Some marketing techniques stand the test of time. The best ones often are uncomplicated, sustainable over a long period, and deliver a hefty return on investment. Those factors are especially important when economic conditions are in flux, as they are now, or when market forces outside an industry’s control exert internal pressure.
One of the key strengths of classic techniques is their ability to create a tangible connection with the audience. Strategies like brand partnerships, limited-edition or seasonal products, and multiplatform promotions are effective because they tap into universal consumer motivations—exclusivity, novelty, and the desire for shared experiences. When these traditional approaches are reimagined in contemporary ways, they can generate excitement and engagement among targeted groups.
Collaborations and partnerships can be elevated by aligning with emerging trends and tapping into niche communities. Today’s brands have loads of options for strengthening brand visibility with highly engaged audiences, including partnering with influencers, gaming platforms, and virtual creators. Partnerships also can blur the lines between industries, helping each attract new customers from the other.
Limited-edition products fuel a sense of urgency and exclusivity, motivating consumers to act quickly. This tactic becomes even more impactful in the digital age when pre-launch campaigns, countdown timers, and social media teasers are employed. In addition, the rise of online shopping has introduced new dynamics like “drops,” where brands release limited-quantity items at specific times to create buzz.
Multiplatform promotions, once synonymous with print, television, and radio, now thrive in a digital ecosystem that spans social media, streaming services, podcasts, live events, and more. By synchronizing messages across platforms, brands can create seamless, immersive, and memorable campaigns.
The eleven brands on the following pages reinterpreted classic strategies with modern, industry-specific panache, retaining the essence of what makes the tactics effective while enhancing their relevance in a unique market.
A product for all seasons
Brands can increase holiday sales by offering themed and limited-edition merchandise that coordinates with the festive season. Subscription service Hemper is a master of that craft, packing its monthly goody boxes with seasonally themed products that bring characters and celebrations to life. During 2024, themed boxes included gummy-bear bongs for Valentine’s Day in February, beachy van bongs for summer, and sugar-skull-inspired bongs for Dia de los Muertos during the Halloween season.
The tactic has been “super-successful,” according to a marketing team member. Each release is preceded by a marketing campaign that leverages email and limited digital advertising featuring unexpected product imagery that encourages viewers to take another look.
Amplifying the message
Nature’s Heritage, MariMed’s flower and concentrate brand, often taps a universal love of music to build relationships with consumers. The brand’s most recent campaign, Amplify Your Experience, is an ongoing brand-building exercise that recruits local solo artists and bands for commercials, live concerts, and digital performances meant to promote the company’s vapes. Inspired by Nature’s Heritage’s new partnership with two iconic Boston entertainment venues—MGM Music Hall Fenway and Citizens House of Blues Boston—Amplify Your Experience is just one element of a fully integrated marketing push that also includes billboards, entertainment venue signage, live activations, and digital advertising.
“Music has served as a pillar to our Nature’s Heritage marketing efforts for the past two years,” said Brand Director Tami Kirlis. “Amplify Your Experience celebrates the deep relationship of music and the plant while also supporting local artists.”
Creative collaborations
Colorado edibles brand Dialed In Gummies uses several smart marketing tactics to attract and retain customers, including standout packaging and sending top brass to hobnob with consumers at local events. But the company’s most successful campaigns have featured limited-edition products and collaborations. Since launching in 2020, Dialed In has executed 2,600 batch-partnerships and special editions. None required much more promotion than announcements on social media and other digital channels.
Sales have been brisk. This year, “Fire Water Batch #106” in collaboration with 710 Labs, and “Zambony,” which honored the Colorado Avalanche’s ice-hockey championship win, sold out in four weeks. Similarly, “Champions,” a batch released in conjunction with the Denver Nuggets’ championship, disappeared in only three weeks. “Swirl,” inspired by electronic music producer Pretty Lights’ song of the same name, cleared the shelves in less than five weeks. And the ultra-limited Lazercat Cannabis “four-products-in-one-box” collab astounded retailers, vanishing within twenty-four hours.
Influencing the influencers
When a company stakes its reputation primarily on the flavor and creative form factors of its edibles, National Dessert Day is a natural fit for a special promotion, right? Gelato thought so. As part of a campaign to spread the word about its hard-candy products, the company distributed gift baskets wrapped in its signature neon-bright colors to a network of young, energetic influencers with enviable fan-base numbers. The baskets were a hit, increasing Gelato’s exposure among the company’s target market.
The company kept the campaign’s cost in check by targeting influencers in the Los Angeles area, where it operates a single store and could deliver the baskets without undue complexity. But social media isn’t geographically limited, allowing a relatively small investment to benefit the brand’s hundreds of retail partners across California and Michigan. With hundreds of national and international “themed days” recognizing everything from the sublime (4/20) to the ridiculous (National Nothing Day is January 16), social media offers a wealth of possibilities.
Let’s talk
Alien Labs founder Ted Lidie engaged in a bit of tongue-in-cheek name appropriation when he embarked on a California-wide tour to meet face to face with budtenders, vendors, and local residents in what the company calls “Ted Talks.” The continuing series of events brings together communities, Alien Labs fans, Lidie, and other industry leaders and influencers for unfiltered conversations about the plant. Participation by pop-culture icons including critically acclaimed DJ and music producer The Alchemist and YouTube phenom 5fulcrum add star power and increase the draw, requiring RSVPs in advance for some sessions.
