Handle With Care: Weed Inside

Press sample etiquette & advice.

The Broccoli Report 
Friday, July 22, 2022
Time to read: 6 minutes, 35 seconds. Contains 1318 words.

Handle With Care: Press Sample Etiquette & Advice.

On any given day, I get several packages from weed or CBD companies. When I open them, here’s what I usually find: gummies flattened into sticky pancakes; crumbling, stale baked goods; dry, scentless buds; mystery boxes with no information on whatever brand sent them my way; boxes stuffed with an absurd amount of product (500 jumbo joint cones?!) and unnecessary extras destined for the trash; new accessories sent without instructions; and unwelcome surprises from PR firms that have my address on file and sent things I didn’t request my way.

For writers like me, the sample deluge is a space-consuming mix of free stuff we want, free stuff we don’t (but need to try anyway), and bags worth of stuff destined for the trash. Still, in the noisy, fragrant, and saturated world of cannabis and CBD, samples can be a way to cut through the din, connect with a writer, and earn press coverage. Come gift guide season (which is getting closer every day 👀), samples are all but essential to ensure consideration for those coveted, shoppable spots. 

So, today’s newsletter aims to serve both your interests and mine. I discover a lot of the products I write about through personal trials, and samples are crucial to my job, but I can’t keep throwing this much stuff away. And shipping and raw materials are as expensive as hell these days—no one should be wasting that money or carbon footprint on samples that get discarded. With a more strategic approach to samples and effective communications about them, brands have a better chance of getting press while wasting fewer resources. 

So, let’s reimagine how this could work.