Pot. Weed. Bud. All those bogus slang terms that the D.A.R.E program taught. Marijuana.

With the rise of the legal cannabis industry, companies are dipping their toes in bringing the plant to the general public. Despite the growing acceptance of cannabis and the increasing number of states where the plant is legal recreationally and medically, it remains illegal on a federal level. This means that advertising and marketing marijuana products is complicated and impossible in some cases. However, brands are finding creative and effective ways to get around these restrictions and get the word out about their products.

Letter of the Law

Cannabis remains illegal on the federal level. Even in states with legal medical or recreational marijuana, federal law supersedes state and local laws, meaning that the government has the final say. Even as the federal government has largely shifted its focus away from cannabis, the laws are still in place, and defying them can come with dire consequences—ranging from fines to criminal penalties.

Google and Facebook ban the advertisement of cannabis and related paraphernalia on the platform, which takes over half of the digital advertising market off the table for cannabis businesses.

Getting Creative

This doesn’t mean that cannabis can’t find a place on these platforms in the form of organic content. However, organic content can get flagged by the platform, resulting in removal or a ban altogether. Organic content cannot be geo-targeted to only legal states, meaning that marketers need to get creative with their language and shy away from direct promotion. Additionally, SEO has enabled cannabis brands to market themselves via search results without putting money behind promotion.

Programmatic advertising is an increasingly appealing option, with the ability to geofence advertising promotions to legal states and those over 21. These ads appear as banners on websites, on television services like Roku, and in mobile games. While it is platform-dependent on allowing these advertisements, many marijuana brands are finding success with this approach.

Guerilla advertising has been wildly successful in both legal and illegal states. Some well-placed stickers have led to brands achieving viral success. Recently, Bubby’s Baked made the world’s largest edible, an 850-pound brownie with over 20,000 milligrams of THC, leading to substantial earned media in major publications worldwide.

Foxy and Eaze broke into Tribeca X, the branded content showcase of the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, with The Pope of Dope. The Pope of Dope, a cannabis activist biopic, premiered at the Tribeca X Film Festival. Backed by Foxy and Eaze, this is the first marijuana brand-backed project ever to make it into the Tribeca Film Festival, leading to a big surge of popularity in the brand without explicit advertising.

Success from Brands

Houseplant, Seth Rogen’s cannabis brand, has had wild success, with product launches including cannabis, lighters, and ashtrays. Houseplant is one of the first cannabis brands to get national mainstream attention. Seth Rogen’s celebrity status and weed-loving persona do a lot of the heavy lifting of their promotions, but another part of the success around Houseplant is that the brand is divided into House (which sells home goods and cannabis paraphernalia) and Plant (which sells marijuana). Advertising lighters and vases are far from illegal, meaning that the brand benefits from paid advertising from the legal aspects of the business and can avoid ever mentioning the plant aspect, as it is implied.

Often, celebrity-backed cannabis brands succeed due to their existing audience and their association with marijuana in general. Some famous stoners, like Snoop Dogg and Tommy Chong, have created and promoted successful weed businesses through their existing network and innate associations with the plant. Even celebrities that have not typically been associated with marijuana have been able to launch successful weed brands, like Jaleel White (“Did I do that?”) and Melissa Etheridge.

In recent years, influencers have also significantly impacted cannabis brand popularity— from paraphernalia to the actual strains. Formal influencer programs tend to get shut down in these spaces. However, influencers who promote these products and brands based on their personal connections are legally clear, leading to some brands exploding and achieving cult status. Blazy Susan has become a status symbol for marijuana users, with their signature pink rolling papers and rolling trays. The brand’s popularity has been attributed to super fans with big audiences on social media, like comedian Ashley Ray and other verified Twitter and Instagram profiles.

What’s Next?

The changing legal landscape around marijuana will have massive impacts on the industry beyond advertising. As more states legalize recreational marijuana, it is expected that the advertising restrictions will be loosened, and it is likely that we will start seeing paid advertising for weed. However, the industry has had success in marketing without ad spends and will likely continue to expand on these tactics—utilizing celebrities, influencers, and guerilla promotion.

How Can YMC help?

If your brand is interested in engaging with some non-traditional marketing, we’re here to help.

At YMC, we specialize in connecting brands with Gen-Z and Millennial consumers, and we’d be happy to share our wealth of knowledge with you. Contact us today!

After their launch at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Clubhouse quickly became the hottest social media app for Millennials. The app consists of open-ended audio chat rooms focused on a range of topics—think of dropping in on someone’s unscripted phone call conversation and having the chance to ask questions at the end. Downloads of the app have plateaued since July 2021, but with new features on the horizon, Clubhouse is an app fighting to stay on our home screens.

