Marketing Moves That Work

Four brands share success stories and past mistakes.

Friday, March 22, 2024
Time to read: About 9 minutes. Contains 2,015 words.

Great marketing doesn’t look like one thing. In fact, something that works wonders for one brand won’t move the needle for another. Sometimes it’s a complete accident, and you wake up wondering where all these new followers came from. For brands in our biz, it’s twice as tricky. We have fewer touchpoints available to reach customers, a minefield of compliance challenges to navigate, and most are attempting to do a lot with a little bit of budget. Finding the right way to catch the right audience’s attention takes work, and not everyone has time to experiment. 

One way to start narrowing down your next move? Hear what worked and didn’t work for peers across the hemp and cannabis scenes. 

Today’s newsletter checks in with the brands I spoke to in the last roundtable of marketing wins and losses—Garden Society, Laundry Day, and Weed Sport—asking if what worked for them in 2022 still stands today, how their marketing approach has evolved, and whether they’ve learned any other hard lessons since. I also spoke with Brelixi, a newer edible brand whose THC and CBD drinking mixes are sold online and in New York dispensaries, about their most worthwhile move thus far. 

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Garden Society pre-roll packs.

Maggie Connors, vice president of marketing at Garden Society, a licensed edible and infused pre-roll brand in California, Ohio, and now New Jersey.

Marketing Win in 2022: Garden Parties. These Tupperware-styled parties for cannabis were hosted by loyal Garden Society customers who brought together friends interested in learning about cannabis, answered questions, and helped them purchase products discreetly. 

Are Garden Parties still happening?

MC: Garden Society has grown significantly since we last checked in, and our parties have evolved accordingly! We opened manufacturing facilities in new markets, including Ohio last year and we’re about to open our doors in New Jersey. At this scale, we’ve had to change how we think about our parties, but at the end of the day, the spirit is the same: meeting our consumers where they are and educating them on our products to build loyalty and harness the power of word-of-mouth. This now looks like after-hours womens’ events at our key retailers, gathering community at legal consumption lounges like Irie in LA, and collaborating with others’ events (i.e. Cannascape retreats, Yoga with Minelli, and The Lit Club.)

Are they still the most successful part of your marketing strategy?

MC: The reality is it’s impossible to measure the ROI of in-person events, so I can’t say it’s the most successful, but we still believe it’s on us to educate on our products given all the misinformation around cannabis. Making high-quality products that we love is our most important remit, and along with that comes sampling them and teaching folks about the details such as the effects of minor cannabinoids, benefits of Full Spectrum Oil, various ways we make concentrates in Ohio, etc. 

Since 2022, has the company tried anything new marketing-wise?

MC: One paid channel we’ve seen success with is buying digital menu ads through I Heart Jane. The endemic product tiles as well as cart toppers at check-out are reaching our consumers at the right place in their moment of purchase. It’s also great to have significant data that we use to target our fans and optimize our ad spend. By digging into the data we’ve found that our success depends on the store, local competition, and assortment, but spending at the point of purchase where we can clearly measure ROI has been a great tactic.

Did you try anything new that fell flat?

MC: One shift we’ve implemented is pulling back on mainstream partnerships with bigger brands outside of cannabis as part of an earned media strategy. As much as we love to introduce new audiences to our favorite plant, it’s a heavier lift and often inefficient. We focus more now on current industry consumers and meet them at the point of purchase as much as possible. This means activating at dispensaries, reaching both budtenders (through sampling, incentives, and celebrations) as well as end consumers (through promotions, unique gifts with purchase, and creative displays). 

What do you think was key to the brand's survival in the past few years? 

MC: We thrive by focusing on what we do best—making awesome products. This is in our DNA as our founder, Erin, is a Six-Sigma Lean manufacturing expert and chemical engineer. In addition to all the product development we do for our two brands Garden Society and Chemistry, we also manufacture for other best-in-class brands and are now bringing them east to new markets. This helps pay our bills in competitive markets. We are extremely capital-efficient—our small but mighty team works across all our markets as well as the co-packing side of our business. 

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Laundry Day’s core chrome collection.

Vic Ashley, founder of accessory brand Laundry Day.

Marketing Win in 2022: Spending on design & PR. Ashley took out a small personal loan to hire a public relations agency and produce her first packaging design, and, in 2020, ran an impactful seeding campaign that included about 30 people.

Are you still hiring PR for help with certain seasons/product launches, and do you still dedicate significant funds on packaging design?