Reimagining Corporate Value: What is a Cannabis Firm?

This is not a trite or academic question.  I am talking about leveraging your assets and brand beyond your current way of making money.

For example, some cannabis enterprises like Cookies do a big business in apparel and merchandise in addition to selling weed and operating stores.  

While many pundits will criticize this brand extension strategy it is worthy of consideration for certain MSOs/SSOs.

There are numerous examples of non-cannabis firms pursuing this strategy.

In the real world…

Ikea is the largest furniture retailer in the world and the 6th largest food chain globally, in part because they sell over a billion meatballs annually.

Chick-fil-A plans to launch a streaming service.  They are currently developing a slate of "family-friendly" shows that will launch sometime next year. Interestingly, Airbnb, Walmart and Lyft have their own streaming plans.

A while back, Air Canada discovered that its Aeroplan loyalty program was worth far more than the entire airline (Aeroplan was eventually spun off).

Coming to cannabis

For understandable reasons, it’s hard for most cannabis executives to look beyond the next quarter or capital raise.  Disruptive and ambitious strategists, however, are playing a different game.

I doubt anyone saw Chick-fil-A get into streaming but in hindsight it makes a lot of sense when you consider their limits to growth and challenging market dynamics.  The move is all about harnessing customer data and generating advertising revenue.  For Ikea, the plan was always to leverage store traffic and keep them shopping, longer.   

Uber (cannabis) and Amazon (hemp) are knocking at the cannabis door while Google and Apple already have most of the key pieces in place to compete in our space (I wrote earlier on this).

Here’s a prediction:  A few years from now, some of the most successful weed companies won’t sell much weed.  They will derive most of their market value from non-plant touching assets.

Making it happen

Some will say this fanciful notion and off strategy.  But…

MSOs own real estate that could be monetized in different ways. Many are collecting troves of consumer data from walk-in and online traffic. These consumers are in the sweet spot for marketers: young, hip and spenders. Other firms are creating cool 'lifestyle' brands.

Size is not necessarily the key factor. The smaller but more visionary SERHANT real estate brokerage outflanked its bigger rivals to secure a reality show on Netflix ('Owning Manhattan').

These pivots are complicated.  A strategic thinking exercise should focus on deeply understanding your consumer, uncovering your latent assets and connecting the two via monetizable products & services.

Its strategy development time. Let’s talk about how to reimagine corporate value and monetize some of your assets and brands.

#Ikea #Chick-fil-A #Aeroplan #disruption #strategy #MSOS #data #brands