When Matt Janz accepted a job as marketing director for The+Source, a vertically integrated cannabis company with retail locations in Las Vegas and Henderson, Nev., he could not have been happier. “It sounds cheesy, but they were always my dream dispensary,” he tells Cannabis Dispensary. “They always had very consistent branding, they had strong messaging, very consistent voice and tone as well. Definitely a brand I wanted to be associated with, from a marketing perspective.”

Prior to working with The+Source, Janz was VP of marketing and operations for Oasis, another Las Vegas retailer, where he increased sales by 180%, margins by 20%, and in-store traffic by 150%, he says. Prior to that, he worked with the Apothecarium and for an entertainment marketing agency that worked with several entites on the Las Vegas Strip.

Courtesy of The+Source

After Green Growth Brands acquired The+Source in 2019, Janz saw his role expand to director of THC marketing, where he now leverages his experience in Nevada’s cannabis marketplace to develop strategies to bring a new suite of products to market. In this 10 Questions interview, he shares details on his role, tips on how to market new products, and advises cannabis companies how best to navigate the global COVID-19 pandemic.

[Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length, style and clarity.]

Brian MacIver: You’re the director of THC Marketing for The+Source. What exactly does that job entail?

Matt Janz: As the director of THC Marketing, I’m responsible for leading and executing across all markets for The+Source, as well as our vertically integrated brand, 8Fold. 8Fold is actually The+Source’s legacy brand. They are a cannabis line truly focused on quality cannabis at a friendly price point.

[I also manage] CAMP [an extracts and edibles line], developed with our partners at Green Growth Brands. They are an award-winning brand focused on connecting with nature, others and yourself.

In conjunction with all that, I also lead and develop all our communication and marketing strategies and am responsible for the brand’s articulation at retail across the region.

Ultimately, I do act as our team’s in-house cannabis expert.

BM: The+Source was recently acquired by Green Growth Brands, which added different brands and products to your offerings. What’s your approach to developing marketing strategies for new products?

MJ: Developing brands and new products is a team effort. It really does take a village to overcome the challenges that we face in our industry.

When we start the process of strategy development, we start with the “who” and the “why.” The marketing strategy should meet a unique consumer need. You should be communicating your product’s reason to be and provide consumer-centric messaging that is both connective and authentic.

To develop an effective marketing strategy for new products, you need to take a deep dive into those niche consumer needs, refine your core audience and understand their psychographics and understand what matters most to them. From there, you should take a 30,000-foot view on your omni-channel mix and create the most cost-effective penetration strategy across those channels while deploying that connective and engaging messaging.

From my perspective, marketers should also understand how to best leverage and utilize their earned and paid media. Because our industry has its challenges when it comes to traditional marketing strategies, it becomes even more pertinent to be innovative in how to communicate, what internal and external resources you leverage, and how you invest to develop mutually beneficial partnerships.

BM: The+Source is very community oriented. What has been your favorite community program that you launched?

MJ: One of my favorite programs that we started in the medical-only market is the Higher Education series. Higher Education is a completely free series of cannabis educational seminars that is led by our head of education Tony Robertson. Basically, every month we provide one free class that is open to the public in both Las Vegas and Henderson.

For us, no matter what the circumstance is, we’re always going to prioritize our community and our education. We think by providing education we’re supporting the community, because the better educated our community is on the positive benefits cannabis provides, the easier they can get the most out of the products they use for relief. We believe that wellness lives on a spectrum, and that spectrum ranges from the after-work winddown to a consumer looking to alleviate some serious conditions or ailment that they are facing.

"We felt that because cannabis is an essential medicine to patients, we had to minimize that risk of exposure and focus on serving their needs."

- Matt Janz, Director of THC Marketing, The+Source

 

BM: What are some tips you have for companies looking to start community programs?

MJ: One thing that I want to impart is that every last bit helps. Every movement starts somewhere, so don’t worry about launching the biggest community program you can. Start somewhere feasible and where the largest impact can take place. While a national charitable organization does provide tremendous support, you’ll likely make a more immediate impact by working with a hyper-local organization.

One example is we had worked with a local, veteran-owned charity called Forgotten Not Gone. They basically set up recumbent bike missions where they are uniting veterans to get out of the house to try to prevent suicide. We put together a fundraiser one day where we matched every transaction with $2 in donations, and we were able to raise $4,000. That $4,000 may not have had as much of an impact at a national organization. The donation we made to Forgotten Not Gone made a tremendous impact on our local veteran community and provided them with the funding necessary to repair some of the recumbent bikes they use.

