Two weeks ago while I was compiling the weekly newsletter for Lift News it struck me as strange that by far the most reported story of the week was that a BC dispensary was selling a cannabis advent calendar.
It struck me as strange for many reasons, the foremost being that it seemed odd that such a massive percentage of the Canadian newsmedia felt this was newsworthy material. If I had seen one or two stories from different outlets I wouldnt have thought much, but I must have seen at least a dozen such stories in just that first week.
story of the week: national media conspires with BC dispensary to market illegal weed advent calendar to unsuspecting canadians.
Boss Sauce (@DonDeCosmos) November 18, 2017
Its now two weeks later and it seems the story is still gaining momentum. There are stories about the stories now (including this one), many of them mentioning how all the previous media coverage has lead to record sales of the calendars; theyre flying off the shelves!
If the popularity of these stories is due to high demand from the readership, thats all well and good, and Im sure it is this way to a certain degree. But even so, this example is useful for illustrating a larger trend in the emerging cannabis industry one that has its beginnings all the way back in the earliest days of the medical marijuana movement and stretches through to modern LPs and dispensaries alike.
The larger trend here is that because the regulations and stigmas around cannabis mean that traditional avenues of marketing and advertising are off limits, cannabis advocates and professionals have often turned to the news media for exposure.
For dispensaries and activists in the past, this has often meant holding rallies in high visibility places or publicly doing something illegal in the hope of getting arrested in front of TV cameras so that you make your mark on the 6 oclock news.
But the situation in BC has changed over 20 years, and its not so easy to get arrested here anymore. So we see dispensaries looking to other techniques to get the attention of the press (and the free advertising that comes with it).
And youll find no more effective technique than this advent calendar. Media outlets all across Canada, and even a few in the US, have taken the bait.
Several LPs have also tried their hand at using pop-culture associations to rope the media into providing them with free advertising that circumvents the harsh restrictions placed on the cannabis industrys ability to advertise to the public.
The most prominent examples of this tactic are celebrity endorsements and brand associations, such as Tweeds infamous deal with Snoop Dogg, Organigrams partnership with the Trailer Park Boys, and Newstirkes alliance with the Tragically Hip.
These celebrity associations work a little bit differently (and cost a whole lot more) than the holliday association of the advent calendar, but both tactics operate on the same ...
