take advantage of that, that's great.
Ben Gaines
Yeah, it's a very common attribute. People here at Wyld HQ love the outdoors, you know, a lot of our product inspiration comes from love of nature, and really is reflected in some of our branding, that iconic, you know, kind of feeling that you get when you're connecting with the natural environment, and connected to things that, you know, replenish you as a person. And we find that a lot in our in our surroundings up here.
David Paleschuck
That's awesome. I mean, passion is really everything, you know, just to touch upon something quickly, which I wasn't aware of. It's very rare to see, to see an operations person also be a marketing person, you know, one operations is usually really grounded in, in reality and getting product developed and made and shipped and, and all the logistics, whereas marketing is obviously more creative. So in reality, no, I didn't say that. I'm saying there's probably a little more opportunity for, for creativity in marketing than there is in OPS, although, although I would love you, I'm sure there's operations, operations, people saying no, there's plenty of creativity and efficiency and in ops, too, but would you just touch upon that, you know, sort of working both roles and sort of seeing that balance?
Ben Gaines
Yeah, happy to, I think it's safe to say that I've been a jack of all trades. And then I've worked a lot of different roles. This is my fourth director role in two companies in six years. So there's just been a lot of moving around and addressing business needs. As I pursued, you know, the best opportunities within the environments that I was acting in. If we were to zoom out and you know, go back to before Wyld, working at polar was a really great experience to be able to work on brand operations and grow into that, you know, working on e-commerce, consumer-facing sales, wholesale, and then eventually really trying to drive a successful, you know, startup experience for that brand. There's a lot of nuts and bolts that go into how a brand gets communicated, how it gets executed on time, how it goes to market all of those things. And I started to learn those things that polar coming over to Wyld. This company is full of people who came from a different place and ended up in the place that they are and took the bull by the horns and really, you know, embrace the opportunities. And we're an operations first company we manufacture. We have a bunch of facilities and a bunch of states and a bunch of people doing things with their hands and their bodies. And so a lot of our DNA is really built around that. If we fast forward, you know, past my time in the manufacturing wing in this company, the opportunity existed to really build out the Department of Marketing within Wyld as a new experience. There were there were some small headcount. And there had always been some support here internally, but we really hadn't built out the full kind of brand Operations Wing.
So partnering with our CMO and founder Chris Joseph, and with the blessing of their and more CEO, I got the opportunity to come into a different director role and really focus on operationalizing brand as a function of expansion. And when we talk about what it takes to execute marketing and go to market as quickly as we are in as many places as we are. And skew assortment additions, those are all operational problems and requires a ton of project management and interconnectivity with people who are very business minded, and on a timeline and budget and all the functional things. So, whereas people like to think of marketing as, as the creative wing, and we certainly do a lot of that, and we're, you know, very inspired by, you know, the work that we do on the Wyld brand. We're also down to brass tacks very lean, and very focused on how we hit goal and how we do more with less as an independent brand. I think the only one of the few independent cannabis brands at our scale, we really have to be operationally excellent in order to achieve what we're doing.
Adriana Hemans
Thanks for that insight into how your organization is structured and the viewpoint I think that's really helpful for people as they're like, considering how to scale up or like how to approach opera operationalizing, the brand as you put it so eloquently, I just want to call out a comment from Jeremy Smith, who said, wearing my Wyld hat while working on my Canadian federal petition, love Wyld. Thank you, Jeremy.
Ben Gaines
Wonderful, thanks for the support.
David Paleschuck
I want to call out, you call yourself independent, you certainly didn't use MSO, or multi state operator. And I think it's, it's really interesting, too. And I understand why based on the history of the company. But it's really interesting to see the difference in the nuance between “independent cannabis manufacturer in many states” versus a “multi-state operator”.
