Jennifer Whetzel, Founder & CEO, Ladyjane Branding
Jennifer Whetzel is a marketing professional and founder of Ladyjane Branding. For over 25 years, Whetzel has been branding, advertising, marketing, strategizing and researching for Fortune 500 companies and B2B/B2C small businesses. After finding significant symptom relief in medical cannabis and emotional support from community members, she was inspired to use her professional expertise to help businesses in the cannabis industry develop smart, strategic and consistent brands that create deep connections with consumers. Jennifer’s signature creations, Ladyjane’s Archetypal Segmentation Model, Brand & Consumer Personality Quizzes and Two-Hour Brand Makeover all empower entrepreneurs in the industry to take their brand strategies into their own hands to stand out and sell more.
https://ladyjanebranding.com/
https://womenincannabis.study/
https://www.instagram.com/ladyjanebranding/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferwhetzel/
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Thinking Outside the Bud where we speak with entrepreneurs investors thought leaders researchers advocates and policymakers who are finding new and exciting ways for cannabis to positively impact business society and culture. And now, here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:30] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc. Award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For details on the program visit Eckfeldt.com/thrive. That's E C K F E L D T.com/thrive.
[00:01:06] Welcome everyone. This is Thinking Outside the Bud. I’m Bruce Eckfeldt, I'm your host and our guest today is Jennifer Whetzel. She is founder of Ladyjane Branding. We're gonna talk to her about cannabis. We're gonna talk about branding. We're gonna talk about how companies are approaching the whole brand development brand strategy. Fascinating topic. I think that developing brands and cannabis is hugely important as this industry grows, as we get new consumers, new segments of audience, of customers, of people using cannabis and participating in the cannabis economy. So I'm excited for that. I think there are a lot of interesting and dynamic things going on in this world in terms of branding cannabis. So I'm excited to have this with that. Jennifer, welcome to the program.
[00:01:45] Thank you so much, Bruce. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:47] Yeah. So let's understand kind of your background. How did you get into cannabis? Everyone's got a story. I would love to hear how you got into cannabis, how you develop professionally and how you've been able to integrate the two at this point.
[00:01:58] Sure. So just like everybody else, I do have a cannabis story and mine is a personal growth and healing story, I guess you would call it. So I had an auto immune disease, an immune disorder, and then I had a really bad year that left me with PTSD and a combination of cannabis and a lot of therapy and some brain retraining allowed me to heal all of those things. And while I was doing that, part of my healing was creating like I needed to have a creative outlet and that was launching this business. So all of those things together were what allowed me to heal.
[00:02:35] And fortunately, I have I now have business and it's got a side product.
[00:02:39] Yeah. So I can help give back to all the people who helped me heal. Yeah. So, you know, I had a lot of caregivers and other patients who gave me advice and help to allow me to heal myself. And so a lot of those were entrepreneurs. And I saw that there was a lack of a background in branding and marketing and advertising because their growers and they're doing their thing. And I realized that my expertise could help them. And so I took my background, which is and I moved around a lot. So I've got experience in retail, merchandising, PR on a military base, in marketing, advertising, branding, consumer research strategy. So all sorts of different things, experiential marketing. And I took all of those pieces and that helped me create some shortcuts that entrepreneurs can use, especially ones who don't have a big budget for an agency or a brand strategist.
[00:03:35] Yeah. And that's it's it's hard. I think a lot of people don't, but I think a lot of people really don't understand branding to begin with. And that's hard. But even if they do understanding same branding at some level, you know, figuring out how to develop a brand, how do I kind of design or select or on earth the brand that's in my company can be a challenge.
[00:03:53] Talk to us a little bit about how you work with entrepreneurs, with business leaders to get to their brand. What is the process that you go through?
[00:04:00] I have made it so easy for you. So I use a concept called archetypes in my branding. And archetypes are universal characters. They exist in our collective unconscious. If you believe you know, a lot of the philosophies, technologists and archetypes are characters that we would recognize in any story. So you go to the movies, you see a hero and an outlaw and a lover on the screen, and you can immediately picture in your mind what those characters are all about. What do they value, what are their personality traits? You know, you just know. And so I developed 16 of those characters specifically for the cannabis industry, like an activist, a stoner, a rock star, a hippie, a farmer, all kinds of different ones with the idea that if you are brand understands your archetype, then you use those universal characteristics, the values, the personality, and you use that to create a brand identity. And then you can personify that brand and really understand what your brand is all about. So, for example, if you are an activist brand, you know you are you're all about action and advocacy, you know, and you then use those seems to help develop messaging so that your brand remains consistent and you can use this to also help with your visual design. So basically, I took these archetypes and I made I made it into a multiple choice quiz. I made it as easy as possible for. You know, and fun. So you take the quiz, you figure out your archetype, and then I have built all of this content to help you understand what to do with that archetype.