Clubhouse’s Explosive Take Off

The launch of the Clubhouse app was fortuitously timed. Its initial March 2020 launch was just a few weeks before nationwide lockdowns due to COVID-19 and people were searching for new forms of entertainment. It started with an invite-only mode and immediately caught listeners’ interest with chat rooms starring celebrities like Elon Musk and Jared Leto. Clubhouse became so popular so quickly that people scrambled for invite codes on eBay, fetching prices of up to $400.

By December 2020, Clubhouse had accumulated 600,000 active users. The app was recently opened to the public in July 2021, followed by a steep dropoff in app downloads. But with a slew of new features and changes to existing functionality on the way, there’s hope for a comeback.

What Makes Clubhouse Different?

Clubhouse is credited with taking social media to a new medium: audio. We know that consumers are overwhelmed by visuals, making tuning into a Clubhouse room a welcome respite. Radio shows have fallen out of favor for many listeners as the topics can be too general or too hard to engage with and listeners have turned to podcasts to fill the need. At the same time, podcasts can be highly scripted and produced to the point where listeners don’t experience a genuine connection to the speaker.

Clubhouse created a few unique features that really set it apart. First, it allows listeners to drop in and listen to multiple conversations on topics of their choice while hearing the speaker’s raw and unfiltered opinions. Another perk is that the app allows listeners to raise their hands to ask questions and add their own commentary. These features have provided a level of engagement that terrestrial and/or satellite radio shows and podcasts can’t.

Other social media platforms have taken notice of Clubhouse’s rise, adding similar functionality including audio capabilities. For example, Twitter accelerated the launch of its audio-only app called Spaces and are planning to give their millions of users access to the feature shortly. There’s also been talk of similar audio-only feature launches coming from Facebook, Linkedin, Spotify, and Slack.

How Can Companies Utilize Clubhouse?

Clubhouse is an excellent way for companies to drive awareness and hear their customers’ unfiltered and real-time opinions. The rooms are fast-paced and allow for easy communication and quick connection building.

So what should a company focus on when starting its Clubhouse journey? Find your niche and explore your target audiences’ interests. Aim to add value to your listeners’ experience and make them feel like your Clubhouse room is worth their time. We’ve already seen companies such as Milk Bar and Restaurant Brands International utilize the platform to speak on topics relevant to their brands including conversations on earnings calls, latest releases, and general trends, and business news.

Clubhouse is also a great way to humanize your brand by having employees hop into rooms and start conversations about their industry. A good example of this is Kat Cole, the former COO and president of Focus Brands (parent company of Cinnabon). Cole is a prominent presence on the app, known for giving business professionals advice on navigating their careers. Kat Cole made a massive impression on the app after asking her listeners to share their mailing addresses to send them Cinnabon free of charge. As a result, almost every room in the app was buzzing about Cinnabon products for the following month.

The Future of Clubhouse

Clubhouse recently launched its Creators First Initiative to keep creators engaged and motivated to stay on the app, with the goal to help them land sponsorships and make money from their content. Clubhouse wants to ensure that creators are financially supported and have the proper equipment, like iPhones and Airpods, to curate their content. Clubhouse will also be supporting creators by providing them with the development of creative assets, matching guest speakers for their rooms, and promotion. The Creators First Initiative is launching as other social media platforms, like TikTok, are also looking at ways to sponsor and support their creators to ensure they produce the best high-quality content and keep accelerating the app’s growth.

Clubhouse is adding new features to the app to enhance its listener’s experience. Recent updates have focused on retaining users and helping them find their interests through universal search. The universal search feature will allow users to look up both live and recorded content from Clubhouse to improve their content’s discoverability.

In addition, the new “clip” feature will enable listeners to crop audio of a speaker to share at any time. Clips can be shared through text messages or on social media. These features have been introduced in the hopes of creating steady and gradual growth after the drop-off of the app’s initial launch.

How Can YMC Help?

Are you looking to expand your social media presence? Want to explore new content creation options? At YMC, we specialize in connecting brands with Gen-Z and Millennial consumers, and we’d be happy to share our wealth of knowledge with you. Contact us today!

Since Pinterest launched in 2010, pinning has found its way into the pop culture lexicon, and the site now boasts over 454 million monthly users. The website has led to the rise of virtual mood and vision boards, recipes galore, and DIYs ranging from easy-to-execute to downright impossible. Despite Pinterest’s role as a powerful social media platform, it’s escaped the scrutiny placed on other giants, such as Facebook and Twitter. This can be attributed to the format, which makes it easy to avoid conversations, and to the fact that the content on Pinterest tends to be more innocuous than other platforms, at least on the surface. However, Pinterest has been making moves in the past several years to easily earn it the title as the most positive place on the internet. Let’s dive into how Pinterest is curating a positive and healthy community on the platform and why you need to be keeping an eye on it.

Who’s On Pinterest?