Ben Gaines
We've scaled into multi state operation. And that's an appropriate kind of nomenclature for what we're doing, when we really look at how that's applied in our industry typically refers to companies that have taken significant investment, have a board are traded in on, you know, that level. And that's just not us. So it's important that we feature our independence as a strength because that has really enabled us to do the things that we're doing have strong control, and execute, you know, brand and product consistency across a wide variety of markets and touch points, and not have to worry too much about too many cooks in the kitchen as far as our ideology and our strategic approach.
David Paleschuck
Yeah, that's great. And thanks for calling that out. I think that's important to a lot of people today. Well, you know, because they're so passionate about the industry. And because we have such a passionate, you know, audience here, we always like to have audience interactivity.
So with that, we're going to do something a little fun, a little a little wacky, which we always try to do at least. So we have something every week where we have a little game this week's game is it's called stream your brain of course, we're going to talk about cannabis strains, which some people might call cultivars or have other words for them, but we're having fun. We're not getting politically correct right now with the words we're choosing. Cultivar right didn't rhyme with brain, so we went with “Strain Your Brain”
That said, let's jump into it. We've got a fun question. We're going ask the audience to participate. And then Ben, we’ll ask you to chime in, with the last call and let's see where everybody so that said, let's jump into it. Alright, “Strain Your Brain” Which one of these strain names is fake?
A. Purple Panty Dropper
B. Don't stop.
C. Alaskan Thunder F*ck, or
D. Stankasaurus.
Adriana Hemans
Three are real and one is fake. So take your guests on which one is fake and drop it in the comments. That's right.
David Paleschuck
Let's see how many cannabis business people know their strains (cultivars).
Adriana Hemans
We can call it Alaskan thunder fork. If we want to not have to spell out the word.
David Paleschuck
I didn't want to get us booted from our live stream I don't know you know we're a boundaries are relative to the words we choose. So any anyone from the audience want to participate? You can the right side in the chat. Again,
A. Purple Panty Dropper
B. Don't stop.
C. Alaskan thunder, F*ck, or
D. Stankasaurus.
Ben Gaines
You know, I'm watching the crowd here and trusting in their deep, deep knowledge of what's out there, what flowers got going on? And I'm going to go with B. “Don’t Stop”.
David Paleschuck
Okay. All right. Alright,
Adriana Hemans
Let's reveal the answer. And hey, Cheryl from she says hello from SweetLeaf genetics and beautiful Mount Shasta. Thanks for joining us.
David Paleschuck
All right, let's see what the answer is. The answer is B. “Don't Stop”. You would think that would be a strain to for sure you know that. The euphoria you want or the sleep you're getting? Or whatever the benefit, is you? You want it to continue, it seems, seems to make sense to me. Thanks. Well. Yes. Well, I hope that was as good for you as it was for me, everybody. That was it was quite enjoyable. Now that we're warmed up.
Adriana Hemans
Now that we’re warmed up, don’t forget to check out David’s book, “Branding Bud, The Commercialization of Cannabis”, the bestselling book in two (2) categories (“Branding & Logo Design” and “Green Business”) on Amazon. You can find out more and purchase the book here:
https://www.amazon.com/Branding-Bud-Commercialization-David-Paleschuck/dp/1936807513
David Paleschuck
Let's get back to the show. Shall we?
All right, you know, so then let's jump in and really talk about Wyld. Wyld is in several states, as we spoke earlier, to be specific, you know, Oregon is this year, your home base and originating state, you're in California, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, and in Michigan. And so, you know, when I think about that, and the various rules and regulations that you need to sort of transcend or transcend, but incorporate and you know, that differ your brand from state to state? How do you keep that brand consistent from state to state? Can you talk about that?
