The Hotbox with Cassie Tomaselli

 

You’ve built a career around helping brands tell their stories. But as a lot of us in the industry know, cannabis marketing can be bought and paid for nonsense and smoke and mirrors. So where do you draw the line between building a brand and straight-up selling bullshit?

I’ll say one of the biggest mistakes I see—on both the ancillary and plant-touching side of the business—is that brands try to be “everything to everyone,” and I think that’s where you see what feels like inauthenticity creep in.

A lot of times, it isn’t even nefarious. It just comes from a place of fear. It’s scary to think about alienating addressable market segments by narrowing your focus, but the strongest brands we see are unapologetic about who they are and who they serve. (Your recent interview with Aaron Morris of Wyld is a great example.) In an industry that is increasingly facing commoditization, JUST being the “best product at the lowest price” won’t cut it if you’re trying to build long-lasting loyalty. Bold and resonant branding is incredibly important!

As a woman running her own agency, do you see real empowerment and find allies in the cannabis industry, or is it more on the side of token PR? And how do you cut through that noise?

I have felt incredibly supported and overall still find a lot of collaboration and information sharing compared to older, more established industries (especially in newer cannabis markets). That’s helpful when it comes to elevating diverse voices and extending opportunities, so I hope that continues. Cannabis has always been this chance to broaden the net of who gets to participate.

As aspirational as that idea is, though, we have to take a sober look at what business ownership actually looks like more broadly. The latest data we have on this is from 2023 by MJBiz:

After a dip during the pandemic, nonwhite business ownership grew to just 19% from 15% the previous year. At the same time, women-owned ownership slipped from 21% in 2022 to 16% in 2023.

Not great. We also really need an update to this information because so much has changed in our economic and political environment over the past 3 years.

One of the best ways to cut through the noise is to make ourselves visible. It’s simple, but awareness creates opportunity that can change everything for your business and/or career (if you’re doing it right). And it can also inspire others to join in because they see someone like you doing what they want to do.

Sometimes that means instead of waiting for permission, you have to get creative and pull up your own chair to get a seat at the table. Kristina Lopez, the founder of House of Puff, and I had a great conversation about this last year on the Big Ideas in Cannabis podcast with Beard Bros Pharms. I’ll link it here in case anyone would like to listen (34-minute mark).

Everyone in cannabis has their “why.” What’s the moment in your life that made you say, “fuck it, I’m going all in on this plant and this industry”? And how does The Green Room fit into that?

I was a journalist and editor in the traditional horticulture industry before I was offered a role with the company’s new cannabis trade publication. This was 2017, and the industry felt so much more like the “Wild West” compared to today. The newness, speed, and excitement of it all was mesmerizing and all-consuming. But in all that allure and messiness, I learned pretty quickly the responsibility and weight of what it took to “get it right” with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

That carried over when I became the director of marketing for one of Ohio’s first cannabis companies in 2019. Being on the plant-touching side and breaking into a brand-new market was a whole different level of putting that responsibility to work—and helped me gain even more respect for the people and companies I was reporting on in my previous job. People in cannabis are truly the hardest-working, grittiest, and most passionate out there.

Today, The Green Room is my way of helping others go all-in on the cannabis industry by investing in themselves. It’s the first-of-its-kind membership for cannabis founders, executives, and rising professionals to help them build personal branding and thought leadership in this space. The training is based on my experience in cannabis media, marketing, and PR—and the program also features LOTS of workshops from the industry’s most trusted experts, events, and publications (including Fat Nugs!!), so members can build direct relationships with contacts that have otherwise felt gate-kept. With all the marketing restrictions that we still face, it’s critical to develop your personal brand and focus on reaching new audiences with earned media. The Green Room provides an approachable and more affordable way to do that.

You’ve got a front-row seat to how cannabis brands craft their image. Do you think this industry is doing enough to challenge prohibition, corporate takeover, and political corruption, or are too many people sitting on the sidelines just cashing in? And do you think we as an industry with extremely small brands making up most of it, should take on so much responsibility when 2/3 of the industry isn’t even profitable?

There’s a lot of industry infighting, no doubt. Big versus small business, legacy versus legal, hemp versus licensed market, deschedule versus reschedule—the list goes on, and it’s complicated and messy. And some of the questions here are larger than just cannabis.

In reality, we’re still operating in a relatively small industry that’s facing a lot of collective challenges. Investment has been harder to come by, debt is coming due for many, competition is steeper, costs are as cannabis prices take a hit, we’re losing talent, we still don’t have SAFE banking, and even with the recent executive order, we don’t really know if 280E will go away anytime soon.

The people who have chosen to remain in this industry are ALL going through the trenches trying to make more happen with less—and they keep doing it because they know this work matters. While we all stand to benefit in our own way from building the cannabis industry, I try to remember that what we’re doing here is far bigger than any single one of us.

Conflict can be healthy, and we need to keep having those important conversations about what the future of cannabis should look like. (It’s also worth noting that our cannabis media and events are so important in helping us do exactly that.)

Yet through all our frustrations, I think the biggest responsibility we ALL have is to keep fighting prohibition, as you mention, because clearly there’s still a lot to do. We’re even seeing backsliding with attempts to recriminalize cannabis in some state markets. (!)

One bright spot that inspires me: Pew Research reported this past summer that 87% of U.S. adults believe cannabis should be legal for recreational and/or medical use. That’s a result of all the VERY hard work we’re doing despite all the headwinds we face, and it’s worth celebrating.