[00:05:39] So once you know your archetype story, then you can go into this model that I have built or I've provided you with eight different emotional themes from which you can write your messaging. And then I have four look and feel categories so that I can help you design your visual identity. So I provide color palette, examples, fonts, visuals, all kinds of different materials that you can use, but ones that are specific to your archetype. So if you are an activist, your theme is action. Your look and feel is a rough and earthy. And those are very different than what you would imagine a rock star might be. And you know, their theme is a little bit more about status and power and their look and feel might be luxurious and refined, you know. And then there's the eternal child. There are brands out there that are all about fun and joy. Those are colorful, you know. So I'm basically giving you a blueprint for your brand to create your identity. And then the very the most important thing is to stay consistent. So when you do all of your marketing and advertising, once you know what your brand identity is, you can check everything against it and make sure that it fits. So if you're an activist and you have an agency who brings you something that looks like an internal child would say it or do it, it doesn't fit and it will confuse people. So it's really a guideline for people to understand their brand.
[00:07:03] Yeah, no, I love it. Originally, I was trained as an architect and I I love the thing to do with kind of structure and systems and patterns. I geek out. And I don't like the idea. I think the idea of archetype, I always refer to kind of the Joseph Campbell and even Star Wars and stuff. I mean, they all use these, you know, fundamental archetypes, you know, and stories and plots and structures. And, you know, you can tell the story a thousand different ways, but it's still the underlying subtext. And I think it's fascinating that you can take that same idea and apply it to the brands and brands in a category, I guess. How did how did you come up with them? And was this, you know, doing lots of research? Was a conversation or did you develop them over time? Discovered them through working with clients. How did you come up with these archetypes?
[00:07:44] Great question. So, you know, there are twelve typical archetypes that are used in branding. And there was a book written about it, I know, 15 years ago, and I used those when I was doing branding exercises for big companies when I worked in an agency.
[00:07:58] But, you know, I saw for cannabis that the market was full of doctor looking brands and stoner looking brands, and there wasn't a whole lot of other stuff. And so I thought I need to provide people other directions to go because they're just not thinking about what other directions can I take these brands. And so coming up with those 16 took me it took me months and months of research and therapy. I actually did it. This is kind of interesting. But I did with a therapist. This modality called Internal Family Systems. And it's all about unifying the parts in your mind now. So this part wants to do this, but this part wants to do the other. Well, those are kind of archetypes a little bit. So that helped inform you what I was doing. And then when I was spending time at my caregivers house and I met all of these entrepreneurs, I met them, I met a magician, I met a hippie, I met a healer. And I could identify each of these people. And so that actually helped me solidify my choices in terms of who the 60mm were going to be. I named them. I know, 10 different times. Yeah, sure. You know, so it was it was a but it was doing it was also my therapy.
[00:09:08] Yeah. Now I can see that that the process being not only a good system to use for the work that you do, but actually a therapeutic bromstad for yourself as well. Yeah.
[00:09:16] You know, when you work with the client or when a company is kind of figuring out how to use these archetypes, is this is this something that they are kind of or who they are or it's in their DNA and you kind of discover it? Or is it something that you choose? And it's a conscious choice to say, well, look, look, I think being this archetype would be more strategically beneficial. How does this process work out? How does it how do you choose or find the archetype for it if we're giving company?
[00:09:41] It depends on the client and it depends on their objective. I have had clients who are, you know, entrepreneurs and they are the brand. And so we get in there and we get them on paper and it is their brand identity. You know, I had a family that was four of them and they all had very, very definitive personalities. Each of them and I made them all take the quiz and they all got different answers. You know, I made them take the quiz together as a family and their cuisine make any sense because they took turns randomly choosing who's going to and how do you do that?
[00:10:10] So if you've got if you got a leadership structure there that has, you know, different organ types, as is a is a negotiation process, is it a battle royale? You just put an entity who wins.
