Chris Znerold Product + Brand Systems · AI Design Engineering

Cannabis for Canadians

Chief Marketing Officer at Garden Variety, 2019

Strategy:

The province allows the sale and restricts the promotion, so the brand had to be built inside the store. The print says 'This is not a cannabis ad', and every word was true.

Design:

The Sparwolf, half sparrow and half wolf, is the mark. Stores built like a cafe around the flower bar, packaging, merch, and the print run Advertising Age called creatively noteworthy.

Leadership:

The Manitoba half of the same CMO seat as Native Roots. We partnered with a First Nation as co-owner of the licence and operation, opened three stores, and it was sold to Tokyo Smoke.

Brand system

Drawn at tin size.

Everything here had to work at tin size first. The wordmark, the botanical pattern and the leaf palette were drawn for the package, then scaled up to the store and the print.

The wordmark sheet: garden variety in a serif beside the line-drawn bird, the Anything But lockup, and the botanical roundel with the g v monogram
Wordmark and markTwo lockups and the bird.
Cards printed with the botanical pattern in teal, the monogram at the centre
Botanical patternLine work in teal.
Three cream tins in a row, each with the wordmark and a different botanical pattern, their lids above
Tin labelsThree tins, one system.
A dried cannabis leaf on a coral-to-rose gradient
Colour, off the leafCoral to rose.
A stand-up pouch in cream with the pattern in gold and the line gettin' after it
The pouchPackaging, gettin’ after it.
The store brochure open to the map page, the This is not a Cannabis ad panel on the facing page
The brochurePrint, the map inside.

Manitoba lets you sell cannabis and mostly forbids you from advertising it.

Product in Hand

Not a cannabis ad.

A cream sheet, one object in the middle, a pine tree or a baguette, and the line under it. The Sparwolf sits small at the foot. The store keeps the same restraint: wood and open shelves.

The print ad: a pine tree on a cream sheet under the line This is not a Cannabis ad, the Sparwolf small at the foot
The Advertising Age spread on the campaign, with the pine tree and baguette ads reproduced
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Product in Life

A cafe that sells cannabis.

A first-timer in Manitoba walks into a room that looks like a cafe, leans on the flower bar and asks what the difference between two jars is. Nobody treats the question, or the person, like a problem.

A customer being shown two jars at the wooden counter, the Sparwolf on the wall behind
Posters01/15
Garden Variety poster 1 of 15
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Render, not built

Product in Culture

Legal, and unadvertised.

A province can legalize a product and still forbid most ways of telling anyone. That moves the brand off the billboard and into the store, onto the shelf and the counter. In cannabis the store is the media plan.

The Garden Variety storefront at sunset, the wordmark lit over the glass front
0Stores

Built on the Colorado system, then sold to Tokyo Smoke.

Position:

Chief Marketing Officer at Garden Variety

Services:

Research, Design, Management

Partner:

Garden Variety

Status:

Launched, 2019