Despite its many challenges, cannabis is supposed to be one of the most exciting industries in the modern age.

And make no mistake, safe access to cannabis is exciting. But you wouldn’t know it by the lackluster marketing efforts coming out of the space.

Perhaps you’ve heard the complaints: tight budgets, regulatory restrictions, crazy tax laws, and understaffed teams. As painful as these realities are, they shift focus away from the heart of the matter.

The real issue in cannabis marketing: negligent storytelling.

Storytelling is as important as language itself. It’s one of the few things that unites us as human beings. It’s how we achieve clarity and meaning. It’s how we make decisions and inspire action in others.

Nothing happens without a compelling story—except apathy, boredom, or confusion.

And confused people never say yes to something.

By the way, how many people do you think are still confused about cannabis?

Missing in action: story-driven marketing

Storytelling is the backbone of great marketing, but very few cannabis marketers have actually mastered the principles of story.

Pull up the social media channels for almost any brand, and you’ll mostly find announcements for discounts and special offers or an endless line of product glamor shots and other storytelling fails.

Here’s another glaring instance: a dispensary website full of blog posts about quarterly financial updates and recent additions to the board of directors. Instead of targeting prospective customers, investors are the target audience.

“Cannabis brands struggle with storytelling for a few reasons,” said Brad Bogus, a fractional chief marketing officer in multiple industries including cannabis. “For one, most companies struggle because almost no one teaches storytelling in business school or when coaching entrepreneurs. It’s a skill of art, not business, and is left out of most education, training, coaching, and mentoring. Most people just don’t have experience in it.”

The other big issue, Bogus continued, is a lot of cannabis operators simply can’t afford to hire a storytelling specialist. The economic struggle for the majority of operators is very real.

“Most operators have to scale way back on their marketing budget, leading to mostly entry-level hires who don’t specialize—great at executing on tactics, not great on strategy and messaging,” he said. “With more budget to work with, one can expand the marketing team to include specialists capable of great storytelling.”

The disconnect between brands and consumers

Even when funding is available for robust marketing efforts, many cannabis brands don’t have a clue about how to truly connect with consumers.

“Many times I’ve had to create stories out of nothing,” senior brand strategist Bri Smith said of clients who invested in cannabis with no previous point of reference to the plant. “No personal connection to cannabis, no lifelong mission of advocacy, no unique offerings solving a problem. Some brands don’t have a story to tell.”

Brands also struggle with creativity and finding the best ways to reach their audience.

“Billboards and crappy programmatic ads are horrific at storytelling,” said Scott Jennings, founder and chief executive officer at Pantry Food Co. “They’re low-level ads that aren’t convincing a large percentage of potential customers to come into the industry.”

Indeed, demand generation is practically nonexistent in cannabis today, which says a lot when you consider how many people are still trying to overcome 80-plus years of harmful misinformation.

It’s ironic. While cannabis legalization efforts call for powerful storytelling and a relentless drive to change hearts and minds, this intense focus abruptly vanishes after legalization.

Getting clear about your target audience

Who’s your target audience? If it’s “everyone who smokes weed,” you’ve stumbled into the same pitfall as many other cannabis marketers.

Cannabis consumers come from all different backgrounds, and trying to lump them together is trying to be everything to everyone. You’d think cannabis operators would have enough business acumen to avoid this trap, and yet it’s quite common throughout the industry.

“I think there’s a belief that the cannabis consumer is a part of the ‘cannabis community,’ as if we all exist in the same places with similar interests, beliefs, and style,” Bogus said.

Cannabis consumers actually don’t identify as “the cannabis community,” he continued. Some like to mellow out around jam bands; others are into punk and street protests. They’re corporate professionals with minivans full of kids, or they’re weekend warrior outdoors junkies.

“What will make your marketing the most effective is to pick one or two target customer profiles and absolutely nail it with your marketing and messaging to them,” Bogus advised. “If you can slam dunk for those customers, you can expand and win others. Focus. Be something specific to someone and you’re likely to pick up others along the way. Stand for something or stand for nothing. Those are your choices.”

Along these lines, most cannabis marketers are guilty of the same oversight that plagues marketing departments in many other industries: not talking to the customers. Is there a worse blunder in marketing than not knowing your audience? If you want to compromise your marketing efforts from the very beginning, that’s how you do it.

“I’d also blame investors, distributors, and sales reps,” Jennings said. “A well-known [consumer packaged goods] expert pointed out to me how all of these groups are incentivized to push operators or brands to grow as fast as possible and into as many accounts, stores, or markets as possible. Meaning sell to everyone because everyone is your customer. How wrong that is.”

