Under Ed Brown, who served as CEO of Patron Spirits from the early 2000s until last year, a once-humble make of tequila became one of the world\u2019s best-selling and best-known alcohol brands.<\/p>\n
He did this at least in part by making sure that if you knew one brand of tequila, you knew Patron.<\/p>\n
If you lived through the 2000s, you knew and you know: Patron was everywhere. Tom Cruise yelled for it in \u201cVanilla Sky.\u201d It was the call tequila for\u00a0every popular rapper<\/a>\u00a0and oh, did this marketing work. According to data from Bacardi Limited, which bought Patron out in April 2018 and announced Brown\u2019s subsequent retirement from the company last year, under Brown, Patron sales increased from 118,000 cases sold in 2001 to more than 2 million in 2018. All this, despite Patron being both\u00a0kind of expensive<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0just kind of OK<\/a>.<\/p>\n What can Brown do for cannabis? Something pretty good, multi-state operator Surterra is hoping. Atlanta-headquartered\u00a0Surterra<\/a>\u2014 Spanish for \u201cSouthern Earth,\u201d basically \u2014one of the biggest cannabis operators in Florida\u00a0in the process of buying out an operator in Massachusetts<\/a>, in what it says is one of the biggest-ever transactions in American cannabis,\u00a0recently announced<\/a>\u00a0that Brown is joining their team in the vaguely defined role of \u201cexecutive director.\u201d<\/p>\n What he will do for the company isn\u2019t exactly clear \u2014 or at least it isn\u2019t being made clear by the company. Surterra already has a chief executive. That would be Georgia-based Beau Wrigley, scion of the chewing-gum fortune,\u00a0who was named CEO in November<\/a>\u00a0after securing control of enough shares to become chairman of the company\u2019s board last August.<\/p>\n In that time, Surterra expanded from 14 dispensary locations to at least 24,\u00a0with the latest opening its doors in Miami in May<\/a>. The company also claims operations in Texas and Nevada as well as Florida and the pending deal in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n But more important than its expanding footprint, in all likelihood, is the company\u2019s brand cachet. And here\u2019s where Brown fits in.<\/p>\n Surterra is also the commercial power behind \u201cCoral Reefer,\u201d the Jimmy Buffet-licensed cannabis brand. Putting cannabis in a celebrity\u2019s hand (and, hopefully, their lyrics) is what worked for Brown at Patron, and it\u2019s exactly what built Cookies, and whatever else San Francisco-based rapper and\u00a0cannabis-adjacent marketing prodigy Berner touches into successful brands<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to a company press release, Brown used some of his Patron fortune to invest in Surterra. How much of Surterra he owns, the company isn\u2019t saying;\u00a0disclosure forms filed with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission<\/a>\u00a0say only that the company sold $165 million worth of exempt securities last year.<\/p>\n The obvious question, then, is whether Brown can help Wrigley do for Surterra what he did for Patron. The problem with this is that putting booze in the hands and mouths of rappers and actors doesn\u2019t exactly fit with what Wrigley has been doing with Surterra so far.<\/p>\n Wrigley appeared at a cannabis-related \u201cthought leaders\u201d event in April,\u00a0where he beat on the same predictable drum<\/a>\u00a0every cannabis CEO brings to every public event. He called for federal reform and he said that cannabis is going to become the next-biggest wellness product in America. That\u2019s all well and good if you\u2019re playing cannabis-industry CEO bingo \u2014 as soon as they say \u201cparadigm shift,\u201d you win! \u2014 but it isn\u2019t exactly going to differentiate your brand from everyone else selling weed in exactly the same way. And \u201cthis is a wellness product\u201d doesn\u2019t appear to be how Colorado cannabis companies sold $1.6 billion worth of the stuff last year. People go to Colorado to buy cannabis to get high, after all.<\/p>\n No, Brown\u2019s secret move is product placement. Under Brown, Coral Reefer will likely appear wherever he can put it. Under Brown, there will likely be other similar Surterra-controlled brands. And if there\u2019s a \u201cVanilla Sky\u201d sequel, do not be shocked if Tom Cruise or whomever is cast in the role starts screaming for a Surterra-brand of weed. Vida? Bienestar? Salud? Life, wellness, and health in Spanish are all available, and squarely within this operation\u2019s established wheelhouse.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0how do you feel about alcohol executives getting into the cannabis industry?\u00a0<\/p>\n The post Former Patron CEO Joins Florida Medical Marijuana Giant<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Under Ed Brown, who served as CEO of Patron Spirits from the early 2000s until last year, a once-humble make of tequila became one of the world\u2019s best-selling and best-known alcohol brands. He did this at least in part by making sure that if you knew one brand of tequila,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,170,388,687,4552,139,9380,10400],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36187,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36186\/revisions\/36187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nRead More: Former Patron CEO Joins Florida Medical Marijuana Giant<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"