Smoke Signals

Marketers test different approaches as mainstream brands size up cannabis potential.

- Lindsay Rittenhouse

The ad opens to a group of millennials wandering through the woods, the sun glistening through the trees as they blissfully stroll to a field of flowers.

Upon their arrival, a montage reveals the idyllic day ahead of them: They laugh, picnic, play chess, take pictures and later huddle around a campfire to cap off the night.

With its emphasis on aspirational but relatable lifestyle, the spot has all the makings of a beer campaign or an ad for a clothing line—until the end, when the screen flashes the words “Fireside Cannabis.” What you’ve just witnessed is an ad for a weed product— and with the cannabis industry booming and showing no signs of slowing, there will be much more where this came from.

Constellation Brands, the beverage giant behind Corona, Ballast Point and Svedka, among other labels, last month invested $4 billion in Canopy Growth, a leading publicly traded Canadian cannabis company. “Fundamentally, we think this is going to be a big business worldwide,” said President and chief operating officer Bill Newlands during a Barclays investor conference. (Constellation declined to comment for this story.)

Newlands estimates cannabis will become a $200 billion industry, with $100 billion of that eventually concentrated in the U.S., once legalization hits the federal level. Canada, he notes, is “one of the early movers.”