Episode 50: Beyond Buzzwords: Authentic Strategies in Cannabis Marketing

Lisa Buffo

Hello, everybody. Welcome to today’s episode of Party like a marketer. Today’s guest is John Shute, the founder and CEO of PufCreativ. John, welcome. And thank you for coming on our show.

 

John Shute

Thank you for having me. It’s a honor and pleasure to be here.

Lisa Buffo

of course. So I know that we’ve known each other a while now and have worked together in the industry. You’re in Denver, you’re deep in the the Colorado cannabis community, but for our audience who doesn’t know you, could you introduce yourself? Introduce puff creative? Tell them a little bit about your background professionally, how you got into cannabis. And as a founder how you started puff.

John Shute

Sure, yeah. So yeah, John Shute here, founder CEO of PufCreativ like Lisa mentioned. So I guess a little bit about my background is right after I got my master’s degree in project management, I was a marketing and operations director at a mega nightclub in South Florida, which was a very interesting experience. But it opened my eyes kind of to creative marketing and what was possible, and wasn’t really my forte. That same year, I unfortunately lost a few friends to the opiate epidemic, which kind of led me to my cannabis path. And that led me to being a marketing and marketing director of a cannabis contract manufacturing company. So left that marketing and operations gig in Florida, moved to being a marketing director digitally have a contract manufacturer in California, which kind of taught me everything from what happens from seed to sale. So these folks dealt with the growers, they dealt with brands, they dealt with dispensaries, they had their own in house brands. So I kind of took this like, headfirst dive into cannabis marketing 101 What goes down from seed to sale? What happens from like a, b to b, b to c perspective. So yeah, just kind of crazy. Like I always was a cannabis consumer and never thought I grew up in Southern New Jersey and like, never thought my entire life I would like have an opportunity to work in the cannabis industry. And at the time, I think I found the gig on indeed.com. And it was the only single job listing on there. And I couldn’t find a job in cannabis like anywhere else. It was like so weird. That was like 2015, I believe. And that is when I met my now business partner, Katie Burrell. She was actually my intern at the time. And her and I were managing the social media, and email marketing and content marketing for the manufacturer their in house brands, and then some of their brand partners they brought on as well. And we both I think Katie left her job. And I also I think like a month before my wedding. The company we were working for decided like, oh, like, we know, we promised you these long time gigs. You know, sorry, it’s not going to work out. So we were like, wait, what, like we literally just like left our jobs changed our whole entire lives for this. And now like, you’re telling us that we can’t like it was ever after we made them like so much money too. So it’s very disappointing. But instead of kind of, you know, putting our tail between our legs, that’s how we started puffed, creative. We like realize their value, realize the value of knowing what happens from seed to sale, and everything in between, and all the marketing intricacies there. And kind of took that knowledge. We met up with Seamus, who was kind of like the missing piece to our puzzle. He kind of handled like our photography website, you know, more did more technical stuff. And yeah, that was seven years ago. So we started kind of doing mainly just social media and like Photo Video, kind of tying together cannabis culture to these brands, to different retailers and whatnot they were working with and then brought on guy who knew a little bit more Ben Stewart, who know knew more about web and SEO than we did. And we realized there was this huge gap with branding, social media, websites as SEO blogging email like there wasn’t there was a huge gap and alignment between how they all work together, what was possible, how people were creating this alignment. So we started doing just social content and really and then that led us to doing branding, you know, websites, SEO, blogging, email marketing. And in that journey, you know, I already was kind of passionate about cannabis, like helping people from like an opiate, you know, addiction perspective, I learned all these other missing gaps of wow, like, there’s a huge sustainability issue in cannabis. There’s this huge education gap. There’s this huge gap with community, there’s this huge gap with social justice. And then I realized, like, wow, there’s this crazy opportunity where we could infuse all of these efforts into one where people are aligning their entire marketing platforms, infusing culture infusing community, infusing these efforts all into one to kind of create this harmony. So that, that being said, a long winded way of saying, yeah, it’s been seven years since like that experience that Katie and I went through. And we offer this very, very robust offering now of branding, packaging, you know, websites, SEO, social media, blogging, we’ve had our partners over cannabis doing good, the cannabis Impact Fund, who helped us kind of align with all these community partners, nonprofits all over the world, at this point, which is really cool. So we really enjoy, you know, getting these brands and retailers and companies set up and kind of taking them from start to finish. And it’s really cool. Just, you know, going through seven years of the cannabis industry and eye opening, it’s stressful at the same time. Because it’s such a fast moving industry and so much has changed since then. But yeah, just a really wild ride. Hope that covered covered a lot of it.

