"The most powerful brand names connect with people and move them to buy because they are based on familiar words and concepts that they understand and appreciate”
-Alexandra Watkins, Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick
When I returned to California and had full legal access to cannabis once again, I immediately began experimenting with different strains of cannabis, rolling them into joints, and adding multi-colored stripes using colored tape to visually separate one from the other.
As visual learner, I often need to see something before I can begin to understand it. But when it comes to cannabis, this gets tricky. Not only do the nearly 800 strains of the cannabis plant look identical to my eyes, they become further indistinguishable once dried, ground up, and wrapped in white or brown rolling paper.
Introducing color to the cannabis equation functioned as a critical data point that forced my neurodivergent brain to accept that each joint was different. Once that had been established, I could then actively observe the subtle but varied effects that accompanied each strain, and begin to take note on which worked best. While at first, those notes may have looked like “red stripes = good, blue stripes = bad, I was eventually able to dial things in even further by using an A/B testing method to crack my personal cannabis code for my body chemistry. Those experiments led to a new level of cannabis personalization that helped see cannabis in a whole new way.
Plus, color coding my cannabis stash felt surprisingly fun! Sometimes, I coordinate the strain name with a color by rolling my Blue Dream with blue stripes, Lemon Kush in yellow, and Roadkill in red— but only if I want to be cute about it, which I often do. But when I'm strategically A/B testing strains, I prefer to roll indica strains in sleepy-time colors (blue/black), sativas in vibrant ones (red/orange), and hybrids down the middle (yellow/green). That system, coupled with the free tools I created, turned out to be a rock solid approach to fine-tuning your cannabis experience in the modern era.
And yes, I recognize this all sounds nerdy, and I see what you’re seeing. But I chose to lean in anyway. I did a shit ton of research (which I do very well having worked at Google!), and for whatever reason, nobody else was doing it. Like I'd explained, you can certainly buy pre-rolled cannabis that clearly indicates on the packaging what each strain is. But the moment you remove that product from the janky-ass plastic tube that it was sold in, the actual joint is unmarked and looks identical to the one in the next tube and the next. It made NO sense to me, and even got me a little steamed. Am I the only person seeing this? Why are we still doing this? Don't we want to move into legalization with some best practices in place? I love you, America. But the time has come!
And with that, I chose my lane, and took the steps to pick a name for my new project. Fortunately, a friend of mine, Alexandra Watkins, literally wrote the book on naming companies: Hello, My Name is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick, and she's a legit big deal in the marketing world, even if I only know her as my cool ass friend that I share a love of travel with. And while I seldom ask friends for professional favors, my gut told me I'd be a stupid ass motherfucker if I didn't this time, so I got up my nerve, and she agreed to help.
I told Alexandra about my idea for pinstriped joints called "Mallets" and I shared my vision of a 1920s speakeasy theme that was classy and discreet. When I explained that “Mallets” was the name I’d been considering for the brand, Alexandra responded: “Mallets? I don’t get it. I instantly thought of a hammer. Why don’t you just call it 'Croquet'? It’s a word everyone knows but doesn’t encounter every day, so it's extra special. There’s nothing dangerous or scary about Croquet– it’s fun and brings people together. You’ve probably never seen another brand with that name, so it’s unique". She went on to say that she liked my Roaring 20’s theme, and the inherent “wink-wink, nod-nod” of the Prohibition Era. As Alexandra likes to say, this idea "has legs," and can go in all kinds of interesting directions.
Croquet. It was intriguing, and I sat with it for a month or so, allowing my imagination to germinate its seed. I only had positive associations with that word, including playing croquet in our backyard when I was a kid, playing with good friends, as well as a recent “Croquet & Cocktails” themed party I came up with at Google, which is probably why my brain made the initial connection in the first place.
I settled on Croquet as the name for overall brand, and “Mallets” would be the name of its color-striped smoking cones, then created what’s known as a “non-plant-touching” business that only sells accessories and not cannabis, so our products don't have shipping restrictions. In other words, we don't sell cannabis. And with that, I came up with Croquet's first tagline: "Just Add Grass".
I had no background in cannabis, but possess a Rainman-like, neurodivergent brain that can quickly get up to speed on almost any subject simply by reading books and making connections to things that I already understand, but everything was knew to me.
I did deep dives into plant science, neurochemistry, the history of cannabis, and reviewed past emerging markets-- like the California Gold Rush. That taught me that the people who prospered the most in that era weren't the gold miners themselves, but the merchants who sold the supplies– like shovels, pick axes and blue jeans. The last part piqued my interest because I would be that merchant selling supplies, too!
It turns out that Levi Strauss is buried just two rows away from my father, and for the last 20+ years while visiting my dad, I'd also pop by his grave, too, and thank him for the jeans!
Despite my many visits to his grave over the years, I realized I knew nothing about Levi Strauss as an actual human being, and when I was telling him about the new business I had started, I wondered out loud what he might be able to help teach me about creating a San Francisco brand. So I tracked down the only full biography that was written about about Levi Strauss, by Lynn Downey, and adopted him as my imaginary mentor. I learned so much!
And with that, I began developing all of my ideas formally, funded by the nest egg I had always known to put aside for just such an endeavor. I already knew that my ideas had value from when one of them became a patent at Google, so I decided to bet the farm on my very own horse, and see how far I could go. Besides, I couldn’t deny what I was looking at. All of the Croquet stuff that I made? It was baller. And for the first time, I actually knew it.
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