Ben Gaines
Yeah, sure, happy to, I would add, you know, a few states to that list, we, you know, have recently gone into Oklahoma, and we're in Canada as well. So that really like opens up the conversation in terms of complexity and how we address it. The standard that we have set as far as our operational model is to go in and as much as possible on our operations, from production through distribution. So the number one way that we maintain consistency is to employ staff and our own facilities to operate and execute on the same playbook everywhere we go, same kitchen, you know, same, same recipes, same ingredient, base, etc. In the background, we've got a huge team of people working specifically on expansion and collaborating. We have a director of expansion operations, our supply chain team is always looking 18 to 36 months ahead, it's like you know, what's coming? What's going on in the world where supply chain shifting, how are things happening in the world that can impact the natural ingredients that we incorporate in our products. And it takes a small army really to like, look ahead and enable that consistency, once we get into market, right? Aside from all the complexity of compliance, and you know, like the packaging design components, and what that means and every individual market, at the end of the day, we really want the gummy to be the same from region to region. And insofar as it is possible. We've, we've really done well at that. almost across the board, we have consistent potency and dosing in our gummies in America, slightly different in Canada in terms of the maximum potency per piece and things like that. But overall, we we've been remarkably successful at designing a product that can be made in a repetitious way at scale, across a variety of facilities and then really done well with our teams, which are highly be trained and highly motivated, and leaning on to all of the food science and food safety and quality employees that Wyld brings into each of those facilities to maintain that quality?
David Paleschuck
Well, I have a quick, quick question. You know, just in terms of dosing, so I would say, over time, you know, because people were focused on THC levels, they look for the highest dosage. So, when a company moves into different states, they're, they're really changing that dosing. So for example, if you're in Massachusetts, the dose per serve, or a serving dose is five milligrams, whereas in Washington state, it's 10. Whereas in some of the other medical states, it's way higher. So are you taking the approach similar? There, I say, like can which, you know, it's a micro dose, and they keep it uniform across all of the states, rather than having various doses as they work through the different states? Yes,
Ben Gaines
I think, you know, it's important to point out that while does meet the market, where it's at in certain cases, so in a medical environment, we do have some higher dose products. And we'll go where potency is allowable, but also where the consumer supports. So if we see a SKU, that's a, you know, 1000 milligrams per package and 20 pieces or something like that, that's, that's what they need. That's what they want for that medical customer, we're certainly there to provide that our core lineup really is those 10 milligram per piece, you know, gummies, the serving size can vary based on regulation, whether that's a half piece or you know, something more than that. But in general, what we find is, the way that we are able to match consumer use and need is that the gummy is really very well made, its homogenous, and its potency, and it's able to be portioned in a way that the consumer can count on. So for instance, in my house, I'm very much a 2.5 milligram guy on a weeknight, you know, I kind of want to like, take the edge off and enjoy myself while I watch a TV show right before I fall asleep. But I don't want to wake up with any kind of hangover like, you know, fuzziness. So I won't go a lot further than that. So that might cut my gummy in half or a quarter, you know, whatever it is, I can definitely go further, and I can definitely go less. And I can do that reliably, because the gummy is going to be kind of the same in all in all areas. And it's easy to portion out. So that's one of the success stories of Wyld. As far as matching consumer use, we do definitely have consumers that are going to take higher dosing, we do definitely have a lot of consumers who find it very welcoming, that they're stairsteps. Within Wyld, we have a few SKUs that or lower potency, we have quite a few that are kind of maxing out on the state allowable per piece or per serving, and providing that value to the consumers a lot of what Wyld does, we're really focused on making sure that the price point and value proposition is strong. So that does mean that like where potency is allowable, we're likely to provide that. But the homogeneity and the repeatability of you know, scale in terms of portioning really makes it an approachable product from almost any dosing scenario.
Adriana Hemans
Since we're talking about approachability, and the experience that the end user is having, I think this is a good time to show to talk about the design and talk about packaging itself and how people you know potentially are drawn to products based on you know, what, what it looks like on the outside what promise you're sort of showcasing to lure them in?