Lisa Buffo

Thank you for sharing that I even I didn’t know some of those details. So yeah. When did you get to Denver? Did you move from South Colorado?

John Shute

Yeah, no. So it Yeah, it’s been a wild ride. My wife and I, we graduated from college in New Jersey, she went to law school in Vermont, I ended up getting my master’s there. We lived in California for a little bit where I just I learned a little bit more about like the the black market and like I did some trimming and things like that in this job. The this is like completely separate Yeah, then I then I, I was doing my Masters online. And while I was doing that my wife was doing a study and practice in law. Weird. Probably shouldn’t have said that. But then we then I after she graduated law school, I got my master’s is when I was in Florida. And then I was like, I need to get out of this and get into cannabis industry. I just had this like, there’s this gap, I feel this is like my calling and yeah, then then it was back in New Jersey to get all of our stuff where we’re from. And then Colorado, but we weren’t planning on actually staying in Colorado, like we were like, Oh, I can do this job remotely, but like we want to go back to California. But then once we landed here, I kind of got screwed over she had a job I started puff and then it just kind of all weed you know now I now have my second child on the way and at home here. We kind of just like landed here. And it’s really cool because this is like you know, this is the mecca of cannabis and where it all started but Colorado has its own unique animal and in the whole cannabis space all around, you know from like a brand retailer consulting there’s a lot going on here and it’s as much as other states you know, should follow the path of Colorado it didn’t interesting how business works here and opened my eyes just to how unique the industry is state to state and globally and things like that. So it’s cool.

Lisa Buffo 

Yeah, definitely Colorado was it was a good place to kind of get that first cannabis education sure build a business we were on a very similar timeline in Denver as well so I totally under

John Shute

Yeah, yeah, I always say I think I was like at one the the first maybe happy hour you did like and you have like a pencil and paper the sign up the emails I remember and I was like yeah, this is like this is sick now and like and then I like attend your conference and just like wow, this has come such like a long way. So yeah, I remember when like you were kind of first getting going to it’s crazy to be on this podcast. Yeah, yeah. No,

Lisa Buffo

it is it is and we we started to serve marketers like you because I was formally in your position, the brand that also didn’t work out and also had to start my business as kind of a, in some ways a reaction to it, but also it was, you know, doing its thing at the same time. So, yeah,

John Shute

well one want to say is that like, I remember what you like, I still feel this way, like about CMA is like it’s almost like a bit of pillows to fall on. Because it’s always nice to know that you have someone who has your back. Because you never know what type of situation you’re going to be in as a cannabis market there, whether it’s like a random compliance thing with a third party provider or a state to state issue where you’re just like, completely stuck. And just like feel like you’re, you’re alone. So Thanks for Thanks for doing what you do.

Lisa Buffo

Thank you, I’m so happy to hear that. And thank you for your support, we could not do it without members like you. So I also like to talk with our guests about their unique area of expertise. Marketing is a broad, wide net, like you just mentioned, as far as your do need to know, it’s one thing to be a specialist, whether it’s SEO or design or content writing, you have to understand to be truly effective, the big picture, the 30,000 foot view on how all these things play together. But everyone does some degree have an area in which they understand better or can execute better. And I know puff does so many things so well. But I know one thing we had talked about before was the unique way websites can be built and user experience. And user interface, which I will personally say in the early days of the industry 2014 2015 When I got started, clean, Polish modern websites were not the standard and Norm they they started a lot of like there was a lot of similar colors, there was technology that I mean, obviously technology moves faster than I think any of us can keep up with these days. But definitely the case as far as where things started, and how quickly brands have evolved in thus their design. But I just want to hear from you more about your perspective on UX and UI in the space. What differentiates how you think about it, and what is important for marketers who may not be as design oriented in that sense, from the technical level about how it fits into the bigger picture.

