Rose and Jim Totino started baking their “fun deliciousness” in a pizza parlor in Minnesota back in 1951. Today, General Mills sells over 300 million Totino’s Pizza Rolls a year, thanks to their deliciousness and clever advertising.
Just in time for 4/20, the $18 billion global food giant that brought us the “Breakfast of Champions” is targeting Denver’s pot consumers with billboards making legal cannabis companies green with envy.
Their slogan for the tasty pizza rolls, seen all over town, is “Stock Up B4/20.” It’s cute—but not to Denver’s legal pot industry, for whom advertising rights are a major point of contention with the state.
In Colorado, marijuana advertisements are prohibited from appearing on television, radio, newspapers, and websites where there is “reliable evidence” that more than 30 percent of the audience is under 21. When it comes to outdoor billboards, stores can only erect signs on the same lots as the businesses. Ads may not target out of state tourists either, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue.
“[The ad] is ironic for all of us now because you have a mainstream brand that can advertise on the backs of legalization,” Joe Hodas, the chief marketing officer at Dixie Brands, told Marijuana Business Daily, “But we companies, as pioneers having paved the way for this, none of us can advertise our products on a billboard.”
photo via MJBizDaily.com