[00:10:19] It's immense. It takes a little bit of therapy and, you know, intervention tactics. But I'll tell you that in this case, I got out my book of archetypes and I said, OK. Based on everything that I've heard you say, this is the one I think that you are and they all look like ya. So they were able to solidify their concept of their brand because up until then they all had their own idea and they all were doing different things. Now they have a central idea and they can all focus on that one brand and make sure that everything is consistent.
[00:10:49] Yeah, I like that. It's kind of a curated guided. You assess that you. It's almost like a midwife.
[00:10:55] You're you're there helping it. I mean, it's going to do what it's going to do, but you gotta guide it up. The brand identity.
[00:11:01] It took me. So once you identify your archetype, I mean, I I'm curious or I guess at some level, I assume that there's there's still work to be done. I mean, I don't look at the world and and see all the same things. Right. Like that. There's still kind of a unique fingerprint that gets developed through this process. Tell me about how you go from this kind of generalized archetype down to the specific kind of, you know, manifestation of that particular brand for that company. And how does that process work?
[00:11:24] The next step after the quiz, I take clients through a detailed question and answer interview where we're going deeper into their mission and their vision and their values and their personality and their defining everything in there. You know, we're we're revealing how they're going to act as a brand. And we write all that down. That is the creative brief. And so then they can take that to any designer they want, particularly if they have a free one or two, an agency, or I can send them to, you know, any of the freelancers in my network. And then they get whatever it is they need, a logo, a website, anything. So basically, I am the brand discovery, the brand definition, and then the visuals get made. So we send them off of that creative brief and they're able to get whatever they need. And then I'm available for coaching so I can step in and talk to a designer and say, nope, that doesn't fit.
[00:12:11] Sure. Yes, you can going to guide the process. Yep. Interesting.
[00:12:15] And then give us give us a couple of maybe your favorite archetypes or were ones that we wouldn't expect or ones that are going to most interesting given the cannabis space. Give us some examples of these.
[00:12:24] One of my favorites is The Magician because I don't see it very often. And this one is a little bit based on the magician you'd find in tarot. So it's all about, you know, manifesting things and having a little bit of secrecy. And I had a client whose brand they were scientists brand, and they came to me and I see a lot, a lot, a lot of scientist brands. I actually have data from the quizzes where I can show you the distribution of archetypes from everyone I've surveyed so far. Lots and lots of scientists, interesting magicians, not so much. So I talked you know, we went through the process and I guided her and said, I suggest maybe we move towards magician. And she took that and has done some amazing things. And it really just breathes a little life into the brand. Yeah. So I can see it is really fun. Eternal Child is another one of my favorites because that's where you can just play with colour and joy and. And it's one of my most favorite.
[00:13:17] Yeah. And when you go to manifest this in two particular product outcome, you know, whether it's a Web site or a print piece or collateral of various sorts, like what are the things that that you're actually kind of specifying or that you're guiding using the brand strategy, as you mentioned, look and feel. I mean, you get into like copy and tune and, you know, language and stuff like that. What's that? What's that look like?
[00:13:40] Yes, we do. Part of the inspiration that I that I give brands is not just a visual inspiration, but also messaging inspiration. So I've been categorizing words into archetypes and emotional themes so that if your theme is introspection, then I'll give you a full list of words to think about, like mindfulness and meditation and things that will inspire you to write copy that is consistent with your brand. So if we're talking about action, those words are very different, you know. And so that way anybody who's writing about the brand can use similar words and feelings.
[00:14:17] Yeah, yeah, I could see that. Otherwise you get a little schizophrenic brand, you know, it's kind of writing all over the place. You know, people are not sure exactly how to address it or don't understand what the brand is about.
[00:14:28] Good. And give us examples. Some of the clients you've worked at to me, you mentioned some of the, you know, either specific or general categories. What what are some of the interesting applications of this that you've you've been able to partner with clients and create good work product? What are what are some areas that that's been applied?
[00:14:43] It actually works for anything, anywhere. And I've been focused focused mostly on cannabis. So I've had cultivators who are putting brands out into the market, retailers, ancillary businesses, couple of advertising agencies grow equipment. Gosh, pretty much. Yeah, it spans it spans the industry. I'm actually putting together some online classes so that I can expand and help other. You know, this doesn't just work for cannabis. But I only have so much time.
[00:15:11] So we're going to focus. You got gotta you're gonna pick something that, too.
[00:15:15] And, you know, in terms of the other work you're doing in the industry at this point. So, you know, you develop the archetype.
[00:15:21] You're working with companies on the brand side. How was he involved in the industry or what else are you doing to kind of do the work that you like to do with people in the.