John Shute

Sure, yeah. I mean, it’s changed, possible for cannabis. You know, speaking in terms of retailer brands, specially on the retailer side. I would say compared to, you know, just even a couple years ago, the E commerce experience now and the customer loyalty and rewards experience now is like night and day. We used to be forced to work out of it. And this is a topic that you guys talked about all the time, and it’s a hot topic right now is the is ecommerce site, but we now like native menus are like our, you know, a thing they weren’t before. So now you have the ability to be more creative with your project pages, have them indexed by Google have have users be able to get locked in on their e commerce experience in the location closest to them, you know, you can actually build these e commerce focus sites where we could we could do that in the past, but we’re limited really, on how customized we can be and, you know, the quality of that experience and you know, less clicks to get something of a car. So that’s been really fun. You know, like, we been doing a lot of different websites with like, dispense and duchy plus and the blaze solution and chain routes. And it’s been really fun learning about what each what each one of those, you know, major e comm tech stack, you know, providers, you know, can do from like a native ecommerce perspective. And it’s fun, because you can, you know, get right to product categories and right to embed product menus on specific pages. And it makes not only that website experience better, but the tracking of links and email campaigns, blog campaigns, you know, social campaigns, things that really just weren’t on the on the table before. So the all around like marketing experience now with EECOM to in general is just awesome. Sorry, dogs barking. The on the on the loyalty side. It’s really cool to see what companies like Alpine and spring big have done that kind of just really take that ecommerce experience to the next level where people can have rewards. You know, you can do email, email, SMS campaigns, align them with the rewards, you know, et cetera. And there’s a lot of different customizability, you can do there as well. And it’s been crazy to just work with developers and different partners out there too, that have capabilities to develop, like custom features to like align someone’s rewards to the E commerce experience and how that interacts and works. And it’s really cool. So that’s been a huge side of it, that just the tech side, and there’s so much to talk about there as well just like dealing with people early on, and who they choose for their POS provider, how that aligns with the E commerce, how that aligns with the loyalty, you know, how deep you can get with your analytics and things like that. And all of that ties back to the website design and development UX UI. And that’s something that I feel like people don’t actually realize like early on in the process, right. So that’s been fun. But also like, another thing to consider early on, that impacts UX UI, just like that, what I think helps ecommerce sites and sites that you’re trying to convert, get people to find your product, etc. Is starts with the branding. And like, the more branding assets that you have, whether it’s your logo, your colors, your fonts, organized and dialed in, plus, your mission, your vision, your tagline, your brand, introduction, mood boards, you know, patterns, you know, creative things that like have been thought out and align with your brand and your ethos. I believe we know someone like us, like we build better quality sites that convert, you know, better in my mind. Not to mention, if you tie in a great story and some type of great effort of like, a missing piece in the community or in like, whether it’s education, or there’s a certain amount of, you know, folks in prison for cannabis in your community. And you allied some social justice effort there, or some type of like, leather writing program or something along those lines, I think infusing all that together, the brands, the community effort, the story, the Econ experience, the the quality of the output of the ongoing deliveries, you know, you have like cannabis providers, retailers, and even brands to an extent, like have this opportunity to like, really do it. And now, where we just didn’t have that before. So it’s really fun to have these opportunities. There’s like a website design developer, but for us in particular, we really liked that we can help people, like, map out that story, develop those brand assets tied to the site, think long term about, hey, like, let’s use this econ provider, because you’re trying to get to these goals and reach these key performance indicators down the line. So long winded answer about UX UI, but I feel like it’s important to say, because another another point there is like, dive into, you know, website projects, and people might have, like timelines or expectations around it. But, you know, if they don’t have any branding assets, or, you know, copy or, you know, photos and videos, you know, there needs to be so I’m like, understanding of like the give and take of like, what that deliverable is going to look like and the timing of it, and like, what’s the best time and things like that? So? Yeah, I hope that was,

