Compliant Marketing Doesn't Have To Suck.
Cannabis, as an industry, is a very tricky place to navigate. For one, there is no known roadmap…I mean Google map. (what’s a roadmap?) It is also much like the the wild west, full of opportunity and sharp minded gun slingers who are experts at dodging bullets, except of course that it is regulated AF. This limits it to a single ‘wild’ kind of west, a more Kanye kind of West. Up close it's a little like a puzzle board but since the puzzle came in a baggy rather than a box, no one knows what the final picture is supposed to look like nor how many pieces are supposed to be there in total. The outer border pieces are amorphous and can rearrange for a low price of $75, as was the case with Ontario private retail. Suddenly, what you thought was a 1000 piece puzzle starts looking like a 25 piece of...it was too dubious for anyone to really 'get it'. This is cannabis and believe it or not there are many of us who thrive in this environment because for one we enjoy solving puzzles with half the pieces missing and b, we like to build things from scratch.
Cannabis, as a plant, is experiencing its own existential crisis fighting to be both the new kid in town and the benevolent teacher. It is establishing itself in the market place as a brand new product (across a variety of categories) while fiercely unwilling to discard any its' rich history and as a marketer I am always playing both sides. Winning the hearts and dollars of consumers grows exponentially in difficulty when most forms of creative expression is off limits, the masses believe CBD comes from tears of unicorns and there are very few points of sale. In other words, from a marketing perspective I can’t do sh*t, I can’t sell sh*t, and I can’t talk about sh*t if I want to do it in an authentic way that celebrates both sides of the coin. Since this is cannabis though, we don’t have many people actively raging about this but lots of people openly collaborating as was the case this past weekend at the 2019 Lift&Co Expo.
The Lift Expo is considered Canada’s largest cannabis expo and has the tagline “Get To Know Cannabis” so it only made sense for it to be a cannabis safe space - where logos, product demonstrations and all forms of canna-centric conversations are welcomed! But like many things in life, equality of opportunity does not mean equality of outcome so on June 8th and 9th (aka consumer days) Lift partnered with Hotbox and voxie to collaborate on a compliant marketing program that allowed brands to engage with warm leads, participate in up close conversations about their products and drive back to store where possible with a compelling offer. It didn't suck and was #4 on their list of 'new things to check out.'
Our objectives were simple 1) Increase traffic, 2) Create brand engagement that catches feels and 3) Convert happiness into sales.
Disclamer: Those who wish to dive a bit deeper with me on how consumerism exploits the human condition - message me! In the end, the program produced a lot of happy faces, organic searches, tweets, insta moments and massive sales spikes specifically in the products we targeted. People got to know cannabis.