Ryan Bouton, Chief Marketing Officer of Torch – Interview Series

Although one product type is readily available at most grocery stores and gas stations while the other is legal to possess for recreational use in only 24 states, there are quite a few similarities between the ice cream business and the cannabis business. Both offer widely popular consumer goods with numerous industry-defining or otherwise beloved brands, yet customer preferences and choices are constantly changing. Some consumers are very set in their ways about the ice cream flavors or cannabis strains they prefer, while others are more open to trying new products. Both industries face extensive regulation and unpredictable problems, such as dreaded Listeria or Aspergillus outbreaks, but brand building and recognition remain highly important in each.

For a deeper look at the interesting similarities between the two industries and the branding lessons cannabis businesses can learn from iconic ice cream brands and stores, mycannabis.com spoke with Ryan Bouton, Chief Marketing Officer of Torch. These lessons are especially relevant as the cannabis beverage market continues to grow rapidly.

What subjects did you study at Georgetown that became the most useful over your career with first Halo Top and later Torch Drinks?

I was an English and Theatre major, which in retrospect was probably the perfect marketing degree without actually being a marketing degree. English taught me how to communicate clearly and tell a story; theatre taught me how to understand an audience and hold their attention. Both have been incredibly useful across branding, messaging, creative, PR and basically every part of building a brand people actually care about.

What interested you about joining the Halo Top Creamery team? How did you view that opportunity as different from the roles that recent graduates usually take?

I actually wanted to be an actor, which couldn’t have been more different from what most Georgetown graduates around me were doing. Everyone expected me to go into finance or law school, and I wasn’t interested in either.

Halo Top initially gave me the flexibility to work in LA while I was auditioning. It didn’t take me too long to realize I was better at selling ice cream than acting.

More importantly, the product was amazing and the opportunity to get hands-on experience building an actual brand and business was unparalleled. I wasn’t sitting three layers removed from the decisions. We were making them.

Although it’s a very well-known ice cream brand now, what was Halo Top like as a company when you first joined? What were the first few years of growth and increasing popularity like?

I was the very first employee, and Halo Top was sold in fewer than 20 stores. There was nothing glamorous about it.

The first few years were pure hustle: driving ice cream packed in dry ice across LA, selling at farmers markets, working demos and trying to get people to notice us with extremely limited resources — aka no money.

There were probably five years of consumer education before the market truly embraced the concept of “low-calorie ice cream.” At first, people heard that phrase and assumed it meant bad diet ice cream.

It was also an incredible crash course in ROI. When you don’t have much money, you learn very quickly what actually moves the needle and what just looks like marketing.

What were the most effective ways and strategies that you used to successfully market and grow the brand and production? Especially on an international scale and when connecting with ice cream consumers across different countries, what approaches proved most successful?

We never wanted Halo Top to sound like a corporation. We wanted it to sound like a person you’d actually want to talk to.

That meant leaning into social media early, talking with consumers rather than at them, and obsessing over cultural relevance instead of sending every sentence through 14 rounds of corporate approval.

As we expanded internationally, the important thing was preserving that personality without assuming the same joke, reference or message would work everywhere. We worked closely with local teams to make the brand specific to each market.

Consumers didn’t feel like Halo Top was run by a bunch of suits. It felt like it was run by people who understood what they cared about, laughed at the same things and actually responded when they talked to us. That’s what created the community around the brand.

Particularly in the European markets, how did you compete against many great local creameries and large European ice cream producers such as Haagen-Dazs that have been around for decades?

The advantage was that we weren’t trying to beat century-old ice cream brands at being another traditional ice cream brand. That would have been futile.

We had a fundamentally differentiated product. Those markets had never really seen a mainstream low-calorie ice cream brand before.

Of course, that was also the challenge. Europe hadn’t gone through the same years of consumer education the U.S. had, so people weren’t automatically drooling over the phrase “low-calorie ice cream.” In many cases, they were skeptical of it.

But skepticism creates conversation. We leaned into being different, used that difference as a lightning rod and gave people a reason to be curious enough to try us. Once they tried the product, the product did a lot of the work.

From a marketing logistics standpoint, what went into creating and launching Gatsby Chocolate? How did you build off the success and reputation of Halo Top when creating and marketing the brand to consumers?