Lisa Buffo  18:36

it does No, and I emphasize a few things. You said that good marketing strategists and folks who are on the channel side, whether it’s executing social or email or any of these campaigns have to have that foundation of a of thought out brand and thought out story that comes from the business owner or leadership, to be able to take it and run with it, they can thoroughly reverse engineer it and invent it, that that kind of soul of the company has to come through first, and then you can apply good strategies and techniques and I get asked a lot personally just in this role at CMA. Like what’s this is the number one question I get asked like, what is the best channel for my business to for marketing, and I’m always like that is five steps, five questions later than the first question you need to ask which yes, balls understanding the brand and understanding your customers. And then you can talk strategy and optimizing that and tweaking that you have to know who that is first, and to your So assuming that’s a given and that’s there, which is why we emphasize storytelling so much at CMA because then the channel just becomes where do you tell the story not what is it and how, but I think in the early days of this space, there was a lot of, you know, we think about cannabis and how it’s sold and even in my mind still, it’s like it’s all about retail because you still have to walk into a dispensary to get At your product, but now that has changed where as a regular customer, I can go to the website, I can pre order pandemic was a perfect example get curbside pickup, I don’t need to have a conversation with the budtender. I just need to know what I want order it and then physically go get it as opposed to having it delivered. And those are your customers who are going to be coming back who already know you and know what they are, at least know what they want. You don’t have to educate them on though like, why am I to try cannabis over, you know, alcohol at the end of the day, they’re further down that customer journey. So having a clean, thoughtful, optimized tech stack is a core part of your marketing. That’s just as important as the in store retail experience. That is just you know, as important as the story that you’re telling. So the the, I’m just giving some credit and conversation that the cannabis marketing picture is way more than just channel or strategy. It is story it is in store, but also really understanding how they all play together. Because you can get one right and not the other to as much and and you’re just not going to see results and if you’ve carefully thought them through. But lastly, to your point, I do think that sort of tech optimization, this conversation we’re having about Native menus, and the marketing kind of techniques that can be used through E commerce, still apply to cannabis, even if we’re not at Amazon status, where we’re able to have full selection and get an order to our door. It’s not those tools and best practices still exist and still can be used and are being used by companies who do get that

John Shute

100% Yeah. And like what we saw during Yeah, COVID in particular is, I guess sick, especially depending on the state, but most states I mean, we’re working in like, I forget how many I think it’s like 23 states or something, give or take, but yeah, most states not all, but most majority of our clients in those states switch to their revenue, most of the being online, which is which is pretty crazy to see. And since then, yeah, this whole tech race has been very prevalent and everything that we do. And yeah, like, the main point there is like, there’s so much maybe folks that need to consider in the past or couldn’t consider that really needs to be considered, though, no matter what your situation, whether you’re a big company or small, I would say, you know, now, like, there is opportunity, like I think with that being said, like there’s more opportunities for smaller companies to be competitive, if they, you know, do this the right way. And the challenge there is just budgeting. Right, I think that’s, you know, part of a bigger conversation. But yeah, like mapping out like a marketing budget, keeping those things in mind is definitely smart to do like early on as well. Now, a lot of times, like we’ll get involved in projects and video, people go into the conversation like, Hey, I’m on like a very tight budget, you know, and I’m I have licensed now and doing like retail, and I’m on a very tight budget. So it’s crazy for me to see both sides of that. But what I will say is that, having that market market, like a realistic marketing budget planned out, it’s just going to create pain points for your operation down the line, because it’s things that like you’re just going to need now, because everyone’s gonna have you know, these things. So, you know, just something they consider whether you’re a marketer or like an operator, like those are conversations that you should totally try to have early on and like dial in to avoid future headaches or, you know, feelings towards you know, that agency client relationship that really don’t need to be there. It just a misunderstanding of like, potentially the operator of just not understanding, marketing and tech and what goes into that. And you know, cuz there’s even industry like, that’s crazy as that cannabis is so far behind. But there’s industries out there where just like marketing, you know, people have just gotten by without it, like using much organic SEO, they just maybe did a few ads, and that’s how they ran their business. But in 2023, in cannabis marketing, you kind of like need to get at this level, because even if you’re maybe the only location or you’re one of the few brands in the state right now, once things get competitive in the state, it just doesn’t stop. Like it just gets more competitive. So like the sooner you’re on top of this stuff, or if you’re someone going into a competitive market, going in with these types of strategies like implemented you’re, you’re gonna be able to get ahead of the game, for sure. and be more competitive. So