Seek out specific groups in your community that might need assistance and try to find a way to work with vendor resources to benefit them, from fundraising to hosting support groups and providing free educational classes. There’s really a way for every cannabis organization to get involved and make a difference.

BM: From your position as a marketer, what is the biggest misconception people have about cannabis, and how do you go about changing that?

MJ: While I would like to think we’re reaching a new point of progress and the stigmas are slowly fading as we move forward, one misconception that I think still exists is that cannabis is a one-dimensional product that is just used to get stoned.

From my perspective as a marketer, we can beat that stigma through education, through empowerment and through showcasing cannabis integrating into every lifestyle. Our industry has an obligation to operate professionally and with integrity, impart education on everyone we serve and empower leaders to activate change.

BM: What are some marketing “don’ts” during this global COVID-19 pandemic?

MJ: Don’t avoid the hard conversations in communications. We’re all facing very uncertain times, and we need to provide continuous communication with our customers to alleviate the anxieties that they are facing.

The+Source had made the very hard decision to move to medical-only temporarily right before our governor had an emergency declaration. For us, this was important because one of our core values is being wellness minded. We felt that because cannabis is an essential medicine to patients, we had to minimize that risk of exposure and focus on serving their needs. It’s not that we completely shunned retail customers—we did provide them with delivery opportunities—but we made the decision to prioritize our medical patients’ health, and we ripped that Band-Aid off with a full-on communications campaign that touched every single channel that we have. We also deployed PR. We really went to the fullest extent to communicate.

It was a hard message, and it was not well received, but the reality is you can’t avoid hard conversations. You need to rip off the Band-Aid because your consumers are uncertain, and what you need to do is reduce that uncertainty. During this pandemic, we’re all going to have to make sacrifices with the intention of protecting our community and, as a result, ultimately the world’s health and safety. So, don’t be fearful how a difficult message will be received.

Most important, don’t make light of the situation. Now is not the time to be overly playful. Now is the time to take a more reverent tone and take your customers’ health seriously. With over 1 million worldwide and over 11,000 deaths in the USA alone, the situation is extremely serious, and our industry needs to project seriousness and empathy.

BM: What are some marketing “dos” during this global COVID-19 pandemic?

MJ: The three that I want people to take away are, one, do be empathetic; two, do communicate as often as possible; and three, do provide helpful resources to your community. 

Courtesy of The+Source

As marketers, we often focus on maintaining our brand’s voice and tone, but during this pandemic you need to break that mold and be human, first and foremost. Now is the time to connect with every customer you have in the most authentic ways possible, be empathetic to their problems and challenges and utilize your channels to relieve as much of the difficulty as possible.

We need to communicate frequently. Every single day brings new developments to the pandemic and how we’re operating, and the challenges humans across the world are facing. During a crisis, providing enough information to our customers is paramount: It’s going to reduce uncertainty and, as a result, reduce some of that anxiety that they are facing.

From my perspective, this is our time to leverage our channels to communicate those available resources to our community and provide pathways to them. Outside of direct resources, I urge marketers to get creative. What are some activities that your customers can do at home to stay active? What are some ways that customers can stay social while remaining at home? You should be developing strategies that bring the biggest benefits to your customers and lend a helping hand in every way that you can.

BM: What are some things that cannabis companies should be mindful of in how they communicate with their consumer base or patient base after this pandemic is over?

MJ: I think that, as a world, we’re realizing the importance of being ultra-hygienic. It’s going to be relevant to continue to have these elevated hygienic practices and to communicate what you’re doing to protect your consumers’ safety. You have to make sure that they feel comfortable knowing that just because this pandemic is over, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to go back to how things were because things are never going to be the same. In fact, now we have to be even more cautious so that we can provide that comfort.

BM: What has been your biggest lesson learned during your time in the cannabis industry?

MJ: The biggest lesson that I’ve learned personally during my time in the cannabis industry is the power of community. Across all the organizations that I’ve been blessed to work with, the Apothecarium, Oasis and The+Source, cannabis has helped my community in so many diverse ways. For example, with my teams, I’ve worked with organizations like Opportunity Village, which provides help to mentally and physically disabled members of our community through vocational training, treatment and art services. I’ve worked with Three Square, which is Nevada’s largest food bank. The+Source donated over 150,000 cans during one massive food drive. We’ve worked with organizations like the Nevada Blind Children’s Foundation, which helps underprivileged children who are blind or have visual impairments.

