Late last week, hedge fund manager Andrew Lahde made headlines in the financial community when he gave it all up and, in his letter of resignation, touted hemp as an ethically defensible pursuit. Well, of the many heads that he turned, Mr. Lahde turned that of the Hemp Industries Association (HIA). As a press release on MarketWatch.com states:
The Hemp Industries Association (HIA), a trade association made up of hundreds of hemp businesses meeting in Boston today, is appealing to millionaire retired hedge fund manager Andrew Lahde to use a portion of his recent windfall made betting against sub-prime mortgage-backed securities to help bring back hemp farming in the United States. Mr. Lahde garnered media attention for stating in a resignation letter that hemp is needed as an alternative food and energy source and should be grown again in the U.S.
The press release then goes into some interesting figures on the viability hemp-based market niches. For example:
[...] the HIA Food and Oil Committee now estimates that the total retail value of hemp foods sold over the past 12 months in North America grew from $20 million last year to approximately $33 million this year.
How accurate these market figures are, however, is not the most interesting point. Rather, it’s how effective of a marketing stunt was for the HIA. They manage to seize an opportunity and piggy-back on a stroy that was already making headlines. As a public relations professional by day (who himself is often tempted to write his boss an Andrew-Lahde-style letter), I know for a fact that PR know-how like that doesn’t come cheap. I’m left to believe, then, that either the HIA has a massive marketing budget, or the people behind it really are on top of their game as a lobby group.