Lisa Buffo 

yeah, and I’m glad you mentioned that about the budget and expectations because we, we’ve been through this to where we built our site when we first launch, it’s gotten. And the thing is with websites, there isn’t a final destination. And I think that’s sort of a common, unstated misconception that like it’s built, and it’s done. And so we built this website, and then it kept getting updated over the years with different content and different things we need. And then, you know, recently we looked at it, and we’re like, this is no longer it needs a whole overhaul to be more modern and fit with what we’re doing now. And so when we sat down with our developers, and scoped it out, and we were like, how do we get it to a place where essentially, it’s in its final state, or has like the most up to date tech, and we had a conversation with our developers, and they were like, who are running agency as well, saying, they weren’t in our websites built on WordPress, and they’re like, we aren’t even planning for, like, more than a possible two or three year horizon on WordPress, because AI is changing everything. And like, the fundamental of websites are changing everything so so you don’t actually know what that final like horizon could be. But you do need to plan essentially need to plan for things to be updated need to be planned plan for as your things them to break, and to be able to fix it at that time. And

John Shute

there’s it goes, yeah, yeah, it goes deep. So that’s, that’s, like, you know, some pain points that we’re going through, like today, like, writing proposals and negotiating, like, with people and a pain point for us right now is we people were like, hey, we want to switch to your agency, we really liked that you can do everything for us. Like, you seem like cool people will, with my team is really cool. I’m like, alright, but you know, they’re like, can we transfer all of our assets over to you, and then we’ll rebrand and then, but what happens is, is like, they’re say, like, it was just built very poorly, and has all these really unnecessary plugins, and all this and then will, like, kindly take over the site. And then like, all of a sudden, these things are going wrong, that we could have never even planned for consider and like, it’s because the site wasn’t built, right, and the people managing it, or, like someone took it over who like didn’t know what was going on, or, you know, someone thinks you build a site, but then doesn’t realize like, what goes into making the banners and your specials every day and like what goes into backing up and securing it and it goes deep. And your website’s such a critical function, you know for you so yeah, there’s just so there’s there’s totally a lot of things that people need to consider with like the difference between hosting development this design, management, integrations, ecommerce, who’s responsible for what when you bring in third party providers, you know, things like that. So

Lisa Buffo 

yes, no, and I’m, I want to pivot to talking about some client projects you’ve done, oh, that have created submitted some work to our award show the CMI sevens, and we have a judge review or a jury review that but you do have award winning work that you’ve produced for clients on the web and the branding side, that for brands, specifically cannabis brands and retailers? So can you speak to some of those projects if you’re willing to and particularly like, what are some of the things that you would say differentiate between like good work and outstanding work and how do you kind of optimize for that in that sweet spot because I think that’s what everyone is true throughout you know, a fantastic work when you see it and you know, average work what you see it but like, what is that?

John Shute

Yeah, I think both the awards that we won at year sevens are great examples to talk about. I love that they’re both brands, which is which is it’s a challenge for brands like there’s a lot that goes into it and it’s it’s different from just like being just a retailer or fully integrated and I think rebel, so I’ll talk about rebel spirit first because I Diane is just awesome. She’s just like such a leader. I have a meeting with her Friday, very excited for it. But we were tasked with building her a new website that was going to last her being a long term sustainable brand, so thinking years ahead of she was in two states at the time. And we had to think ahead to like alright, let’s build her design that like designer said resonates with her brand has a great user experience leads people that were store locators, but it’s easy to build out from like, if you’re in a certain state and want to get to the information about that state, or as she adds on more states, it’s really easy just to do that as time goes on, or in her case, right now with our meeting, Isabel is out of country stuff, and like, expanding into him, and, you know, doing merch. And so when we were tasked with designing your site, we have to consider all these things state, the state, global hemp industry, cannabis, e commerce, how those clash, merge, language barriers, how languages need to change. So the first iteration of her site, we also considered aligning her design with her sales efforts and sales design and her new social media and branding book that she just did, because we wouldn’t do it with a great brand. But there needs to be some fine tuning with the design, and there needs to be some fine tuning with the messaging. And we needed some lifestyle photography to complement her like awesome farm photography. So we identified these like missing gaps. And then we came in, fill those gaps, design the site with, you know, her team, and then develop the site with these kind of custom features of balance between getting people to a store locator signing up for the newsletter, but also being able to really find the great information about her sustainable farming practices, and like her social justice efforts, and the story behind Uncle Mark, who was you know, their, their champion in this whole, you know, project that they started. So yeah, it was really cool, because she has a great story, great practices in you know, involved with her growing and her business practices, great branding. She was a school teacher in the past. So, you know, it was just funny, it was fun working with her on the copyrights, you had a lot to say. But it was cool. And yeah, we delivered this awesome site. And what’s really cool is like our meeting this Friday is about doing these things that we set it up to do, which is like other industries, building out the merch more, changing the languages, you know, having these custom features that we already mapped out that like aren’t going to be as big a lifts as if we didn’t have this conversation in the past around goals, you know, what, what’s going to like, is E commerce going to actually be a thing in the future, which it might be so like, Let’s do what makes sense that we can easily you know, if you want to start if you want to integrate royalty, or things like that, like it’s set up to do that. So that’s what’s so cool about that site, because we’re just able to kind of tie in a lot of what we do as like a full service agency, but like utilize a business that was set up greatly, you know, had these great practices, you know, had the story to tell and think long term at the same time, which is like, I feel like we’re just that’s like our sweet spot is like, getting set up thinking ahead. You know, making the right introductions if needed. And then, yeah, so we know we’re going to be executing this stuff for her over the next couple of months, which is awesome.