Those three examples are a very short list of a very long one that touches so many aspects of our community’s needs. From my perspective, there’s no limit to the power of the cannabis community when we harness our strength for the better good of our community. This is one way that we continue to fight the stigma: by showing our communities that there are numerous benefits from wellness to economic and through community impact.

BM: What’s next for The+Source?

MJ: Fortunately, with Green Growth Brands, we’re looking to expand The+Source to new regions and provide that same level of community support that we have here in Nevada to as many communities as possible. We stand for access, decriminalization and destigmatization. With the backing of hundreds of years of combined retail experience in [consumer packaged goods], our production and cultivation team continuing to be on the cutting edge, and our The+Source team bringing years of passionate and trusted experience, we’re extremely excited to continue our mission in bigger and better ways while we serve more communities across the country.

We believe that cannabis and life are better together, and the future of The+Source will be an evolution to humanize cannabis from relevance to its integration into every lifestyle and support the wellness of our communities.

Ohio has officially secured the testing equipment it needs to tell the difference between marijuana and hemp.

Up until recently, most of Ohio’s crime labs, if not all, could only detect the presence of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), but not the concentration. The concentration is key in determining whether the cannabis in question is hemp or marijuana, which would be anything containing more than 0.3% THC.

The lack of testing equipment exposed a major loophole in the state’s law enforcement capabilities. Since Gov. Mike DeWine signed Senate Bill 57 in July of 2019, which decriminalized hemp and legalized licensed hemp cultivation in Ohio, prosecutors across the state were told to either delay low-level marijuana possession cases for months or not pursue them at all. 

Now, the state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation has the equipment it needs to carry out quantitative analysis on cannabis, according to News 5 Cleveland. Attorney General Dave Yost said that now that the equipment is ready, local departments can start sending samples to the lab.

The loophole resulted in hundreds of marijuana seizures across the state that were not pursued with citations or charges, News 5 reports, including when a police officer pulled over Browns Running Back Kareem Hunt and “suspected the NFL player had marijuana.” The officer didn’t file charges.

In the time that cannabis has been in a sort of purgatory in the state, some municipalities have changed local laws to remove marijuana charges for lower levels of possession. In January, the city of Cleveland removed all penalties for having less than 200 grams of marijuana. 

States across the country have been dealing with similar issues of outdated equipment and K-9s unequipped to tell the difference between hemp and marijuana.

Some states have devised solutions, including Virginia, where some police officers have been using field test kits that measure the ratio of THC versus cannabidiol (CBD). Those kits allow police officers to limit the amount of cannabis they need to send to labs for official testing.

Doug Fine is an author who became so invested in his subject—hemp and, more broadly speaking, the cannabis plant—that he began growing hemp and developing a long-term plan as an entrepreneur. With the 2014 Farm Bill ushering in a new era in American agriculture, the dawning of the new hemp industry brought Fine to a greater understanding of the plant and its many possibilities. From New Mexico to Vermont, he’s picked up many adventures with the crop in the first five years of its 21^st-century cultivation in the U.S. 

Amanda Gorski

His latest book, American Hemp Farmer, outlines a more practical guide for aspiring hemp growers who may be interested in a close read of the industry and its attendant charms. Here, Fine talks about what he’s learned from the writing process and how he’s “walked the walk” as a hemp farmer himself.

Eric Sandy: In the interim between Hemp Bound and American Hemp Farmer, what did that earlier book teach you about the plant?

Doug Fine: It actually starts a little earlier than that. In 2011, I embedded for a year in the Emerald Triangle ganja-growing culture in California to write about regenerative nonprofit medicinal cannabis providers to see what the landscape could look like in a best-case scenario when legalization happened. At this point, there was no guarantee that any kind of cannabis would be legalized. Now, it’s not only happening in many states, but it looks like a near-certainty soon on the federal level.

While I was working with those farmers, they were talking about how their entire market is flower. They felt like, at best, they could compost the fiber. But they weren’t growing for seed at all. They were growing female plants. They planted the seed in my head, so to speak, that there was so much more to this plant. I went on a several-year research project that became Hemp Bound, which came out 4/20, 2014, not knowing when I was researching this book that hemp would be legalized the same month this book came out. Hemp would be federally legalized in the initial 2014 Farm Bill.

It was time to write a book about how we take this burgeoning industry and how farmers benefit. Let’s face it, farmers haven’t been the chief beneficiary of agriculture over the last century.

