Business
First Cannabis Ads Coming Soon to Spotify
The advertisements for beer companies and underwear start-ups on your favorite podcast may soon be accompanied by cannabis commercials.
Chicago-based marijuana company Cresco Labs Inc. announced on Thursday that it will become the “first cannabis company to launch cannabis advertisements on Spotify, the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service with more than 551 million users and 220 million subscribers.”
The ad campaign will promote Sunnyside, a chain of dispensaries operated by Cresco Labs and will include “30 second audio and in-app digital banners that drive to the retailer’s proprietary e-commerce platform,” the company said in a press release.
Those ads will be specifically targeted to Spotify listeners (and would-be Sunnyside customers) in Illinois, where recreational cannabis is legal.
“Audio streaming services represent a major opportunity for brands to reach large audiences in a targeted manner, and we’re excited to collaborate with Spotify to launch the first-ever cannabis ads from our Sunnyside national retail brand,” Cory Rothschild, Cresco Labs’ National Retail President, said in a statement on Thursday. “Our Sunnyside advertising strategy is built on a data ecosystem enabling best-in-class targeting and measurement. Spotify’s platform will enable our marketing team to target our ads compliantly and profitably to our core shoppers in Illinois where we have a leading share in retail. This important partnership is not only a step in normalizing cannabis, but it also showcases the sophistication and quality of marketing that we have unlocked at Cresco Labs.”
Advertising has been a tricky area to navigate for cannabis companies looking to market in the United States, where marijuana remains subject to federal prohibition.
Marketing Brew ran a story in 2021 detailing those challenges, and highlighted how the publicly traded Cresco Labs “has a podcast advertising strategy that is just as nuance-filled as you’d expect,” and that its “core strategy hits at the intersection of host-read and programmatic ads.”
The outlet reported that the company “only advertises in states where cannabis—and therefore, marketing cannabis products—is legal.”
“We follow the letter of the law in terms of our content in our delivery,” Matt Pickerel, senior director of performance marketing at Cresco Labs, told Marketing Brew. “So, because we’re dynamically inserting podcast ads, we only serve in the states where we have a footprint and where we have all the licenses that we need.”
Pickerel explained that the podcast company Headgum allowed Cresco Labs to “dynamically insert pre-recorded host-read ads in states Cresco wants to advertise in.”
“Because podcast measurement is still ‘in its infancy,’ Pickerel said, Cresco tracks success with ‘some pretty elementary metrics.’ Those include number of impressions, completes, discount-code redemptions, and website visits if the podcast mentions Cresco’s URL,” Marketing Brew reported at the time.
“While Cresco hasn’t jumped into the podcast advertising landscape headfirst due to those measurement concerns, Pickerel told us it’s doing more than dipping a toe in, with about 15% of its marketing budget going toward podcasts.”
Cresco says that its mission is to “normalize and professionalize the cannabis industry through a CPG approach to building national brands and a customer-focused retail experience, while acting as a steward for the industry on legislative and regulatory-focused initiatives.”
“As a leader in cultivation, production and branded product distribution, the Company is leveraging its scale and agility to grow its portfolio of brands that include Cresco, High Supply, FloraCal, Good News, Wonder Wellness Co., Mindy’s and Remedi, on a national level. The Company also operates highly productive dispensaries nationally under the Sunnyside brand that focus on building patient and consumer trust and delivering ongoing education and convenience in a wonderfully traditional retail experience. Through year-round policy, community outreach and SEED initiative efforts, Cresco Labs embraces the responsibility to support communities through authentic engagement, economic opportunity, investment, workforce development and legislative initiatives designed to create the most responsible, respectable and robust cannabis industry possible,” the company said in Thursday’s press release.
According to Business Insider, Cresco Labs CEO Charlie Bachtell “is a keynote speaker at the upcoming Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference in Chicago on September 27 and 28, where he will undoubtedly share more insights regarding the new partnership with Spotify.”
In addition to the Benzinga conference in Chicago later this month, Cresco Labs said that Bachtell will also appear at the ATB 2023 Life Sciences Institutional Investor Conference on September 20 in New York City, and the AGP Annual Virtual Cannabis Conference on October 4.
Sunnyside has dispensaries across seven states: one in Arizona, 33 in Florida, ten in Illinois, four in Massachusetts, four in New York, five in Ohio and 14 in Pennsylvania.
Sunnyside opened a new location last month in Palm Bay, Florida.
“We continue to expand the Sunnyside brand and increase access to top-quality cannabis products in the most meaningful Florida markets,” Bachtell said at the time. “Palm Bay is the most populous city in Brevard County with over 129,000 residents, and the city’s location just southeast of Orlando will enable Sunnyside Palm Bay, along with our many other stores in the East Central Florida region, to serve tens of thousands of patients with their cannabis needs.”
Source: https://hightimes.com/business/first-cannabis-ads-coming-soon-to-spotify/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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