[00:15:29] So I've got two other projects, one is building this this online curriculum called Brand Camp. The first class that I have is it's like a Coursera type class with quizzes in a test at the end even. But this class is called cell joy. And the point is to teach Brandes how to write messaging that will not get them in trouble with the FDA. Just last week, we before the FDA sent letters to 15 CBT companies. And so I built a database, a tool for brands to use to go in and look at every single one of those letters and see exactly where they got in trouble and why and where and where do people get in trouble.
[00:16:06] Explain why. Why is the FDA about these letters? What what is the what are the things that they're they're catching people on?
[00:16:12] Well, it's it's illegal to make health claims in your advertising. So if you've got a CBD product that's talking about pain relief or curing someone's cancer, that is going to alert the FDA. And so I think 22 companies so far this year have received letters from the FDA. And right now, the letters I mean, you just have 15 days, I think, to fix everything and send a letter back saying that you've done that, but there are penalties involved if you don't do that. So I teach people in this class what the rules are, what a health claim looks like, how two words, you're not supposed to use this. You don't get yourself in trouble. And then I give you some guidelines on how to kind of skirt got a little bit. But then the whole point is to teach people how to use emotional messaging instead using those themes that I was talking about earlier, action and introspection and guidance. Because if you talk about joy in your messaging, you know, you might get a little placebo effect and people are going to be happy about your product.
[00:17:08] But if you talk about curing their cancer, you know, you're selling hope and you're going to disappoint some people when you don't cure their cancer. So how about we go the other way instead? And if you help them, great. They'll go tell their friends.
[00:17:21] Yeah. And what it had to give us give us a little insight. What is the thing that you can't say? What is the thing you can say?
[00:17:27] You don't say words like cure or treat, prevent chronic inflammation, any sort of disease name or even opioid disorder. You can't even say you can't call it a supplement. You're you're not even supposed to call it a food. So it's it's a tricky place for four brands to be right now.
[00:17:45] Yeah. And is this changing or I mean, you know, there's various, you know, legislation in place to try to deal with some of these things. There's some, you know, decisions on like who's going to regulate some of these markets? What's your sense on how volatile or how dynamic is this issue relative?
[00:18:01] The industry at this point, I am I am not optimistic that this is going to be better anytime soon at all this issue.
[00:18:09] Brands would be wise to figure it out now because others are going to get in trouble. So, you know. Right. Your messaging in a way that it will not get you in trouble now, because if if you get caught, you'll have to throw everything out and start over. That's.
[00:18:21] Yeah. And if you if you made one hundred thousand units or packages that can be expensive, where you're gonna have to get a lot of lot of labels to stick over things, do it. And then I do. You're also doing some research, acting some data. Let's talk a little bit about that.
[00:18:39] I'm fascinated by it. So give us a sense of why, like how this has come about and then, you know, the study you've set up and then where you're out with actually clicking on that ad.
[00:18:46] Yep. So I am starting a study called Women in Cannabis A Living History. And we are gathering data about women's experiences working in the cannabis industry. So, you know, this came about because, well, I'm a numbers geek, too. I love data and statistics. I'm not a data scientist. I'm a data storyteller. So I like it. You know, it came to me that I kept seeing articles about the declining number of women in cannabis. And there's just there's not enough comprehensive recent data about this topic. And there's all sorts of data in other industries. There's, you know, Lean In has done research. Equality can't wait. Has done research. And we don't have that. We have anecdotes. And in cannabis, we keep hearing anecdotes aren't data. So I decided, let's go get the data. So I'm working with a medical sociologist from academia. So she's a p._h._d. And it's an academically rigorous study. We have it's 80 questions long takes about 20 minutes. We've had seventy five women completed so far. We're aiming for a thousand. And then we'll have a secondary portion with qualitative telephone interviews. And then at this conference next week at the Women of Cannabis Conference, we're going to be filming interviews. Wendy Baughman from Mary Jane's. The Women of Weed is partnering with me. And we're going to get video interviews that we're going to put out monthly for the next year talking about women's experiences.
[00:20:09] Well, what are what are some of the questions you're asking? I'm curious, just some samples of types of things. You're collecting data.