Ben Gaines
Yeah, a lot of people will comment on the package as one of the first memories that they have of the brand. Seeing it in store, it creates interest. It is unique, we're proud of the way that this package presents as something that stands out from the crowd. In terms of you know, the why behind this, we really wanted a very small package something that's very efficient and enables us to, you know, produce quality also approachability in terms of price, we didn't really want to market this as a very upscale upmarket product, it's more of that premium middle. So the complexity of the design of the package communicates you know, thoughtfulness and, and that we care about this touchpoint the multifaceted aspect of the package really gives us a lot of opportunities to do both branding and compliance and education. They're all those flaps and really, you know, have an experience with the package. And the two touch points of you know, a box on the outside and a DRAM on the inside. And most of our regions really provides a lot of interaction and engagement with consumers which we're proud of and, and again, you know, usually as part of the story, the history on a personal level of what people have to say about why Wyld is something that they a pinup connect with
David Paleschuck
I remember seeing the Wyld box got, I want to say, eight to 10 years ago, perhaps in Portland for quite some time ago, I'm not quite sure how long ago was but quite some time ago and in it, it just always stood out the box.
David Paleschuck
I see that. We do have a question up here. Let me throw this out. So question for Ben, has your company implemented GMP and OSHA standards which received give your workers and customers?
Adriana Hemans
Thanks, Farmer Tom, for your question.
Ben Gaines
Yeah, that's, that's a great one and really happy to answer you know, on behalf of the entire operations and facilities teams that we have, from the beginning set a really high standard for our facilities, our state employees’ safety, and our operational safety, as well as the quality and efficacy of our products from like a food safety standpoint. So you heard me say safety like five times there, it's a big part of what we do. We operate an FDA registered facility on our CBD line and all of our THC facilities operate with GMP in place. And again, we have a full time staff of, you know, food safety and quality team that's in our facilities on a regular basis, training and implementing policy to test and measure our success rate with those policies. So it's a very strong program. And it's something that we view as critical to our success, not only because we really care about, you know, being successful with our customers and providing something that's safe for them. But also, this is a plan to withstand federal legalization, and be ready for higher regulation and higher standards in the industry at large.
Adriana Hemans
Very cool, I just want to call it another comment we have here from Chrisoula. I'm sorry, if I butchered your name. Wyld was my introduction to the CBD market years ago in Florida, and then the subsequent cannabis market in Arizona, and it was definitely the packaging and labeling – and everything tastes great. Thank you for your comment.
David Paleschuck
Yeah, thank you for that. And just, you know, just to come back full circle, your response was really amazing. The five safeties you threw out, but what's great about that is, you're an ops guy, too. And you can speak to that, right. So you really know the company. And, and this really speaks to the heart of what we're trying to get at today. Right, which is like, what does it take to build a national cannabis brand? You know, like, what are those things you need to be thinking about not only the beautiful packaging, not only the education, educating of your consumers, but also, how do I make this stuff? How do I make it consistently? How is it, you know, homogeneous across individual batches, and across everything else? So it's really interesting, sort of see that, you know, how that shakes out. So we know that you've recently or are just introducing a new brand. Would you talk us through that? A little bit?
Ben Gaines
Yeah, absolutely. So whereas Wyld has been focused really on a lot of territorial expansion over the last, you know, six years and building out its success in North America, this has been the first opportunity for us to focus on expanding our portfolio. Beyond that, that Wyld and Wyld CBD line. So good tide is a solventless hash rosin edible, it's made with real fruit, tropical flavors. So very similar to the Wyld, you know, portfolio as far as like, you know, quality of ingredients and our approach. It is a vegan formulation. So the texture is a little bit different, but very, very delectable and delicious, as you might expect from a Wyld product, the flavor leads the aromas outstanding. And I'm really excited to say that, like our food science and product development team knocked it out of the park with these did an excellent job in combining the flavor and aroma of that solventless hash rosin with these tropical flavors to create a really nice balance. So it's something for everybody, right, you get that that really positive, you know, fruit flavor and aroma and it's super enjoyable. You get the solventless hash rosin experience, which is rich with terpenes. And naturally occurring cannabinoids from straight from the plant. And it starts it starts to, you know, tell more of the story of how we do what we do, which is, you know, bring real high quality ingredients into the market and present an opportunity for those people who found something missing when it's something a little bit more straight from the plant a little bit more experiential in terms of the strain, specificity and terpenes experience that a lot of people really focus on and is emerging as Just like a, you know, the strong trend in cannabis edibles, we're proud to put this on the shelf in Oregon, Colorado and California, Oregon stores are starting to see this product show up in market this week. And we'll be seeing deliveries go into California and Colorado starting next week.
