Quality Meats agency founders Gordy Sang and Brian Siedband are stepping to the other side of the client relationship.
The co-founders and co-CCOs have launched Herb Light, a nonalcoholic, lager-style beverage containing 1 mg of THC. The product debuts first in Chicago, with plans to expand into additional markets.
For Sang and Siedband, the move is more than another branding assignment. The pair developed Herb Light as owners, identifying the market opportunity, shaping the positioning, building the brand and assembling the production and go-to-market team themselves.
That puts the longtime agency creatives in the unusual position of assuming the same operational risks and growth pressures they normally help clients navigate.
The idea behind Herb Light grew from two converging drinking trends: consumers moderating their alcohol intake and the rise of THC beverages. Sang and Siedband saw a gap between nonalcoholic beer, which offers the ritual of drinking without a buzz, and much of the cannabis beverage category, which tends to lean toward higher doses and fruit-forward seltzers.
Herb Light applies the familiar language of light beer to cannabis instead.
With a lager-like taste and a deliberately low 1 mg THC dose, the product is designed around longer, more social drinking occasions rather than a stronger single-serving experience.
The founders also looked backward while building the brand forward. Herb Light was intentionally designed to feel as though it could have existed for decades, borrowing from the familiarity and discoverability that helped light beer become mainstream in the 1980s.
That strategy gives the new product an intentionally lived-in identity rather than the hyper-modern aesthetic often associated with emerging cannabis brands.
For Quality Meats, the launch also represents a broader experiment in creative ownership. Rather than building equity exclusively for clients, Sang and Siedband are using the agency’s branding and strategic expertise to create an asset of their own.
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The idea is increasingly relevant as agencies search for new business models and ways to turn creative intellectual property into longer-term value.
And fittingly for a company born in Chicago, Herb Light is starting at home.
The brand will launch in Chicago first, then expand elsewhere.
