Kayle Barich de Viagra a cannabis en “greenhouse of brands”

“I believe that the cannabis industry 

is ripe for brands that speak 

to the millions of people 

who could benefit from 

the plant’s increasingly evidenced-based properties 

that help people heal and enjoy their lives,”

Kayle Barich(@KyleBarich) 

 

Cannabis company Holistic Industries has named former CDM leader Kyle Barich as chief marketing officer.

Barich is set to join the company next week, reporting to Holistic founder and CEO Josh Genderson. Barich will be tasked with building its “greenhouse of brands,” or the individual brands of dispensaries and medical cannabis that Holistic cultivates and sells.

These brands will be marketed across consumer segments, Barich said, to appeal to different types of cannabis users. He also hopes to destigmatize the conversation about medical marijuana.

“After spending over 25 years in healthcare advertising, I spent so much time trying to understand the dynamic between doctors and patients,” Barich said. “In the healthcare advertising industry and pharma industry, that’s old hat now, but coming to the cannabis industry it has a little bit of a twist.”

Because the industry is new, doctors need to see and understand the science behind medical marijuana to feel comfortable recommending it to patients, Barich said. Patients need a different kind of support to try cannabis.

“Consumers, who are increasingly older and increasingly female, are looking for permission from an authority figure to say it’s ok to treat some common symptoms like chronic pain or sleep issues with cannabis,” Barich said. “They had an entire lifetime of ‘reefer madness’ and negative press about [cannabis]. What I’m hoping to do is to help change that conversation to one less stigmatized, more medical, more acceptable and more fluid.” 

In this role, he will expand Holistic’s marketing team, which has grown from one to five staffers, with a focus on packaging, social media and brand development. Holistic Industries operates in Washington D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan and California.

Barich previously spent 23 years at CDM, holding various roles from VP to president. In 2016, he was promoted to CEO, a role he held for three years. Chris Palmer, previously head of CDM’s New York office, was named CEO after Barich’s exit in June.

For the past two years, Barich has been an investor and adviser to cannabis companies, working with cannabis startups to help founders effectively run their business and providing support for branding and marketing.

He hopes to bring his experience working with doctors and patients to his new role. Barich recalled the strategies from one of his first accounts, Pfizer’s Viagra, noting that the cannabis industry is facing many of the same issues. “Prior to Viagra, no guy was going to go to their doctor and say they’re impotent. It was a very unacceptable conversation; [the issue] was stigmatized, secretive and strange,” he said. “The team at CDM unearthed different terminology, ED, and I believe we really changed that conversation to be more medical and acceptable. Now you look at cannabis and you see the connection. The [cannabis] conversation is stilted, uncomfortable, not medical and it has similar audience. I’m hoping to use plays from that playbook and bring increasing evidence to the cannabis industry.”(Ver)
 





 
Healthcare ad veteran Kyle Barich left his role as CEO of Omnicom's CDM this summer.

When Kyle Barich launched Viagra at CDM in 1998, he helped solve negative stigmas around impotence by changing the conversation and making men more comfortable to discuss medical issues about erectile dysfunction. Now, the healthcare advertising veteran has a new mission: Marijuana. 

Barich, who left his role as CEO of Omnicom health company CDM this summer after being at the agency for 23 years, is taking on the lead marketing role at private multistate cannabis operator Holistic Industries.

"I really believe we can change the conversation around cannabis," said Barich.

As the first CMO of Holistic Industries, which recently closed $55 million in funding, Barich will help grow the company’s portfolio of brands, including its Liberty-branded retail dispensary chain.

During his time at CDM, Barich worked on the likes of pharma giants Pfizer, Biogen, Amgen and Novartis, as well as emerging biotech companies. CDM, a $100 million revenue company, has offices in Montreal, New York, Princeton, Sao Paulo, London, Paris, Barcelona, Milan and Tokyo.

From an advertising perspective, Barich said the company plans on promoting its individual brands in campaigns rather than the Holistic Industries name. The future campaigns will feature both medical uses of cannabis and recreational, as well as different forms, such as edibles.(Ver)