[00:20:15] So we're talking about things like whether women consider themselves successful and how they define space, you know, whether they use cannabis at work, for example, whether they feel like they're taken less seriously because they're a woman, you know. So one of the interesting ones is we ask about bullying or lack of support from other women, and so far 53 percent have said that they have experienced that. And that's a problem. We need to fix that. You know, we're asking about whether they feel they're treated equitably or whether they feel they need to hide the fact that they work in the cannabis industry. This is really interesting stuff.
[00:20:48] Yeah, that the social impact on this is a fascinating topic. And I've been the one I run into. I've had some interesting conversations around us, the whole, you know, medical versus adult use split and how that complicates the process. And, you know, now if I'm a medical user, like, do I show my card to my employer and how does it impact my employment status or at least perception of my my perception in my workplace and all this it there significant you not non-trivial, significant implications of, you know, how this cannabis industry has been set up relative to the social and professional dynamics. Very curious to see what you've got out of it.
[00:21:20] Are your expectations or ambitions to try to compare this to other surveys in other industries?
[00:21:26] You know, that's a that's a good question. I looked at a lot of different surveys and other industries before I started writing this survey. And, you know, I didn't take into account some of those topics. You know, the way they work, some of those questions, just so I could have some sort of baseline in my head where things are elsewhere.
[00:21:44] But, you know, I was listening to your podcast with Carol Reed and you were talking about something interesting about, you know, we're at the beginning of this new industry. We don't have to do it the way that other industries have done it. Those research studies in other industries are aimed to figure out, you know, what are the systemic problems in corporations and how do we come up with policies to fix that. We don't have all those corporations here in cannabis yet. Let's not have it. Let's not do it that way. Let's do it differently. I love that. I love that. So, you know, honestly, I'm not I'm not the expert on diversity and inclusion. I'm not the expert on women working in cannabis. I'm a researcher and a storyteller. And so my aim is to have this to tell these stories and then bring in the women who are the experts to help us figure out what to do. How do we fix it? How do we or not? How do we fix it? How do we create it so that we don't have to fix it?
[00:22:33] Yeah, exactly. Where we're in the early stages, we have a lot of opportunity to kind of guide the process. Exactly. And is this ambitions to make this a longitudinal study that you're going to be doing this over time to see trends and changes over time?
[00:22:44] That was the original intent. Yes. I wanted to follow up with women. I know once a year, every other year. Or perhaps do a male allied ships study only off years? I'm not certain. But yes, I think that if this is successful, then then we should keep checking to see how things are going because, you know, this could serve as the baseline.
[00:23:03] Yeah, exactly. I think click the data where we can so that we have it. You know, later we can look at and see what the trends are. And I always find that the trends oftentimes are are more interesting than the raw data, as you're sort of seeing where people are going, what are the ups and downs and how do they relate to some of the other questions?
[00:23:17] I'm breaker's to see what you got me to disagree that people want to find out more about you, about Lady Jane branding, about the studies. What's the best way to get some of that information?
[00:23:26] My Web site is Lady Jane branding dot com and I'm at large in branding on Instagram and Facebook. And then for this study, the Web site is Women in Cannibus DOT Study. It's a new dot.
[00:23:37] It's a blue dot. I haven't heard of that dot before.
[00:23:39] Yes. Women dot study. And so if you go there, you can go straight to the survey. You can also sign up to get a sponsor kit, because I'll tell you, this is not cheap and I'm self-funding the study because it's important. But when we go to do the qualitative telephone interviews, you have to pay somebody to interview and transcribe an eighty five percent of the women who've signed it, who've taken the survey already raised their hand and said, I want to tell my story. And so I need sponsors so that I can capture all of those stories.
[00:24:08] Well, I will I will put the links in the show notes and I encourage everyone listening to it considered. Consider looking at studies, see what you can contribute. I think it's a great effort. I think it's a really important sort of data to collect. And I think it's timely. I think we don't collect it now.
[00:24:20] You know, we'll never be able to collect it. So I think it's important that we we take the opportunity that we have now to to create this baseline. And, you know, things can be really important for the industry and having that insight. So good. Thanks. Oh, but that all in there, Jennifer. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time. Great conversation. Really insightful and always fun. So I appreciate having the time in your schedule to speak with us today.
[00:24:42] Well, thank you. And I appreciate the time and thanks for being an ally. We appreciate it.
[00:24:47] You've been listening to Thinking Outside the Bud with Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt to find a full list of podcast episodes. Download the tools and worksheets and access other great content. Visit the Web site at thinkingoutsidethebud.com. And don't forget to sign up for the free newsletter at thinkingoutsidethebud.com/newsletter.