To expand the reach of the campaign, Alien Labs records each Ted Talk and broadcasts them all on the company’s YouTube channel, AlienLabs TV. New episodes debut monthly.
Make America Gassy Again
The public is notoriously fickle, making political polling—a mainstay of presidential politics since Gallup rendered its first guestimate in 1936—an iffy proposition. Since 2016, voters have learned to distrust poll results, and many tune them out entirely. Curaleaf devised a way to reinsert a modicum of fun into the process with its Toke the Vote campaign, which allowed consumers in three of 2024’s key states to vote with their wallets.
The nonpartisan initiative pitted three hybrid strains—Kamala Kush, Donald OG, and Space Jill—against one another in bud-to-bud competition. Curaleaf dispensaries in Arizona, Florida, and Illinois provided weekly updates about the candidates’ standing, which kept consumers engaged and returning to “vote” for their candidate. In the end, the ad-hoc poll proved more accurate than any of the traditional prognostications: Donald OG sold out first and was declared the winner.
The silly season
Journalists call election years “the silly season,” because so much of campaign rhetoric is off the rails, no matter who’s running. Embarc took that notion to extremes with Potlitico, “America’s highest news source.” Employing satire in the grand tradition of The Onion, the site added humor to chaos with weed-infused, politics-adjacent non-news about politics, culture, and entertainment. One headline blares “Harris and Trump Clash in Fiery Debate over Sungrown vs. Indoor Cannabis.” Another gives sarcastic props to a dispensary for winning a prestigious award because it paid its bills on time. (Ouch.) Embarc advertising is, of course, sprinkled throughout the website. Because even the ads are humorous, though, the overall tone of the site remains consistent and “sticky.” Consumers can’t resist reading just one more chuckler. The company’s larger marketing presence incorporated Potlitico’s red-white-and-blue collateral.
The company explained its rationale for the campaign simply: “It doesn’t matter what side you’re on. After this one, we’ll all need to get high.”
Cultural affinity
Collaborators in different industries can boost each other when the partners’ cultures match, as Housing Works Cannabis Co. (HWCC) and Think Coffee NYC demonstrated in April. Both organizations are deeply embedded in their New York City communities and both have distinct identities and missions that fall in the “ethical society” bucket, but their consumer bases overlap only modestly. During the campaign, Think Coffee’s eleven locations featured a new, ethically sourced beverage, “Matcha with the Works”; $1 from each purchase supported HWCC’s parent organization’s mission of providing housing and health services to New Yorkers in need. Each purchase introduced civic-minded consumers to a new concept: a dispensary operated by a nonprofit benefiting the unhoused in their community.
At the same time, HWCC helped Think Coffee expand its market reach by hosting a Think Coffee cart offering dispensary visitors a free cup of “Think Coffee with the Works” java. Consumers also could purchase the custom blend for brewing at home.
Supersize me
Rap artist Berner and his Cookies brand need no introduction in industry circles, and The Freak Brothers, which has been an icon of stoner culture since 1968, enjoys a sizable cult following. Cookies’ collaborative campaign with the underground-comic-turned-animated-series—initially intended to encompass a single joint drop—proved so popular that it became an entire product line, a clothing capsule, and a role in the series for Berner. The ongoing campaign embodies the very definition of multiplatform success, even subtly boosting brand recognition for Cookies on a streaming television platform.
The original product, Cookies x Freaks LSD Joint, was “the first-ever official cannabis product for The Freak Brothers, so we wanted to lean into the cool, trippy Bay Area heritage shared by both brands while producing a product the Freaks themselves would have loved to spark up,” said Greg Goldner, head of brand and strategy for FFB Media LLC, the company behind The Freak Brothers. Sales for both brands sparked up, too.
Jacks or better
Many cultivators engage in pheno-hunting in hopes of finding their next superstar strain. Connected Cannabis engaged dispensary customers in the process with a clever play on names and games. The Jack Box campaign consisted of a limited release of four Jack Herer hybrid buds packaged to resemble a deck of playing cards. Each “Jack” was assigned a suit—diamonds, spades, clubs, and hearts—and consumers were asked to pick their favorite from the deck after trying all four. Jack Herer x Biscotti, the jack of diamonds, came out on top, and the company adopted Jack of Diamonds as the strain’s name.
Connected has used a similar method in the past and found it not only rewards frequent customers with something extra-special but also satisfies fans’ desire to be part of their favorite brands’ process.
Legendary appeal
Celebrity appearances are nothing new—and, sadly, neither are the outreach campaigns that get consumers into the store to meet their icons. A local newspaper blitz, social media mentions, maybe a poster in the store… Lather, rinse, repeat.
But when Deep Roots Harvest and Maverick Public Relations partnered to get the word out about Ric Flair’s Father’s Day fan meet-and-greet, promoting the right person at the right time in a place where professional wrestling remains ultra-popular caused a consumer crush that nearly overwhelmed the man many have called “the greatest of all time.” The partners’ multiplatform strategy focused heavily on social media, where engagement skyrocketed by 660 percent during the campaign period. Even better from the dispensary’s perspective: Sales of Ric Flair-branded merchandise experienced what Deep Roots characterized as “a significant uptick.”