Lisa Buffo

And then for those who might want to look at it,

John Shute

we’ve it’s rebel spirit, cannabis that I want to double check though, because I don’t want to say the wrong thing.

Lisa Buffo 

We can link it. Yeah, let’s see. This is the brand

John Shute

rebel spirit cannabis.com Yeah. Yeah, shoot shooting mad if I got it wrong. So that was yeah, that was like, Man, I really enjoyed that project. Like I actually, like someone was out on my team. And I think I had to, like, be a bit more involved than I normally would. And like, it was just it was really fun. And then the other award we won through your award system, and I think a few others too. Yeah, a few other awards for them as well. Is gentleman smugglers which was just like why like a once in a like, almost like, once in a lifetime opportunity kind of thing. Like you never like I’ve never worked with so many great folks and stories, but these guys, literally, excuse me. These guys literally provided guys and girls sorry, provided the entire East Coast and more with cannabis store in the 70s and 80s. And were the target main target operation jackpot of Reagan’s war on drugs. During the time the John Mayer and he labeled they were labeled the gentleman smugglers. So we like we were handed this story like they’re in the process of making a documentary. There was a both written about them, we got to work directly with the main kingpin throughout the whole entire process.

And, you know, they’re in the process of like, yeah, he’s, he’s and till this day, we, it’s I talked to him all the time.

And which I think is cool, I think it’s awesome. You know, but they’re a brand like they, they’re, they’re a good example of like, it’s, it’s hard to get into states is just the brand and like, you know, they, they have a great story and have this awesome brand that we tied together with social justice involved. And we worked with their creative directors working on the documentary, so like, we have this footage and this vision and like, you know, it just, we’re, they brought almost like too much to the table, right? So it’s really cool being able to kind of refine that vision and kind of teach them about the legal cannabis industry. And like, all the limitations there and like things that consider from like, like a CPG, consumer packaged goods perspective, and like, you know, there’s, you know, we can’t just go too crazy in this area, because it’s like, sometimes we have too much too. It’s like, where do we, how do you dial that in and turn it into a sales material, turn it into a website, turn it a brand book, so it was cool to like, do their logo design and their their story and hone that in. But it was really cool to to like build out their website as a brand and like, introduce them to partners that we met in the industry and do their packaging, and, you know, consult them on the events and that strategy and things like that. So it’s really cool because they have an authentic story, they’re doing authentic give back at their partner with the last prisoner project and actively are partnered with different local nonprofits, you know, throughout Massachusetts is where they launched. But they have their own set of unique challenges being just a brand and now we’re helping them get into some other states right now. And just kind of aligning the marketing with that effort to as like a brand, like, how do you build something and then just make it fluid to grow? So we tried to consider like, you know, again, like off with them, it was like, Alright, we’re gonna launch a mass, here’s what that’s gonna look like. But when we go state to state, we’ve already set ourselves up for success to add this verbiage and build things out on the site and then like, make that transition on social media and things like that. So yeah, that’s been that’s been just like really fun project to working with those guys. Like, you know, they were the modern day dispensary. You know, like, they, you know, the sail boat across the ocean, you know, Jamaica, Colombia, Lebanon. I think that you know, I could be wrong here. I’m pretty sure it’s like all female boat sailed to Lebanon and got Lebanese hash, and like, gotten all the way back. I forget how many like

Lisa Buffo 

us? From the US? Yeah, yeah.