That’s really why I wrote American Hemp Farmer: It’s a practical, entire-season, start-to-finish, from soil prep and seed acquisition through harvesting, packaging and marketing—a way to keep regenerative, independent hemp farming as hemp’s leading brand, so that farmers are the primary beneficiary of this billion-dollar industry.

ES: For the active or prospective hemp farmer, what are some of the immediate challenges in 2020 season?

DF: Two immediate issues to keep in mind: The first is, as Wendell Berry advised me, please, tell your fellow hemp farmers to avoid that wholesale trap. I’m paraphrasing here. It’s important to control your industry. The way that I phrase it in the book is to think instead of putting all your eggs in the basket as a wholesale commodities serf, think about creating a value-added product. That is, I think, still the advice I would give as the book hits shelves. However, it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s just a way to avoid what has actually happened, which is that wholesale CBD flower prices have gone from $3,000 a pound to $4 a pound in the last few years. If you want to make it, you’ve got to take that extra energy—and it requires so much more work.

Now, you’ve got to be an entrepreneur. You’re not just a farmer, you’re a farmer-entrepreneur. It’s way more work. The liability and risk is on you. But if you’ve got a passion, you’ve got a real chance for making a good living while sequestering carbon and doing good for the environment.

The second one is a policy issue: We got a reprieve this year, in the 2020 season, where we can grow one more season under the 2014 Farm Bill (Ed. note: As many states are doing). It is imperative that prior to next year’s planting we change the federal definition of hemp from 0.3% to, at least, up to 1% THC content. That must happen. Speaking personally, if I’m going to be able to plant in future years, that has to happen. The plant wants THC, and there’s no reason to be scared of THC. 

 

ES: In terms of your own farm, what is your vision or your own end products that you’re working toward with your crop?

DF: The product that I market is the product that I most want to use and my family most wants to use. It’s called Hemp In Hemp, and it’s what it sounds like. To date, it’s been what I’ve been growing in Vermont, USDA-organic-certified hemp flower that is dioecious. It’s male and female. The seeded flower is infused in the hemp seed oil, so you’re getting flower and seed. It’s been marketed as a massage and bath oil, and my hope is in coming season to expand it to be an edible product. The hemp seed oil side is a superfood, and you’re getting the whole-plant cannabinoids. We do a decarboxylation extraction, so it’s all the cannabinoids in very low numbers but in ratios that I like, with terpenes. It’s very small-batch, very top-shelf. I’m trying to walk the walk and be a role model. I am trying to follow my own advice and have a multi-year entrepreneurial plan with slow growth. I’m trying to demonstrate that we have to, as entrepreneurs, we’ve got to be part of the solution, climate-wise.

ES: What’s the learning curve like in this industry?

DF: I tend to be supportive of newcomers to hemp farming and hemp farmer entrepreneurialism. The reason is: We need for farmers. There’s a school of thought, especially among some more experienced farmers, who say, “Oh my gosh, these greenhorns are leaping in and not knowing what they’re doing!” And, yes, one has to be mature and start small and build slowly. But I say, get the seed in the ground! Learn as you go! It really is the best way to go. If you’re a super young farmer who has the time and energy to apprentice with more experienced farmers, sure, that’s great. But if you’re a farmer who wants to move on and make a living from hemp, I would say, get the seed in the ground. Ask the experts. But you’re never going to learn as much as you will from being in that field every day. I encourage folks to do it: Start small and have a multi-year growth plan.

ES: What did you enjoy most about the writing process in this book? Something that you could take back to the field with you?

DF: For me, humor is always the root to maintaining sanity. I love any time when I can recount really funny things that happened. What comes to mind is the “Planting Day” chapter. The chapter is about malfunctioning equipment—seed drills, specifically—while we were trying to plant our crop. The humor embedded in this, the angry customer service calls I and my colleagues to the people who leased us the equipment, everything that could go wrong—from the seed drill not dropping enough seeds to dropping all your seeds in one spot—it’s funny in retrospect.

The second thing is when I’m out in the field and saying, “Oh, this is a moment I’d love to convey in the book.” That tended to happen when I was out with my family in the home field and it’s quiet, we’re hearing a woodpecker or seeing a fox. We’re talking to the rabbits about treating our crop as a “sometimes-food.” It’s the moments where I say, “This is a moment that means a lot to me.” I’ll whip out my phone and make a quick note for the book. Those were the two most fun experiences for me.