Adriana Hemans
That's awesome. And it's exciting to be able to show on this show on branding, but live a new product before a lot of folks have even had an opportunity to see it yet. So I also wanted to call out a question from one of our audience members question from Germany. And this is for you, Ben. How important is sustainability in the production and packaging process for being successful at the point of sale? How aware is the average consumer in the US about that? If you want to take the first part, I will take an attempt at the second part. Sure.
Ben Gaines
Absolutely. This is great. Thank you for bringing that up. I completely whiffed on one of the main, you know, points of pride with our good type package, which is that this is a fully compostable and recyclable package. It's not the norm for cannabis brands to have a compostable package. In fact, single use plastic is a known defect and flaw in the supply chain for our industry. There's a lot a lot a lot of pollution going into the environment through consumption of cannabis. So as an organization, we've been focused on sustainability, as we've been able to reinvest some of our you know, our capital into projects like this, which is to develop a wholly unique supply chain items, which aren't on the shelf aren't available as stock and introduce a plastic-free package into the market. Beyond that, we're also a Climate Neutral certified brand. In both Wyld and good tide. We are the first Climate Neutral certified cannabis brand. And we're proud of that we were carbon neutral before that, but you know, took the additional steps to achieve that Climate Neutral Certification. And it's an ongoing process, we really have to work hard to continuously measure, offset and reduce our carbon emissions. And we have, you know, pretty lofty goals in terms of where we headed next in terms of making sure that Wyld is always on the leading edge of sustainability.
Adriana Hemans
So to answer your question, on the second piece, I came from the world of consumer insights and data and recalling a lot of the surveys that we did and the research that we did with consumers in the US, it ranged with my memory serving me between 25 to 35%, said that sustainable packaging was something that was part of how they made their purchasing decisions. I think it was like top three or top five considerations. I'm also curious to know, and maybe our listener would know, what is the awareness level like in Germany? Is it you know, more of a concern for German consumers curious? Feel free to answer me have an answer.
David Paleschuck
Yeah, I would say generally speaking, Europeans are probably more worried sustainable, conscious than Americans or, but certainly I think sustainability recyclability, I think are a really big issues in the industry. And I think cannabis consumers are, are concerned about that. You know, I've seen, I've seen products, or companies come back in after they put out non-recyclable products with containers to collect their products. You know, after a year, there have been complaints and things like that. So there's a lot of backtracking where there was a decent industry, but I think it's great that there's a push now toward sustainability. And, you know, Ben, I'm curious, and we're hoping for a German compadres to follow up with the response. But, you know, while we're waiting quickly, you know, I'd like to talk about, you know, the choice of the flavors, you know, versus the effects, you know, selection of flavor versus effect. I know that for example, Wyld has a raspberry sativa you know, so how do you pair up a flavor with the feeling you know, would you talk about that and even looking at the slide now, you know, there's the mangoes of guava pineapple, which certainly seems more for lack of a better word, Caribbean than the Pacific Northwest vibe I get from the Wyld. Can you talk about how flavor and brand aura you know, sort of work together to create an experience?