By the time we launched Gatsby Chocolate, we had sold the U.S. portion of Halo Top but retained the international rights and reincorporated as Halo Top International. We didn’t have the rights to use the Halo Top name in the U.S., which meant the chocolate business had to launch as an entirely new brand.

Operationally, we had a huge advantage. We still had strong relationships across copackers, distributors, retailers and the broader CPG ecosystem, so we could move incredibly quickly.

What we couldn’t bring with us was Halo Top’s brand awareness. Nobody knew what Gatsby Chocolate was. In that sense, it felt strangely familiar: we had all the infrastructure of an experienced company, but from a marketing standpoint we were back at zero.

After several years of major accomplishments with Halo Top and Gatsby, what interested you about joining the cannabis industry and the team at Torch Drinks?

Because it reminds me so much of the early days of Halo Top.

Today everyone looks back at Halo Top and thinks the idea was obvious: delicious ice cream for 280 calories — who wouldn’t want that? The truth is, initially, almost nobody did. Or at least they didn’t know they did. Consumers heard “low-calorie ice cream” and pictured gross diet food.

THC beverages are at a very similar moment.

To me, the proposition sounds obvious: a great-tasting, low-calorie drink that gives you a buzz without alcohol or a hangover. Why wouldn’t people want that? But there is still hesitation, confusion and decades of baggage around cannabis.

That’s what makes it interesting. The fun part isn’t marketing something everybody already understands. It’s helping turn something unfamiliar into something obvious.

How have you helped expand the Torch Drinks brand in a similar way that you expanded the Halo Top and Gatsby brands? What were some similar strategies that you applied when marketing Torch Drinks’ products?

First, building a positioning and brand voice that goes beyond product attributes and actually reflects the consumer’s interests and point of view.

That’s how you build a brand instead of just a category. The goal is to change the conversation from, “You have to try a THC drink,” to, “You have to try a Torch.”

Second, finding the one reason people should care most.

At Halo Top, we had plenty of selling points: low calorie, low sugar, low carb, low fat. We talked about all of them. What ultimately broke through was simplifying everything around the benefit consumers cared about most: calories.

Torch has the same opportunity. Our proprietary nanoemulsification technology is designed to create a faster-acting experience, which gives consumers much more immediate feedback about how they’re feeling and whether they want more or less. It removes a lot of the guesswork people associate with cannabis.

And finally, discipline. Marketing isn’t about doing everything. It’s understanding what matters most right now.

For Torch, that means understanding where we’re distributed, where we need greater velocity and making sure that when we commit marketing dollars, they’re ultimately helping more product move through those doors.

From your experience with Torch Drinks, what is so unique about the cannabis beverage market and effectively marketing within this sector of the industry? How is it different from other product sectors of the cannabis industry?

The most unique part is that you’re trying to build a mainstream consumer brand with one hand tied behind your back.

At Torch, I can’t use paid media, digital platforms and broadcast channels with the same freedom I had at Halo Top — and in some cases I can’t use them at all.

But beverages have an interesting advantage within cannabis because the behavior itself is already familiar. People understand cracking open a cold drink at dinner, at a party, watching a game or after work. You don’t have to teach them a completely new ritual.

That’s why I think cannabis beverages have such enormous potential. They allow you to borrow from traditional beverage and CPG marketing while introducing cannabis in a format that feels remarkably normal.

How do you see the cannabis beverage market evolving as the cannabis industry itself grows? With its increased popularity and normalization, do you view cannabis beverages as a great introductory product to new consumers?

Absolutely. I think beverages have the potential to be one of the biggest bridges between cannabis and the mainstream consumer.

Most Americans already understand the social ritual of drinking something. You don’t need to explain how to hold it, when to consume it or where it fits into someone’s life. You crack open a can. You drink it. That’s an incredibly powerful advantage.

For someone who has never walked into a dispensary, doesn’t want to smoke and doesn’t know the first thing about cannabis strains, flower or vape products, a beverage is a much less intimidating entry point. It looks familiar, the format is familiar and the occasion is familiar.

I also think the category gets much bigger when we stop treating THC beverages as a niche cannabis product and start treating them as a beverage choice.

The real competition isn’t necessarily another THC brand. It’s the beer you normally have watching football, the glass of wine after work or the cocktail you order when you go out.

That’s when the category really changes — when someone isn’t asking, “Do I want cannabis tonight?” They’re simply asking, “What do I want to drink?”

Thank you for joining us, Ryan! For more information on Torch, please visit its website.