John Shute

So yeah, they said these, like, insane stories. And still, like, we, you know, we’ll never know enough of the stories. But yeah, even still, as a brand, like not many people know about them. Yeah. And so it’s been a challenge. Like, once people know the story, like we get that in front of them. It’s an easy, like, Oh, wow. Like, I love this brand. You know, like, like, I get it. But yeah, you know, it’s still it’s still a challenge even even with the story so you still have to do something like that still has to go through this process is like a cannabis brand and like, considering like, where to put their budget and like where to put their time? You know, when’s the right time to like duty certain things in terms of like PR or like, you know, building out product pages, you know, prior to launch and stuff like that. So yeah, that’s been just like unreal experience for sure. And I’m really excited about and yeah, I feel like right now we’re working with some stuff we just haven’t released yet. And a lot of projects that are in motion right now, you know, we’re really excited to kind of share with the world because the I feel like the possibilities right now from just like a marketing perspective, just kind of keep growing. So we’re just trying to constantly just stay up on like that level of education and like aligning that like what what we offer our clients and, you know, taking their platform to the next level. So it’s been it’s a good time. It’s a busy time as the cannabis market there, that’s for sure. Good, it’s

Lisa Buffo

always good to it’s always good to be busy. Yeah, certainly this year. So I the last thing I want to talk about is you have mentioned a few times is about leveraging community and social justice issues. And I know you have done that at POF. I’d know you I know you’ve done it at your work prior. And you do that a lot in the work with your clients. Can you speak to some of that as far as the things you have done? And or the things you’ve implemented? And how that fits into that marketing matrix as well?