Ben Gaines
Yeah, absolutely. I think So, the number one thing to understand is, you know, when we featured raspberry as our sativa SKU that was one of our first products to go to market and berries are huge experience up here in the Northwest and just part of our local culture. And marionberry being that that other core products on the indica side, you know, is that kind of like, you know, hot and cold, red and you know, deeper colors, I think a lot of the mood comes from color, quite frankly, when we consider like those two options. There are terpenes present and fruit and vegetables. And some of those can be synergistic in ways that are meaningful to us when we are more thinking about how terpenes interact with the product and flavor. So when we look at mango, being a myrcene, rich, you know, fruit and positioning that as more of our indica dominant experience on the good side, that felt like a natural pairing that made sense to us. In general, you know, I can't tell you the origin story of raspberry was like, this is the fruit that makes me feel like dancing or anything like that. I do think it was like, Hey, we're going to launch with these three, you know, products that are berries, you know, Huckleberry sitting in the middle being very unique and kind of a standout flavor. And really just looking at those as the main opportunities when we went to market with those THC only skews, I will say that like as we you know, continue to develop new flavors. And we talk about what position in market next. It's mostly about what we're excited about what tastes amazing what continues the tradition of Wyld being some of the best tasting candy, you know, bar none, not even just cannabis edibles. But like best tasting candy on the planet. So our food science product development team are very much focused on keeping a, you know, a base of opportunities, they're always exploring juice, juice, and, you know, supply chain flavoring, working with our flavor house for natural flavoring that that really boosts us into that next tier of performance in terms of, you know, standing apart from the competition and having an amazing flavor experience built in alongside that amazing cannabinoid impact.
Adriana Hemans
super interesting. I'm excited to see what new flavors you'll come up with next. I definitely also think that raspberry is one of the most energetic combinations you can have. Like it's almost the flavor version of our opening song. While we have this slide deck up, let's go into our next step. Because you know, we had to get a little business see on you here, talking about flavors, but we're going to switch gears a little bit and talk just about gummies in general. They're a very hot market right now. They're really just exploding in popularity and growth. But exactly how much?
This stat is from Headset. In 2021, sales of infused gummies accounted for what % of edibles sales in these state markets: CA, CO, MI, NV, OR, WA?
A. 40%
B. 55%
C. 70%
D. 85%
David Paleschuck
Right and it's interesting, you know, to think about, I mean, obviously edibles but within edibles they're the various form factors and so, you know, gummies have taken off and, you know, much like CBD, the cannabinoid of the poster child for cannabinoids, you know, gummies are very much the same thing for work or perhaps are the same thing for edibles. Well, we have we have three C's, so that's 70% Wow, that that would be interesting if gummies are really that that high. Ben, do you have any thoughts on that?
Ben Gaines
I think the audience knows their stuff. I'm going to go with C as well.
David Paleschuck
Adriana, did you expect it to be that high? Or you're rolling with the audience?
Adriana Hemans
I think it's interesting to just think about how popular gummies are overall and I think some of this is driven by what we're seeing outside of the cannabis market with vitamin gummies calcium gummies. I think that this is one example of how food trends and wellness trends are informing what happens inside the cannabis industry and Yes, our audience is very knowledgeable. We have three votes for C, one vote for B and one vote for D. Should we reveal the answer?
David Paleschuck
We should!
Adriana Hemans
Nice, new percent. Wow. 70%? Yeah.
David Paleschuck
Pretty amazing. Well, so. So I have a follow-up question. And maybe you just touched upon it, Adriana. But, you know, Ben White have, you know, gummies out performed. Other form factors like chocolate, like brownies, like, you know, all the other things that are out on the market?
Ben Gaines
I think there are a number of factors that have contributed to this, I think that it's one of the format's that you can, you can make in a diverse, you know, kind of array of flavors while maintaining a consistent matrix for the consumer to experience cannabis. And I think that going further on that I've heard commentary, and I think some of it came from within our company that the way that gummies are cooked and, you know, really, you know, make cannabis extracts available to the body is arguably superior. And that the performance is really what's driving consumer adoption of these products. It's not necessarily that they would rather eat a gummy than a brownie. Maybe at the end of the day, I would rather eat a brownie than a gummy on an average basis. But would those things perform the same way? Would they give me the best possible use? And an impact? Right, so I think for a lot of reasons, gummies are leading the pack, but one of them certainly is that, you know, gummies really are a strong option for quick hit, without consuming a lot of calories, you can get a lot of, you know, various flavors in there. And, and they seem to work really well for the consumer on many levels.
