Northam says Virginia spends $67 million on marijuana enforcement, which is enough to open up another 13,000 pre-K spots for kids.
RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Virginia’s Lt Gov. Ralph Northam calls for the decriminalization of marijuana in a letter to the Virginia State Crime Commission on Monday.
STATE BY STATE: Virginia Cannabis News
Northam says Virginia’s current marijuana enforcement and sentencing laws remain “costly and disproportionately harmful to communities of color.”
Olivia Mannix, founder and CEO of Cannabrand, offers her top pointers for creating the best marketing and branding strategies for your company.
When it comes to navigating the marketing side of your cannabis business, it can be difficult to create a plan to effectively market your product and service offerings to your customer base. Olivia Mannix, founder and CEO of Cannabrand, a full-service marketing agency specializing in the cannabis industry, shared with Cannabis Business Times her top 5 tips for a successful marketing and branding strategy.
Branded content is a type of advertising that uses the creation of content as a way to promote a particular brand. Companies should consider investing in branded content, Mannix suggests, to relay information to their customers about their products and services, to engage them and make them remember you.
For example, she described Cannabrand’s Kushmoji, a marketing and ad platform in the form of an emoji keyboard for your smartphone.
“Basically, people can interact with cannabis brands via emojis,” Mannix said. “You can download Kushmoji in the App store, it integrates into your keyboard into your iPhone or Android, and people can learn about brands in the industry, dosing, strains of products, locations of where they can get product [and] proximity.”
Mannix says that various cannabis brands have their own emojis that allow people to learn general information about them, such as where their products are sold. The app also uses location tracking so if a consumer is in a particular city and he pulls up the Kushmoji keyboard, all of the dispensaries and promotions populate. The user can then click on a link and learn more about the products.
On the flip side, Kushmoji tracks analytics, which allows Cannabrand to collect the demographics of the app’s users and provide that information to their partners, who can then see who their clients are.
Neos marketing campaign by Cannabrand. Image courtesy of Olivia Mannix.
Mannix says social media channels like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are very important, and that you should use these platforms to post branded content, but also to educate your followers. She said posting photos and videos with the content is also important, as people like to glance through posts and not necessarily read them all in their entirety.
“We are in the age of skim,” Mannix said. “There’s some statistic that people only read the first two sentences of an article, or they’ll skim all the way through it and they’ll just look at the pictures.”
For vertically integrated companies with retail (medical or adult-use) space, Mannix says that the way a company’s point-of-sale (POS) is displayed, the way you walk through the shop and its general flow are all important factors to consider when setting up such an area.
“Your point-of-sale or your point-of display of your products in dispensaries is really important to be eye-catching, to be engaging with the consumer,” she said.
Another part of a company’s marketing strategy, Mannix (pictured right) said, is public relations and the way a brand communicates with journalists.
“Public relations is a great way to also get your brand out there because you’re able to speak openly and honestly about the brand,” she said. “Journalists can speak about cannabis companies without the laws and restrictions about cannabis marketing and advertising.”
Finally, Mannix advises cannabis businesses to stay away from counterculture, cartoons, jokes and anything that puts a negative connotation on cannabis consumers in not only their branding and marketing strategies, but also on their social media pages.
“You need to be educating people, you need to be informing people, you need to be on a political level and advocating for the industry so we can change laws, especially in this time, and that all trickles back to marketing,” Mannix said.
Top image: Verde Naturals color palette. Courtesy of Cannabrand.
The Nano Research poll conducted for CTV news included 1,000 Canadians.
The legalization of recreational marijuana may be less than a year away, but Canadians remain divided about such fundamentals as where it should be sold, what the legal minimum age of consumption should be and whether the provinces or Ottawa should take the lead, according to a new poll.
The Nanos Research poll of 1,000 adult Canadians, conducted for CTV News, found that about three in 10 people (27.6 per cent) agree that the minimum age of consumption should be set at 18, while another three in 10 (29.5 per cent) believe that the age should be set at 21. Smaller numbers say that the age limit should be something else or that marijuana should remain illegal.
Currently, intractable epilepsy is the only condition for which Texas allows medical marijuana use.
AUSTIN – Texas Senator Jose Menendez has filed a bill to extend the use of medical marijuana in Texas to include cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries, and other ‘debilitating conditions.’
STATE BY STATE: Texas Cannabis News
Senate Bill 79 was filed Friday. Supporters of SB 79 are hope extending medical marijuana use in Texas will help alleviate the prescription opioid crisis while giving sufferers of specific afflictions a more natural and safer alternative to pain management.
The Health Ministry has until the end of the year to issue its rules.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto approved a law in June calling on the Health Ministry to write rules for the medical use of marijuana. Initially, many politicians, including Jose Luis Oliveros Usabiaga, a member of the center-right National Action Party and youth committee chair in the lower chamber of Congress, opposed the legislation when it was being debated.
“My opposition, of course, was to addiction. It felt like giving a child a gun to play with,” Oliveros Usabiaga said.
RELATED: International Cannabis News
But the country’s Supreme Court later determined that the prohibition of the consumption or cultivation of marijuana violated fundamental human rights. Oliveros Usabiaga, who has since stepped down from office, now supports legalization, he said.
Peña Nieto eventually gave a speech at the United Nations lamenting the human toll of the country’s decadelong drug war against drug traffickers and pledging to push for legislation allowing the medical use and scientific research of marijuana.
