Elevate Your Cannabis Brand: Strategies for Market Dominance

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Introduction

Jake Litke: Everyone, I am Jake Litke, I'll be your host, this is Cannabis Marketing Live, today we have Ryan Hunter with us, and we are going to talk about brand marketing and the funnel and all that good stuff. I'm going to read his bio, because it's a little too long for me to memorize. Ryan leads organizations through transformation and growth across sectors, including cannabis brands, consumer internet, enterprise software, capital markets, and nonprofit organizations — that's a lot in there, we'll dig into that. He's developed and launched dozens of products for multinational companies as well as bootstrap startups. He's currently the CRO for Sparx Labs, a Colorado cannabis company — did I pronounce that right?

Ryan Hunter: Yeah, good work, Jake.

Jake Litke: All right, perfect. Ryan previously was COO at Willie's Reserve, a brand I think everyone's aware of, led business operations and national distribution, grew the brand's reach from two markets to eight. Prior to Willie's Reserve, Ryan developed a 10-acre cannabis farm, as well as led a 12-million-a-year medical cannabis retailer. You currently serve on the board of directors for Redwood Roots Distribution, and are an advisor to Heisman, the cannabis brand from NFL star and Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams. Welcome, Ryan.

Ryan Hunter: Thank you so much, Jake, excited to be here today.

Jake Litke: I already have a bunch of questions just about your bio, but good job pressing through all that. So let's set the topic — we're going to be talking about cannabis marketing, and specifically how to build a brand, brand development. I think this is something I've been saying for a while, and still think is mostly true — there's still no such thing as a national brand in cannabis. If you go to San Francisco, where I live, and ask someone to name three brands, and go to Florida and ask someone the same, they're not going to name the same brands. Cookies probably has the most notoriety overall, because it does a little more than just cannabis, but there are no national brands today — at some point there will be, and the question is who's going to get there, so let's talk about how they can. Maybe you can start by telling us a little about Sparx, and your approach to brand development there now.

Sparx and the Colorado Vape Market

Ryan Hunter: Sure, so Sparx has been around since 2015 in the Colorado market, we've had a few different runs at other markets, but today we're just based in Colorado. We sell vapor cartridge, distillate-based products, a couple different brands, we also have live rosin cartridges. It's a pretty straightforward path for those kinds of products, and I've been on board now for coming up on a couple of years.

Distillate vs. Live Rosin

Jake Litke: That's great, now you mentioned live rosin — maybe we could talk about the difference between regular distillate and live rosin.

Ryan Hunter: We don't have a live resin product in the market currently, we've had one previously, but we've seen a trend shift toward the rosin products — consumers are showing a lot of preference for those, so as we optimize our mix of products and SKUs, that's where we've landed.

Jake Litke: And have you found, between distillate and rosin, obviously different price points — what demographics have you discovered, if any, between those two types of customers? I fall in the live rosin category myself, I like the concept, it definitely costs more, and there's a connoisseur aspect, but is there also just people with a bigger wallet who buy higher-end products?

Ryan Hunter: That's interesting — we actually have two different distillate brands segmented more around affordability. Rosin, for us, is more like you're describing, a connoisseur-grade product. Our pricing strategy across the board is to not be middle-of-the-pack — think of a bar shelf, you have the well, then the top shelf, our rosin product is top shelf, but competitively priced at that tier, so we try to offer value at every level. We work with one farm here in Colorado that does a lovely job cultivating cannabis, very intentional about their methods and genetics, then use an ice-water-based process to produce the rosin. Consumers tend to value those qualities — I think the consumption effects also differ, the high from distillate versus rosin, more directional, based on the cultivar and terpenes preserved in that process. People appreciate that, and rosin does generally run higher-priced than distillate, but I don't think it's purely a price-point distinction, it's more preferences around consumption effects, flavor, and generally quality.

Jake Litke: Just out of curiosity, what's the retail price range in Colorado right now?

Ryan Hunter: Oh my goodness, it's a pretty broad range, probably between $30 and up to $60 — some high-end brands here, like Green Dot, have an exceptional product and command a pretty high price point, but that's a wide range.

Jake Litke: Yeah, similar price points here in California, quite a large range, some of the distillates are quite cheap, or "value-oriented," I guess is the proper nomenclature.

Ryan Hunter: That's how we say "value brand."

Colorado Market Trends and Regional Differences

Jake Litke: As we're talking about pricing in Colorado versus California — one of the questions I get a lot from people outside the industry is about the occasional headline in the local paper — there was just an article last week in SFGate that the cannabis market is collapsing in California and Michigan has overtaken it, pretty sensational headlines — what are you seeing so far in 2024 in market trends, and is there material variability between Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, even within the state?

Ryan Hunter: Colorado was similarly highlighted recently in the Wall Street Journal and Politico about the struggles our market is experiencing, we're going through a contraction and consolidation phase too. On the micro-regions — Colorado Springs is a medical-only market, they don't permit recreational cannabis sales in that county, so definitely a different shopper there, different product configurations, price points, purchasing limits, so you take a different approach there versus Boulder, which can be very seasonal, home to the University of Colorado, so when students are there you see more of a value mindset, when they're not, the area's more affluent, and you see a shift back toward higher-end stuff — Boulder shoppers also tend to be more ingredient-conscious, looking for full-spectrum products. So yes, differences in each region, and then there are retail chains present across all of them, and retailers that are individually in each one, so you really have to know what's happening in each area, even within the state.

Pricing Strategy and Input Cost Volatility

Jake Litke: Let's segue into pricing strategy — curious how overall economic factors have weighed in, given things have gotten more expensive the last couple years, and you've seen people raise prices in different categories — how has that affected your strategy, do you have to give better deals or work with retailers on discounts?

