The Cannabis 50
As Creative/Content Director at MGO, I spearheaded The Cannabis 50 as a marketing campaign designed to raise brand awareness and make direct connections with cannabis industry leaders and influencers.
The goals of this marketing campaign were to:
Develop direct, ‘organic’ relationships with prospective clients
Raise awareness of the MGO brand within the cannabis industry
Earn media coverage of the award
In the following I will describe the essential steps taken to accomplish these goals.
Genuine & Authentic
The cannabis industry is rife with pay-to-play and half-baked awards. So I knew we would have to go above-and-beyond to distinguish The Cannabis 50 and break through the market clutter.
To do this, I identified key trends and issues facing the cannabis industry, including: raising capital, regulatory compliance, M&A, social justice, etc. I then worked backward from these trends to identify leaders across the full spectrum of the industry, including MSOs, celebrities/influencers, non-profits, politicians, and others.
From lists of nearly 1,000 potential nominees, we whittled down the list to include those most deserving, business prospects, and influencers likely to share the award to their social networks. I then broke the final 50 nominees down into five categories based on the reason for their nomination:
Doing Good - Contributions to sustainability, social justice, etc.
Doing Well - Excellence in financial and operational performance
Money Talks - Innovation in raising capital and financial management
Knowledge & Wealth - Leaders in research and education
All the Lights - Celebrities and influencers normalizing cannabis culture
Cannabis 50 Impact Review
The core of The Cannabis 50 project is a 35+ page report we issued detailing all of the nominees and the reasons for receiving the honor. Including the reasoning and descriptions was essential to maintaining the authenticity central to the project. Many other awards are context-less lists of the same MSOs and brands with media buying power.
I sought to distinguish The Cannabis 50 by providing context that would resonate with the nominees to motivate them to genuinely appreciate and celebrate the honor.
Distribution & Engagement
To maximize the impact and secure/strengthen relationships forged through The Cannabis 50, I launched a variety of distribution and engagement strategies. The overall effect was excellent response from the nominees, earned media coverage, and nominees extending our reach by sharing on their social channels.
Through careful coordination of engagement and sales strategies, The Cannabis 50 had a direct impact on the company’s bottom line as eleven honorees in the 2019 class became firm clients generating over $1.5MM in 2020 revenue.
One-on-One Interviews
One core strategic practice implemented during The Cannabis 50 was pre- and post-report outreach. Before we issued The Cannabis 50 Impact Review, we let our nominees know they were to be honored and asked them to reply to a questionnaire to provide quotes, or they could secure an interview with our team.
For the latter strategy, I conducted one-on-one interviews with our nominees that we later published as standalone content on our website. For high-profile new business prospects, we connected the honoree (typically CEOs of major cannabis brands) with one of our cannabis practice leaders. In this way, we let our leadership team develop direct rapport and relationships in an organic way.
Some of the highlights of my interviews include conversations with:
Steve DeAngelo - Founder of Harborside
Kim Rivers - CEO of Trulieve
Jim Belushi - Founder of Belushi Farms
Micah Tapman - CEO of BDSA
Bruno Schiavi - CEO of Uncle Bud’s
Social Engagement
Along with the notification that an honoree was going to be included on The Cannabis 50, I put together an asset package that included language, hashtags, a variety of logos, and other assets that would make it easy for honorees to share on their timeline.
This was a huge success as nearly every honoree we communicated with gladly shared the logo and information, tagged MGO, used our logo, and thanked us for the recognition.
This helped spread awareness of The Cannabis 50 (and MGO) far and wide throughout the cannabis ecosystem.