David Paleschuck
Could you talk about, you know, the vegan gluten-free components, or all the other things that sort of come along with that to make it a healthier product?
Ben Gaines
You know, at Wyld and, and more, so maybe with Wyld CBD, you know, we have definitely been focused on a low calorie, you know, option and understanding that not everybody wants to chow down on a big cookie in order to get their dose. And that's not a wellness approach, right. So when we, when we go into, you know, our product formulation, we're very focused on a 10 calorie per piece or less experience. And that's achievable in almost every case where we're not doing like higher dose products, which are bigger, bigger gummies. And that, you know, opens up the opportunity for people who do have special needs beyond just like wanting to have the cannabis impact, or they can, you know, incorporate the gummy into their lifestyle, whatever that may be with minimal risk. In terms of you know, vegan or not vegan, we offer both formulations across our brands. And there are arguments for both, you know, in terms of a gelatin gummy, there's a lot of great texture, and melt resistance. And the factors like that. Really nice mouthfeel and to the vegan gummies are also really excellent, and have high melt resistance. But for some people that's really a focus of theirs is to is to not incorporate animal or animal byproducts in their diet, and we need to be available for those as well. Both are really great options. We're proud to present both and be you know, you know, arguably best in class in both.
Adriana Hemans
It's cool to hear your perspective as someone who is deeply embedded in marketing, of course, and really understands the lifestyle consumer, the wellness consumer. So final question for you, Ben, when you're not out getting muddy or mossy in the wilderness, where can people reach you?
Ben Gaines
Yeah, you know, I am, as I mentioned, you know, recharging unsalted butter, you know, I'm on, on LinkedIn, you can chase me down there. Obviously, we're always listening in our customer service and contact channels online. We have a strong team there. And I am highly involved in that process. So if you're giving us a shout, you know, good or bad. I'm here for that process as well. And yeah, in general, you know, holler at me, and, yeah, it's been enjoyable to engage with the audience here today. Hope you guys have enjoyed it as well.
David Paleschuck
Absolutely. Thank you, Ben. We really appreciate your time. We appreciate what you do. We appreciate your brand as well. So thank you, keep doing what you're doing.
Ben Gaines
Thanks so much. Right on.
Adriana Hemans
Once again, don’t forget to check out David’s book, “Branding Bud, The Commercialization of Cannabis”, the bestselling book in two (2) categories (“Branding & Logo Design” and “Green Business”) on Amazon. You can find out more and purchase the book here:
https://www.amazon.com/Branding-Bud-Commercialization-David-Paleschuck/dp/1936807513
David Paleschuck
Thanks. Wow. All right. Well, that was pretty amazing. I'm glad everybody learned about Wyld and about your new brand Good Tides. Thank you, Ben.
Well, that’s our show for today. We’ll be back again next Thursday at 11a PST / 2p EST. where we’ll be previewing MJBizCon - the biggest cannabis event of the year - happening November 16th-18th in Las Vegas. We’ll be chatting with industry veteran, James Zachodni, cofounder of Dope Magazine and Farechild events, throwers of the hottest ticket in town for almost every major cannabis event. We’re looking forward to chatting with him about making the most out of what is guaranteed to be a whirlwind week coming up in Vegas.
Adriana Hemans
Please follow our page for a chance to win an autographed copy of David's bestselling book, “Branding Bud: The Commercialization of Cannabis”. If you follow us between now and November 27th (and you reside in the US) you're entered to win.
If you missed us, watch us on LinkedIn, or on our Branding Bud Live YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@brandingbudlive). Find out more about our consulting services at (https://www.brandingbud.com). Thanks, everybody.
Have a great rest of your day. Bye!