Guiding people toward your brand

“Oh, but come on! It’s weed! It’ll sell itself,” said countless cannabis stakeholders. That sort of attitude is probably why the cannabis industry has yet to achieve any real market penetration.

According to a 2022 Gallup poll, only 16 percent of Americans consume cannabis. Meanwhile, the country is evenly split regarding cannabis’s overall effect on society—49 percent say it’s positive and 50 percent consider it negative.

Imagine the successful marketer as a safari guide who knows the terrain and the wildlife (the product) inside out. They’re also deeply attuned to their guests (the audience)—their interests, fears, and expectations. The guide creates an unforgettable experience by skillfully navigating the landscape and its creatures to match their guests’ desires.

Now imagine the opposite with a safari guide who doesn’t know the lay of the land and/or is clueless about their guests. You see these sorts of trainwrecks in cannabis marketing all the time.

“For a lot of the early brands on shelves in legal states, I think it became easy to believe that none of this disciplined brand-building really mattered. They probably felt they were going to do well no matter what,” noted Tim Naughton, founder of Heady, a cannabis digital marketing agency. “And instead of the ‘green rush’ drawing in competitors that were better at storytelling, the space became saturated by lots of brands that didn’t have much unique about them.”

Naughton believes the problem is compounded by brands overthinking content creation.

“They think they need production value and creative agencies, rather than just getting started with simple, authentic stuff,” he said.

In essence, it’s not just a marketing issue or a content-development issue.

It’s not just a public relations issue.

It’s a storytelling issue.

NEW YORK and CANNES, France, June 27, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW), the challenger network built to transform marketing, took home top honors at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the largest gathering in the creative marketing community. Network agencies including 72andSunny, Allison+Partners, Forsman & Bodenfors, and GALE won a combined 12 Cannes Lions awards across the categories of creative, design, digital, entertainment and PR.

“I want to applaud our team and amazing agencies for an excellent showing at the festival in our second year. The success of Sport Beach was widely recognized as a clear demonstration of our creative ingenuity,” said Stagwell Chairman and CEO Mark Penn. “As we do for our clients we challenged the conventional,” he added. 

Overall, Stagwell agencies including Anomaly, Doner and Observatory were put on nearly 40 shortlists.

Cannes Lions Winners

Gold Lions

• Creative Data: GALE – “Chipotle Doppelgänger”

Silver Lions

• PR: Forsman & Bodenfors – “Kami”

Bronze Lions

• Creative B2B: Forsman & Bodenfors – “Pure Waste”
• Design: Forsman & Bodenfors – “The Shuffle Ticket”
• Design: Forsman & Bodenfors – “Kami”
• Digital Craft: Forsman & Bodenfors – “Kami”
• Entertainment Lions For Music: Forsman & Bodenfors – “The Shuffle Ticket”
• Industry Craft: 72andSunny – “The Cathedral of Diablo”

Stagwell Agencies Credited on Integrated Work with Non-Stagwell Agencies

In addition to the above, Stagwell agency Allison+Partners supported PR efforts for several winning campaigns with non-Stagwell agencies:

Titanium Lions

• Titanium: Allison+Partners and Budweiser – “Bring Home the Bud”

Silver Lions

• PR: Allison+Partners and Budweiser – “Bring Home the Bud”

Bronze Lions

• Creative Effectiveness: Allison+Partners and Corona – “Plastic Fishing Tournament”
• Creative Strategy: Allison+Partners and Budweiser – “Bring Home the Bud”

About Stagwell
Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 13,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.

Media Contact
Sarah Arvizo
[email protected] 

SOURCE Stagwell Inc.

Silvia Filippini Fantoni and Darryl Dwayne Walker share the strategies and techniques that have helped them to dramatically increase the diversity of museum visitors and successfully engage local communities.

The Newark Museum of Art is New Jersey’s largest art museum and features a wide collection of American art as well as arts of Asia, Africa and the Americas. Established in 1909 by John Cotton Dana to promote the appreciation, understanding and enjoyment of the arts and science, it has garnered a reputation for being among the country’s most progressive cultural institutions.

After emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, the team have sought to do more than ever to deliver on the museum’s mission of providing “inclusive experiences that spark curiosity and foster community”.

At the heart of these efforts has been an engagement strategy delivered by a dedicated team of experienced professionals including Darryl Dwayne Walker, Manager of Community Engagement and Silvia Filippini Fantoni, Deputy Director, Learning & Engagement.