John Shute

Yeah, I mean, I think that when people talk about, like doing nonprofit work and Community Work and Social Justice, especially people who are like tight on budgets, it almost becomes intimidating, like, oh, man, like, I can barely get my business up and running like, like, what, like, how I can’t put time and effort or more money into that. But I think there’s just more opportunity to get creative, and ways that you don’t need to spend as much money and time as you may think, like, we’ve done campaigns as simple as just like, raising awareness, you know, for a certain nonprofit or community organization that’s going through a hard time, or, like, there’s something going on in the world that I didn’t know where I could put funds or time into. Right, but I, you know, we just middleman. Hey, I announced on our social media, hey, like, if you’re looking for somewhere to donate, you know, X funds this, like issue going on in real time, like, here they are, you know, it just little things just as that I think people need to get more used to in general, and especially in cannabis, because we’re bridging this gap of like, a substance where, you know, I just talked about a brand, or someone’s served 11 years in prison, and now is a brand. You know, there’s people in prison and lives have been ruined over a couple grams of weed, where there’s a dispensary operating, right. So there’s as much as like cannabis is becoming accepted. And you know, there’s still that bridge. And there’s still this education gap in terms of, you know, who you’re buying from the quality of that plant, you know, who makes it, you know, how does that impact, you know, your life and the people around you. So, anyway, we’ve done these campaigns as small as what I mentioned, where it’s just like shouting out someone, because it’s just going to help piece the puzzle together for people or we’ve done deeper educational campaigns that drew traffic to, like a donate button for someone. But we’ve also like raised money through just digital campaigns of getting partners and brands and retailers or other consultants or even other agencies who are competitors like to just collaborate on a project. And those are the most fun, because, you know, everyone can kind of bring a different piece to the table. But like, the outcome is like, hey, like, we just raised, you know, 10 grand for the homeless in Denver, which is something that like, right when COVID happened, and that’s something we did with cannabis doing good, or the cannabis Impact Fund was we did a digital campaign, we couldn’t do events anymore. So we did this like marketing campaign with a bunch of partners out there. And we raised 10k, like, over like, maybe a week, it was crazy. But I mean, we’ve been and then we’ve done events, which I think is like an awesome way to like, pay what’s party for cause like it’s party for it with a purpose here. We’re going to have an events and be networking or activity educational or in the words, but it all ties back to you know, these nonprofits and these community organizations are what I really love now is that on digitally you can do and what we love to do is like a three month campaign partnered, where we partner like a retailer with two brands. And there’s this give back to a nonprofit that’s like local to that specific area. And there’s a page on the site that talks about this campaign that the social media newsletter and blog campaigns drive traffic to, and then we embed the products that are giving back to the nonprofits on those those pages, right, because now we’re cooking with gas with in terms of digital. So that’s what I’m starting to, like kind of geek out about and start pushing towards, you know, as of late is like taking those types of campaigns to the next level. So that’s that’s really cool. And like, yeah, you know, I think all the above like people should be doing because it’s just great content and and it’s great. You’re you’re you’re being authentic, you’re doing good. And you’re not just shoving you know, sales and like the same stuff down people’s throats all the time. It’s like we’re all working in harmony, to make good things happen. And what’s great about cannabis is like people are also getting high and also helping with with their medical ailments at the same time. helped with our mental health. So it’s kind of this like really beautiful thing that, like other industries just don’t necessarily have that opportunity. And for some reason on cannabis, all eyes on us all the time, like, you know, like, it’s, you know, it’s something that we all eyes on us, but something we should be doing because, you know, we have this unique opportunity to, like, address something that, you know, the social justice and you know, the war on drugs and you know, all those things happened for so many years, but given an opportunity to address it now and speed up the process to make things more normalized and fair and equitable. So, you know, and that that goes to the probably the last question you’re gonna ask me is like, what’s my advice to other marketers out there in cannabis in the future? Cannabis marketing is like that, right? There is like, there needs to be some type of standard with marketers, to keep innovating clients and the level of marketing to get to this level where, yeah, we’re marketing products that are good for people embedded the right way, and people who are giving back and making differences and educating, like, there needs to be disharmony. And it’s our responsibility as marketers to bridge those gaps, you know, that those people, you know, there’s lessons to be learned along that journey. So let’s learn those lessons and keep getting to this kind of better place. It’s everyone’s responsibility and history. But especially as marketers, like, you know, we’re the ones pushing it, doing the creative building the stories, like, Let’s push people to get to that level of excellence early on, like, we’re the first people that talk to these people. Most of the time, though, it’s like, Yo, like we can, we can guide these people in the right direction from square one, like, let’s try to do our best to do they know to make that happen. So that’s yeah, that’d be my advice is just like, let’s keep innovating and like making the industry better for ourselves as businesses, but also, like the consumers as well, which is like most important, and thank you bridging those community and social justice gaps. And kind of the moral the conversation is like, it all goes hand in hand, you know, from a marketing perspective. So I hope that made sense and was helpful. I

Lisa Buffo 

mean, any better. I think that was perfect. Yeah, you just you just landed that so well. So that was amazing. Yeah.

 

John Shute

I tried to tie it all together. And sometimes I get lost, but

Lisa Buffo

no, you did. Great. So John, where can our listeners find you like websites, social media, email, anything you want to share? If there are any more?

John Shute

Yeah. I mean, I, I’ve been so busy, but I try to pride myself on being active on you know, LinkedIn. Especially. So you could find me there. You know, that maybe link to other something. You know, there’s POF, creative doc, pu [email protected]. Those are probably the best places. But yeah, I really appreciate you having they’re having me and like if anyone has any questions anytime, like, reach out to me on LinkedIn, or I think all the forums on the POF creative site probably lead to me at some point. So you could just they’re too

Lisa Buffo

nice. And if you connect with him on LinkedIn, let them know. You heard him on this show. So he he knows Yeah, you get a lot of rain. Yeah,

John Shute

I also. Yes, I get. Yeah, I’m sure everyone goes through it on there. It’s it’s wild world.

Lisa Buffo

It is. Well, John, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you. I know you’re super busy taking time to chat with us and share all your insights and for our audience. We will link everything John talked about today. And we encourage you to check out his website and connect with him on LinkedIn. Thanks