The crux of cannabis marketing right now is reaching a different audience than it has in the past. “No disrespect to the hippies and the hairy armpits and all that, but that’s not me,” says pot entrepreneur and branding expert Cheryl Shuman, who landed on the cover of Adweek as the first pot marketer. The peppy blond from Beverly Hills adds, “I don’t want to be associated with pot’s negative image. I am a highly functioning, corporate woman who runs a multimillion-dollar company, and I was looking at all these great women in my social circle, like Cameron Diaz and Fergie, and everybody loves marijuana. Why should we have to be in the closet?”
She’s trying to change weed’s image with her Beverly Hills Cannabis Club, which sells “designer” pot targeted to women that runs for $700 an ounce and comes wrapped in gold foil. To go with it, she’s created a range of $15,000 pavé diamond vaporizers (“why not make it a luxury fashion accessory?”), plus she’s got a series of 420-friendly, Soho House-style hotels and a Stiletto Stoner clothing line in the works. She must be doing something right—she’s about to take her company public, and it’s currently valued at over $1 billion.
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