Silvia’s remit includes school programmes, public programmes, community engagement, interpretation and more. Having worked in a range of museums across Europe and the US, Silvia says that she feels truly at home in Newark at a museum that reflects her own passion:

“My love for museums doesn’t really stem from objects,” she says. “It stems from people and their experiences. At The Newark Museum of Art community engagement is hugely important to what we do and I love seeing people discover our institution.

“Here we try to ensure that we serve a diverse community. Because that is the community that we are embedded in.”

As a city with a population that is 90% comprised of people of colour, Silvia, Darryl and the broader museum team work hard to ensure that community engagement genuinely spans the full breadth of the Newark community and the surrounding areas.

Modern challenges to community engagement

As a museum professional on the frontline of the museum’s effort to connect with its communities, Darryl has a clear insight into the hurdles that need to be overcome in order to build relationships and, ultimately, drive footfall.

“It all begins with awareness,” he says. “Information is slow to filter through to underserved and underrepresented communities for the most part. In more affluent areas with well-established resources and channels it is much easier to connect with people.”

Darryl continues, “I also think there’s an important hurdle of perception to overcome. In some communities it is hard for people to see art in a way that they can relate. For too long museums have told stories with a narrative that doesn’t include the voices of people of colour. And it is very difficult to change or shift that narrative.

“But part of my role is to help people feel excited who maybe haven’t always felt welcome or represented in a museum environment. I love introducing people to the museum for the first time – particularly those who are born and raised here but had never heard about us before. Getting those people to visit us and see them enjoy what we have to offer is a joy for me.”

He continues, “Of course money is the other big issue. We have a challenge to face in terms of accessing funding to grow our museum’s presence – in the way that some larger, internationally recognised museums and galleries may not. Making a difference on a smaller budget is hard – but not impossible.”

Silvia adds that despite The Newark Museum of Art being founded to serve a largely immigrant population and with a heritage of helping to serve local communities (as a safe space during social unrest in the 1960s, for example) staying front of mind with Newark’s residents can be tricky:

“If people don’t feel represented in the stories we tell, the art we exhibit or by the staff they engage with, they won’t want to spend time here.”

As she explains, turning that around requires cultural institutions to be self-reflective and : “We have had to understand that the way we have worked as a museum in the past isn’t the way community organisations work. So, in order for us to open up our doors and make these important groups feel welcome we must become more nimble, flexible and agile.

“Unlike museums – which are used to programming months in advance – the community groups we need to be engaging with work more reactively and focus on the short term. As a community engagement team, we need to be able to accommodate that.”

Creating a flexible and collaborative strategy for community engagement

At the heart of engagement for The Newark Museum of Art is a commitment to collaboration. Crafting new initiatives now includes a range of community voices as standard. Darryl says, “Normally museums programme internally and then push it out to the audience. Our process is different because we draw on a community advisory board to inform decision making.”

The advisory board is comprised of local artists, businesses, city representatives, cultural institutions and what Darryl refers to as “local tastemakers”. This group meets with the museum four to five times a year to help shape community engagement programming for the period ahead.

“The board’s direct access to the community helps to ensure that what we plan is appealing to a diverse range of groups. It also helps to get the word out about our exhibitions and programmes because these stakeholders go back into the community and tell people about what we are doing.”

The Community Advisory Board also plays a vital role in helping the museum extend its reach beyond its doors, by fostering connections with the wider community. This is achieved through active participation in citywide festivals and events, where the museum offers artist residencies (in local schools), facilitates artmaking activities, and share information about upcoming programmes.

The proof of this activity can be seen clearly in the pudding. Attendance and diversity figures have increased dramatically at the museum since the pandemic, and a growing range of community partners have come forward looking to collaborate with the museum on an ongoing basis.

In the last year alone, the diversity of programme attendees has increased by an incredible 30% – resulting in a total of 80% BIPOC visitors. In addition, the under-45 programme audience has grown by 32% and the number of families has also increased by 19%.

Silvia says, “This community advisory board was really the starting point for us, which we actually created during the pandemic to inform our virtual programming. The format for working with the board has been refined over time but, essentially, they serve to curate our programmes – like our Community Days and our signature Art After Dark events.

“In addition, we’ve successfully opened up our museum to host events run by our partners. That’s been a great opportunity for us to showcase our museum spaces to people who may not have been inside before. It’s an important part of our mission of growing the museum as a place for the community in Newark.

“What we have shown is that the museum is a space for them to meet, to get together and to socialise.”

These events can involve business gatherings, film festivals, celebrations, showcases and more.

