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Potvertising.com Need potvertising? Contact: potvertising@gmail.com |
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March 6, 2012
Medical Marijuana Marketing FAIL! FYI the top middle skunk in the art shown below is the logo for Lockheed-Martin's famous "Skunkworks," but that's another story. 
Potvertising 101: Medical Marijuana Marketing Tips Effective advertising will help your MMJ business succeed in a crowded field This article was first published in Mary Jane Magazine #3, Winter 2011Drastically updated (see updates in italics) January 21, 2011 New pot-related enterprises of all kinds sprang to life in Seattle in 2010, and all the new competing messages
out there have created confusion for potential customers. Here's some free marketing advice for those seeking to
start a Medical Marijuana business, based on my recent observations of Seattle's chaotic Medical Marijuana scene --
a world that until recently was totally underground and had no need for newspaper ads or radio spots or competent PR people. "Eight helpful tips for starting your own Medical Marijuana business." There's a huge pool of potential Medical Marijuana patients out there, but many newbies are being scared off by inconsistencies and a lack of quality information in the advertising they see for medical pot. An example: an ad for Purple Cross Patient Care in the Stranger's new "Green Providers" section features their purplecross.ws URL prominently, which as of press time pointed to a blank Wordpress template site -- junk. As a potential new customer, I think I'd feel more comfortable checking out a functional website before making a call to someone who might become a custodian of my medical information. No proper web info and I move on -- what's more of a warning sign than a blank website? Purple Cross founder David "Purple" West is well liked and well established (relatively speaking) in the Seattle pot world, but, sadly for all of us, on December 6, 2010 a Purple Cross employee was assaulted in a violent smash-and-grab weed robbery. More bad P.R. 
In the Sept. 8, 2010 issue of Sound Publishing, Inc.'s "Little Nickel" (Sound is owned by Black Press, Ltd.), Medical Marijuana ads appear next to an ad encouraging readers to "weed out illegal marijuana grows." Another example of sloppy stoner marketing: at deadline a visit to heavily advertised access4washington.com revealed a small typo: "munchies" is misspelled as "muchies." And the website itself is nothing but a jpeg image of an ad that also ran in the Northwest Leaf newspaper and elsewhere in September, October and November of 2010. With the same typo. Whoops! Almost got sucked into the negativity there -- best to avoid that, so let's move on. After all, there will be a few bad apples in any barrel, but the end result is still gonna be sweet, sweet 100-proof applejack, with enough for everyone! Know what I'm talking about? Here are eight helpful tips for starting your own Medical Marijuana business. Think about registering for a trademark too -- your lawyer will help you set that up. Make your name memorable and timeless. "Stonerdudez420.com" might sound cool at the moment, but it will hinder long-term growth of your brand because most people see worn pot cliches as a retarded reminder of a bygone era, and want to move on. 2) Design a logo that is simple and that will be readable at a small size and in black and white. Make sure you get the logo in various formats -- tiff, eps, ai -- and hold on to those files! Formulate your identity: pick a few typefaces and a color palette you'd like to stick with for your marketing. 3) Write a mission statement and content for your website and collateral materials, and make it as honest and pure as the driven snow. Make sure there are no errors -- the appalling prose I have seen on marijuana sites is ... not recognizable English. 4) Make a very simple website. Host it, with email and whatnot, for less than $20 a month at GoDaddy or Hostway. Don't waste money on elaborate bullpoppy -- people want quality information, not animated doodabs. 5) Advertise in the local print media. Set a budget for the year and come up with a plan. Here are some of our recommendations. Update 05-03-2011: Wes Abney writes us to say that David Jablinske has bailed on the Northwest Leaf to concentrate on running his Marijuana Dispensary - West Coast Wellness. Since Wes took over as publisher of Northwest Leaf, we have seen an improvement with the graphics. -Ed
NWLeaf.com has not been updated since October 2010.
Update 01-21-2011: Not sure what I was smoking when I first wrote this - several MMJ folks have mentioned that their Weekly ads have worked for them, Nina Shapiro and others do a great job keeping up with MMJ news in print and on their blog. New! Steve Elliott of tokeofthetown.com has announced that his new Seattle Weekly column of "marijuana/dispensary reviews" will debut February 5. Village Voice Media bought Toke of the Town a while back and they pay Steve to run it. There's not much marijuana-specific advertising on TOTT, which is odd.
He resigned from the paper after leading cops on a crazy chase in the Stranger delivery van because he thought he was holding drugs, which he wasn't at the time, which was unusual. The Stranger's news editor is legendary pot lobbyist and former Hempfest guru Dominic Holden. Dom's not on the sales staff, but you can be damn sure if there's an important pot scoop in Washington he'll be on it, making the Stranger a must-read for stoners nationwide. The Stranger is not a pot newspaper -- it's a booze newspaper run by potheads eager to supplement their booze (and hooker) advertising income with some lucrative pot revenue. And they deserve that revenue, because their paper is sometimes daring and always gross and offensive but never boring. Like punk rock but with better writers. In recent weeks the Stranger has placed its new "Green Providers" Medical Marijuana advertising section in prime positions. Update 01-21-2011: I'm not seeing the value of the THClist.com website - it's just a list of links and a freeware message board. I haven't seen the glossy booklet much anywhere while making my rounds.
Blues to Do Magazine has announced that they are friendly to Medical Marijuana ads and we think that's a great niche audience full of potential MMJ patients -- contact Liz Latham at 206-947-5407 for more info.
Another prime print spot would be in the monthly "Sound Consumer," the newsletter of the Puget Sound Consumer Co-op supermarket chain. We're not sure if they accept MMJ ads but we'll find out in 2011, because their direct-mail audience is full of well-heeled, health-conscious potential MMJ customers. 6) Get ambitious with the multimedia! Consider doing some radio spots for broadcast on AM 1090, and maybe doing some TV spots for local cable. Even a YouTube video, if done right, can enhance your positive image. 7) Join the brand new Washington Cannabis Association. All are welcome to join the WCA for $100, but full membership is $5,000. The $5,000 membership level is a little steep for, say, a pot advocacy quarterly like Mary Jane Magazine (we plan on joining at the $100 level in 2011), but the support this membership provides will prove invaluable to any MMJ business that is in it for the long term. The WCA is about people getting hard-core serious in Olympia. Contact Philip Dawdy (philip.dawdy@gmail.com) for more information. 8) Set money aside for the tax man. At press time the Washington State Department of Revenue had sent out letters to 85 Washington MMJ businesses stating in part that "Medical marijuana is not exempt from sales tax." Seattle MMJ attorney Douglas Hiatt told the AP that "requiring dispensaries to pay sales tax could expose those involved to criminal prosecution." Put a percentage of your revenue in escrow anyway - legitimate businesses pay taxes.
If these tasks seem daunting, do not fear. Find a good marketing guru/graphic designer sort of person to help you with your image.
Or go to an ad agency. 
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