The Hotbox With Rose Fulton

It took months of conversations before we decided to formally align Pulse Signal Agency with Fat Nugs Magazine. Months of learning each other’s language, priorities, and boundaries. What emerged was something neither of us expected, but both of us recognized immediately. A rare fusion of editorial fire and digital intelligence that allows brands to connect with the cannabis community and culture instead of shouting over it.

So, I invited Rose into The Hotbox not just as a founder or strategist, but as someone helping shape the future of cannabis media, marketing, and advocacy from the inside out.

The Hotbox Q&A: 5 Questions with Rose Fulton

For those who may not know you yet, who is Rose Fulton beyond the resume, and what ultimately led you to build Pulse Signal Agency?

At my core, I’m someone who has always been driven by connection, understanding people, their business, what moves them, what they trust, and how stories shape behavior and belief. I’m a data nerd and believe data should be the loudest opinion in the room. Of course, experience is highly relevant and should always be critical to strategies, but it should be led by the data first, which is always evolving.

My resume tells a story of media, strategy, and performance, but the through line has always been about impact and ethics. I’ve spent years inside large systems, national publishers, and high-growth campaigns, and what I kept seeing was a disconnect. Brands were speaking at people instead of with them. Data was being used to optimize clicks, not deepen the understanding. Pulse Signal, powered by ReceptivIQ, was built out of that tension.

I wanted to create something that didn’t separate performance from purpose. A model where intelligence, creativity, and cultural responsibility could actually coexist. Especially in regulated industries like cannabis, where how you communicate matters just as much as what you sell and where your business is investing, knowing your profit-and-loss centers, maximizing impact, and ROI.

So Pulse Signal is really an answer to that question I kept asking myself for years: what would marketing look like if it actually respected the audience and the data, and understood receptivity, while driving the results businesses need to grow and sustain?

Pulse Signal positions itself as more than an agency. What gap did you see in the market that made you feel this model needed to exist, especially in regulated industries like cannabis?

Most agencies are built to execute. Very few are built to understand.

What I saw, especially in cannabis, was a fragmented ecosystem. You had creative teams, media buyers, data platforms, and compliance constraints, and none of them were really talking to each other in a meaningful way. Brands were left stitching together a strategy from disconnected parts, and that’s where inefficiency and missed opportunity live.

But beyond that, there was a bigger issue. Cannabis isn’t just another category. It’s cultural, it’s political, it’s deeply personal for a lot of people. And yet, much of the marketing in the space was either overly sanitized or completely disconnected from that reality. So the gap wasn’t just operational, it was philosophical.

Pulse Signal exists to unify those layers. Strategy, data, creative, compliance, and culture all work together instead of in silos. And with ReceptivIQ, we’re able to actually operationalize that in real time, not just talk about it in a deck. For me, it’s about moving from transactional marketing to intentional communication. That’s the shift the industry needs

Cannabis is much more than an industry. It’s personal for most of us. What drew you into cannabis, and was there a moment or experience that made you believe in the plant and the work?

For me, it wasn’t a trend or a market opportunity. I’ve casually consumed on and off since my teens. It was my mother. She was battling cancer, and in her final chapter, cannabis replaced a significant portion of the pharmaceutical medications she had been relying on. What we saw during that time were precious moments, moments that were gifts of feeling good to spend time in her garden, sit on the patio, and join the family at the dinner table.

It gave her relief, yes, but more than that, it gave her presence. It gave her clarity, connection, and even peace in a time that could have easily been defined only by pain, bedridden, and disoriented. We had conversations we wouldn’t have had otherwise. We shared laughter in moments that didn’t seem possible. It was a level of dignity and awareness in her final days that was a precious gift. That experience changed everything for me because her doctors could not prescribe it, and her state did not allow it. How could something so life-changing be prohibited? So hard to reach?

It reframed cannabis from something people debate to something I understand. It’s not abstract. It’s human. It’s intimate. It’s powerful in ways that go far beyond the product itself. So the work I do in this industry isn’t just professional. It’s personal. It’s rooted in gratitude and in a responsibility to help move the conversation forward in a way that honors stories like hers.

You’ve been a strong advocate for responsible cannabis media through your work with Cannabis Media Counsel and your support of independent journalism. Why is credible media so critical for the future of the industry? And what does credible media look like?

Because this industry is still defining itself in real time. When you don’t have decades of normalized infrastructure, media becomes the infrastructure. It shapes perception, policy, trust, and ultimately adoption.

Credible media, to me, is media that doesn’t flinch. It tells the full story. The good, the complicated, the uncomfortable. It’s not driven purely by ad dollars or narratives that are easy to sell. It’s grounded in truth, lived experience, and accountability.

Independent publications play a huge role in that because they’re often closest to the culture. They’re not trying to retrofit cannabis into a mainstream lens; they’re documenting it as it actually exists. And that matters, especially in a space that has been stigmatized, misunderstood, and in many ways, still marginalized. If we lose credibility in the media, we lose trust. And if we lose trust, the entire ecosystem—from brands to consumers to regulators—starts to break down. So supporting credible media isn’t optional. It’s foundational.

Our partnership between Pulse Signal and Fat Nugs Magazine combines performance-driven marketing with culture-driven storytelling. What excites you most about this collaboration, and what impact do you hope it creates for brands and the broader cannabis ecosystem?

What excites me most is that this isn’t forced; it’s aligned. Fat Nugs has built something that’s real. There’s an authenticity and a refusal to dilute the voice that you can feel immediately. And from the Pulse Signal side, we bring the infrastructure to scale that voice without losing what makes it powerful in the first place.