The advisory board has also helped the museum to establish a space for showcasing work from within the community – a Digital Community Art Gallery. Designed to provide a platform for local artists, this popular showcase (which is presented on a projector in the museum’s welcome center) has helped get contributors’ voices heard and artworks shared.

According to Silvia and Darryl, the key to collaboration is a willingness to be flexible and shape the offering around what our community partners would like to achieve, rather than what the museum thinks they want.  Sometimes, however, we need to be creative and figure out ways to give our partners what they want within the limitations and constraints of our institution . Silvia says,

“For example, we often get our community partners coming forward with ideas for  exhibitions. But as museum professionals know, it can take years to put together full-scale exhibitions. So, we typically look at ways we can pivot to a different format and give them what they want through a different medium, one that we can implement in a short amount of time”

Darryl adds, “What’s important is that sense of ownership and inclusion that we can cultivate by collaborating and ensuring that community voices are feeling heard.”

Bringing external voices into the galleries

In addressing the issue of inclusivity within The Newark Museum of Art, Silvia explains that the museum’s curatorial team have been working hard to find new and innovative ways to incorporate diverse voices and narratives, as well as perspectives form the local community.

The museum is keen to reflect perspectives on some of the historical events and corresponding artworks  that have been previously untold or under represented. Silvia says, “We’ve been on a journey to understand the stories that have been missing from our collections – particularly in our 18^th and 19^th century American galleries. By consulting with focus groups that include local teachers, museum visitors, artists, as well as front line staff, we’ve explored new stories and new ways to tell those stories.”

Of course, being more inclusive is more labour intensive. But as Silvia notes, “We have a commitment to prioritising diverse voices and community engagement and, for us, the additional time and effort is worth it for the awareness it raises and the platform it provides the community and underrepresented groups.”

Another area of focus for the museum in its drive to enhance inclusion and accessibility lies in language. With a growing Latinx community (now 36% of the Newark population) and a fast-growing community of people of Caribbean descent in recent years (many of whom speak Creole as their first language), this is an area the museum knows it must be proactive in.

From labels to marketing materials that go out into the community, Darryl and Sylvia are quick to point to the importance of making diverse groups feel comfortable and accommodated wherever possible.

Silvia notes, “Really, that is the first step in convincing the community that we offer a safe and inclusive space for them. By overlooking their needs we would be almost letting them know that they are not welcome.”

Find out more about The Newark Museum of Art’s engagement strategy here.

ATLANTA, June 27, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Pye-Barker Fire & Safety – the largest private full-service and fully integrated fire protection, life safety and security services provider in the United States – unveiled its new branding at Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Race at Nashville Superspeedway. The new brand mark – the letters P and B shown suppressing a life safety threat – adorned the No. 20 racecar sponsored by Pye-Barker and driven by John Hunter Nemechek. Pye-Barker collaborated with top students from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) to create the new brand mark that comes on the heels of exponential growth for the company, which now operates more than 160 branches across 37 states.

Pye-Barker’s new brand mark reflects the company’s full-service capabilities and unites its service lines – fire extinguishers and suppression systems, fire alarms and security systems, and fire sprinklers – under one brand. It replaces a flame and extinguisher mark which became outdated as the company significantly expanded its capabilities through an aggressive growth strategy that’s resulted in over 100 acquisitions since 2016.

Twenty SCAD students, juniors through graduate level, teamed with Pye-Barker through the college’s SCADpro program, which connects high-achieving students with influential businesses for marketing and design contract projects.

“We knew we wanted to redefine our logo in a way that would unite all of our services under one brand, reflect our values and honor our legacy,” said Bart Proctor, Pye-Barker CEO. “SCAD and its students embrace an entrepreneurial spirit that is complementary to who we are. They’ve created a brand mark that will become synonymous with the nation’s fastest growing and most respected full-service fire, life safety and security company.”

The new logo modernizes the traditional and recognizable Pye-Barker blue and green that symbolize both the trust the company instills with customers and team members and its innovative approach to life safety protection.

“This was an exciting project for our students. They interacted closely with Pye-Barker’s executives who are genuine, authentic, salt-of-the-earth people. Together, they crafted a design that stands for safety, protection and belonging,” said Chris Peterson, who oversees industry partnerships at SCADpro. “I’m thrilled for the students to see their idea come to life in the real world.”

A list of participating students can be found on Pye-Barker’s website at pyebarkerfs.com/brand.

Contact:
Alycia Volpe
Senior Marketing Director, Pye-Barker Fire & Safety
678.801.6547
[email protected]

SOURCE Pye-Barker Fire & Safety