In today’s consumer market celebrity brands are tough to pull off. The barriers of entry are low, so naturally everyone is trying to cash in. With a plethora of options in literally every category, American consumers have become extremely discerning, and it takes more than a well known celeb to earn their trust.

Earlier this month Snoop Dogg made waves in the cannabis beverage world again by announcing that he was expanding his cannabis beverage portfolio to SEVEN brands. The new umbrella company is called Iconic Tonics.

These would now include 5 more existing cannabev brands from Harmony Craft Beverages, 4 of which came from the California regulated market and are clearly looking to pivot into the hemp space.

When I heard this, I was confused…. didn’t he already launch his beverage line over a year ago? What happened to that?

I searched around online. I was right. He announced the launch of two of these beverages in late 2023.

After that, there were a few very spaced out Instagram posts to the brands page, and crickets on the PR/news side.

Maybe this is a relaunch?

Anyways, I reviewed the portfolio, and I have a lot of thoughts on this. Icon Tonics could have potential down the line, but there are many obvious issues I currently see:

1) The branding needs work.

No brand equity 

Besides Klaus, none of these brands are widely known. Klaus made waves early in the cannabev market but it appears they missed the timing on the pivot to hemp D9. But as for the rest of these: I am pretty deep in the cannabev space, and I have never heard of any of these brands, besides Snoop Dogg’s two personal brands, but that’s only because his name alone guarantees media coverage.

I checked the social media presence of all these brands. Most of these brands have not posted since 2023, with Love Yer Brain being the one exception. Consumers really haven’t heard of most of these, and these brands haven’t spent much effort to upkeep themselves. It’s going to take a lot of manpower to jumpstart all seven of these brands and give them the proper love that they need.

Subpar packaging 

Besides Klaus – who’s design I’ve always been a fan of – the branding of these is fairly uninspiring. I think Herbaceé has some potential, but the rest need some major updates before they would be shelf-ready IMO. If this were even just 3 or 4 years ago then maybe this wouldn’t matter quite as much, but the space is wayyy too crowded for any of these to really compete with the current state of their packaging.

Off-putting names

This only applies to Snoop Dogg’s two brands, but personally, I don’t see myself getting excited to say “pass the Do it fluid” or “pass the Doggy Spritz” anytime soon. I know these are supposed to breathe the persona of Snoop, but frankly, they are weirdly s*xually charged, and I just don’t envision them appealing to consumers on a broad scale.

2) Snoop Dogg does not fit the demographic of most cannabev consumers, especially that of low dose consumers.

This may not be obvious to people who are not familiar with the space, or maybe even to Snoop Dogg himself, but the biggest opportunity in the cannabev market is the sober-curious and canna-curious consumers.

I define these as people who are either cutting back their alcohol consumption and looking for new alternatives, or people who tried cannabis 10 - 20 years ago and are dipping their toes back into the water for the first time.

These consumers aren’t the “stoner” demographic—they’re unlikely to regularly consume beverages over 5mg. The problem? Snoop Dogg, the face of this low-dose portfolio, is the ultimate stoner. He’s admitted to paying a full-time blunt roller $40–50K a year.

Now there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s hard to see him resonating with low-dose consumers when he’s rarely pictured without a blunt in hand.

To add to this, Doggy Spritz and Do it fluid are branded like high dose brands but they are formulated as low dose brands, which leads me to ask: who is the target market here?

I believe it's possible to have products on both ends of the spectrum in one portfolio, but I don’t think the intention is there yet. There needs to be better alignment and strategy on the identity of each brand and the consumer it's trying to target.

3) It's hard to sell a portfolio of unfamiliar brands.

Look at any of the major portfolio’s in the beverage space. Coca Cola, Pepsi, Constellation Brands, Diageo, ABinBev. Most of them started as a single strong brand that eventually grew so large that it started acquiring other emerging brands.

But how many of them started as a large group of tiny brands, and emerged to where they are today? Zero.

How do you give 7 brands the care they need to turn into household names, reach distinct target audiences, and develop communities around them? Unless you have a staff of hundreds of people, this is nearly impossible. The best brands in this space have sizable headcounts, and they are only managing one brand.

The cannabev space is developing fast, but there isn’t really a clear winner yet. Sure there are giants like Cann, Keef, BRĒZ, and WYNK, but even they have a lot to prove.

Generally, the point of a portfolio is to combine winning brands into a juggernaut company, in order to take advantage of economies of scale, pooled resources, and better reach in marketing & distribution. In the current state of the Iconic Tonic brands, without major manpower or funding, this will be tough to pull off.

My advice

Now, I am in no way praying for the downfall of Iconic Tonics, but there seem to be a lot of glaring red flags. I’ll also give them the benefit of the doubt: maybe they do have some larger plan or strategy that I’m unaware of.

But with little information available, and already a year gone by since the initial launch, I don’t get a good sense this is headed in the right direction. So my advice to them would be this: 

1) Trim the fat.

Get rid of Lift, there are too many seltzers out there and this doesn’t seem like a developed brand. Get rid of Doggy Spritz or Do it fluid, and make one strong brand that really represents Snoop.

2) Reconstruct brand packaging & positioning.

A wine (Herbacée), a cider (Malus), and a cocktail brand (Klaus) appeal to very different crowds. Use that to your advantage! Look at successful brands in these formats in the alcohol space and figure out who their audience is and how they speak to consumers. These should be your 3 low-dose brands with mass appeal, with doses between 2.5mg and 5mg of THC.

Then take Snoop Dogg’s new refined brand and Love Yer Brain, and make them your high-dose stoner focused brands. Use vibrant colors in creative ways and put the doses between 10mg and 50mg of THC. Look to Keef or Uncle Arnies for inspiration.

3) Build brands, not products.

Now that you have 5 tight brands, you need to separate them and make them each stand out. While you might sell them as a portfolio to retailers, you need to sell them as individual BRANDS to consumers. 

Each should have their own social presence, their own tone & persona, and should not just be known as one of the brands lumped into Iconic Tonics.

Think about it this way: not everyone knows who or what Diageo is, but everyone has heard of Guinness. This should be your goal with Iconic Tonic’s brands.

4) Use Snoop Dogg as a strategic partner, but not the face of the portfolio.

Having a celebrity partner is a big advantage, but it must be used wisely.

Use Snoop and Wayne Coyne’s notoriety as leverage for the high-dose brands since they fit that audience.

But for the low-dose brands, Snoop should be more of a strategic partner in the background. I’m sure he can open doors for distribution and funding, but people shouldn’t associate Snoop too heavily with these brands because he does not fit the consumer demographic.