The user base of Pinterest is primarily described as moms who like DIY. However, their massive community is diverse and generally breaks away from other social media platform demographics. Over 77% of users are female, with age ranges evenly distributed. Additionally, over 28% of all social media users maintain an account on Pinterest, where they primarily use it for purchasing inspiration. Pinterest users are active on the platform, with over 260 billion pins saved and more than 5 billion boards created.

What’s It Like?

Pinterest’s communities are vast and often intermingled. While TikTok can boast more separate communities, like BookTok, FoodTok, and NoodleTok (is it a bones day?)—Pinterest’s users overlap. There are countless options to explore on the platform, including fashion, recipes, fitness, home decor, beauty, art, tattoos, and news. As of January 2021, the top topics on the platform include:

Home décor
DIY and crafts
Entertainment
Education
Art
Women’s fashion
Food and drinks
Beauty
Event planning
Gardening

All Social Media is Toxic, Right?

Pinterest isn’t immune to most common pitfalls impacting other social media channels. It’s been used as a tool to spread misinformation, including falsehoods about COVID-19, the 2020 election, medicine, and mental health. The platform has long been accused of fostering impossible and unattainable standards for young women and girls. There are communities within the platform promoting dangerous behaviors, such as disordered eating, medication abuse, or “cures” for conditions that cause long-term harm.

These are problems that plague many platforms. However, Pinterest has taken a hardline approach to these issues and has implemented several measures to reduce misinformation and discourage dangerous behavior.

In March of 2021, Pinterest announced new measures to combat vaccine and COVID-19 misinformation, prohibiting ads that offer COVID-19 cures and treatments, curating expert-lead search results related to the pandemic, and further enforcing their health misinformation policy on the platform.

To build upon the misinformation policy, Pinterest has taken great measures to combat misinformation on the platform across various topics. Through the use of AI, machine learning, and human moderators, Pinterest is removing content on the platform that “may harm Pinners’ or the public’s well-being, safety or trust.”

Mental Health on the Platform

It’s no secret that there are detrimental mental health impacts associated with social media use. Often, social media users curate profiles and personas that show an ideal and perfect life, leading to harmful comparisons, especially for young people.

Pinterest has launched several initiatives to improve mental health and provide a healthy reality check to its users. In October of 2021, Pinterest launched Pinterest Havens, a board that encourages users to “explore the relationship between mental health and rest.” This has also been paired with an IRL installation in Chicago to bring awareness to burnout—utilizing art and community programming—and donating to local Chicago community nonprofits. Pinterest also launched a self-care tool, which is presented when searching for key phrases related to emotional and mental health.

In July of 2021, Pinterest made a big move as the first social media platform to ban all weight-loss ads. Social media often exacerbates disordered eating, with communities dedicated to encouraging this behavior and ads promoting weight loss products compounding the issues.

Representation

White and wealthy women are often put on a pedestal as a standard to attain, a trend that is evident across all social media platforms, pop culture trends, and media. Pinterest has recognized this and is working to ensure that its platform is inclusive and representative of all its users.

Earlier in 2021, Pinterest launched a hair pattern search option with a focus on BIPOC users. This tool will enable BIPOC users to find hairstyles that fit their hair texture, shape, and needs more efficiently. By creating a dedicated tool for its users of color, Pinterest has shown that it is dedicated to fostering an inclusive environment where all users can find their needs met.

Pinterest also launched a creator fund designed to elevate creators from underrepresented communities. With this fund, creators must sign their “Creator Code,” which requires creators to fact-check, practice inclusivity, and be kind.

Is It Working?

There is no straightforward answer as to whether Pinterest’s strategy is working. It’s hard to quantify positivity and negativity on a digital platform, and many of these changes are in their infancy. However, all of this action has posited the platform as a leader in social media moderation. Making these bold and public moves signals to users that the platform does care about the health and well-being of its users and is taking action to protect them.

Should Your Brand be on Pinterest?

Brands have been slow to adopt Pinterest, finding the format not overly intuitive towards spreading their brand messaging. However, establishing your brand on the platform is an excellent opportunity to reach a broad and diverse audience looking for inspiration and ideas. 50% of Pinterest users have indicated that they have bought products after seeing a promoted pin. Pinterest users tend to skew towards those with a higher income, with 41% of users earning more than $75,000 per year, further cementing Pinterest as a part of the e-commerce ecosystem.

Pinterest has a very active community that often goes onto the platform with a goa—whether to get a recipe, find a solution to a household chore, buy gifts, treat themselves, or have some fun. That positions Pinterest as an excellent platform for businesses looking to connect and inspire their audiences. The photo-forward nature of the platform gives brands a perfect opportunity to showcase their products and services in a fun and creative way.

How Can YMC help?

If you’re interested in establishing your brand on Pinterest and other social media platforms, we’re here to help. At YMC, we specialize in connecting brands with Gen-Z and Millennial consumers, and we’d be happy to share our wealth of knowledge with you. Contact us today!