Ryan Hunter: In general, our pricing strategy, like I said, you never want to be in the middle of the pack, that's the dead zone, so keeping abreast of pricing fluctuations and staying at the lower end of each price tier, especially with a commodity-like product such as distillate vapor cartridges, where shoppers really do shop on price. As a general philosophy, we've seen, with inflationary conditions over the last couple years, the share of the consumer's wallet we can command shrink and shrink — that led us to launch a value offering at the end of 2022 to complement our higher-price offerings. We haven't seen much fluctuation on distillate prices, flower's held steady in Colorado — we did have some interesting activity, our regulator sent a notice in April that some marijuana product manufacturers were working outside the system, bringing in distillate converted from hemp-derived CBD. It was a puzzle for us — we saw input prices going down dramatically, which surprised us because we didn't see an overall decline in biomass supply, but then, when the regulator made that announcement, prices came back up — there'd been an illegal supply depressing input prices, so we saw some margin expansion during that time. It's difficult to pass price increases through to the consumer, especially with the overall inflationary condition of the country.

Brand Creation: Art vs. Opportunism

Jake Litke: Great, well, thanks for that, I always like to ask general questions out of my own curiosity when I get someone from another market. Let's dive into the topic as advertised, brand development and the funnel — you said you have some slides on how you approach the whole life cycle, from brand creation through driving consumers to purchase, and ideally repeat purchase.

Ryan Hunter: Well, let me be super clear, brand creation is an elaborate art. I had such an amazing time at Willie's Reserve, working with Elizabeth Hogan, who led brand there, she's amazing, a superstar, and I don't come close to being able to do what she does, so my efforts at brand creation are more rudimentary — I see white space and an opportunity, and go after it in a less refined way. What I observed at Willie's involved focus groups, bringing in consumers, testing variations on the brand to see what resonated, after developing a deep understanding of consumer purchase behavior — a robust methodology. What I've really done at Sparx is be opportunistic — when I came in, in late 2022, there was a lot happening in the economy around inflation, consumer spending was really tight, and we saw an opportunity at that value tier — the products already there, when we talked to retailers, were seeing a lot of returns, hardware quality was low, leaks and breakages, and generally the distillate quality was inferior. We had a large-scale operation with a lot of automation and economies of scale with our hardware providers, so we leveraged those resources into a really good quality product for its tier, offered at an aggressive price point. The project codename was "Project X" — this was before Elon took over Twitter, I'll say that as a caveat — and we wound up calling it X Vapes. So there really wasn't a ton of what I'd put Elizabeth Hogan's work in a category for, what I did with X Vapes was knuckle-dragging by comparison, but we were opportunistic in the brand's creation. What I can talk more about is the customer journey, which I've had a lot of experience with over decades in different categories.

The Marketing Funnel

Jake Litke: I'll talk about the funnel all day.

Ryan Hunter: I have a funnel to show you. This is something you see in many industries, and it's important to understand, and I'll make what I think is the most important distinction for cannabis in a minute. At the top of the funnel, the overall goal is for shoppers to know the brand exists, and the tactics you employ are advertising, social media, and public relations, getting into the media. Next is the goal of creating an intention, once they know the brand exists, to go out and buy it — tactics might be an email program, text programs, or live activations, which have been very successful in the cannabis industry, something we did very successfully at Willie's, with another colleague, Nicole Kennack, who is a wizard at that, I've borrowed a lot from what I learned from her. Moving down the funnel, we have to sell the product first to retailers, convince them to put it on the shelf — different tactics, B2B sales collateral to convince retailers we're going to bring shoppers into their store and help drive sell-through — email and call programs, and B2B live events where cannabis buyers come together.

Jake Litke: Before you move on, I want to dig in on the awareness side — have you been able to run campaigns where you got enough awareness that the consumer starts asking about the product before the retailer's agreed to carry it, the actual "pull" from the consumer side?

Ryan Hunter: Definitely, that's the dream, and it's hard work to make happen, but yeah, that's something we're starting to have some success with at Sparx, and certainly had a lot of success with at Willie's.

Jake Litke: Any examples of strategies where you've seen even limited success there?

Ryan Hunter: Sure — what we try to do currently, and this ties into the next stage of the funnel — we're doing a lot of live events. These aren't consumption events, public consumption isn't legal in Colorado, very challenging to have consumption events within the rules of the law, so that's not what we do, but we have other events — skate parties at roller rinks, bowling alleys, we've participated in larger cannabis-themed events. Every year there's a Mile High 420 celebration in Civic Center Park, and one of our retail partners, Jars Cannabis, produces this event, they've got a dispensary a few blocks from the park, so we have a booth at the event, but, in addition, we hire out pedicabs, bicycle cabs, and position them outside the park — when people come to our booth, we can't give or sell them product, but we give them a poker chip with our logo, tell them to take it to the pedicab driver, who takes the shopper to the dispensary, they buy the product, and the pedicab driver takes them back to the park. Getting really tactical, boots on the ground.

Jake Litke: I like that, clever. It's a little easier here in California with consumption — there's a brand here that does hash holes, infused, they did an event at the Woods in West Hollywood, Woody Harrelson's spot, made a hash hole with a pound of flower and 28 grams of rosin inside it, this big — made for some great social media awareness for sure.

Building Awareness and Demand Generation

Jake Litke: I'll let you continue down the funnel.

Ryan Hunter: Once the product's on the shelf, the job's not done, our job is really to keep it selling through, and the cannabis industry is like no other — if someone's buying bread, the cashier isn't going to say, "I see that bread you're buying, you should buy this other brand instead" — but that's exactly what happens at the point of sale at every cannabis retailer. Shoppers come in unsure of what they're purchasing, and the bud tender directs them — if I get someone to know my brand exists, intend to buy it, get it on the shelf, get them walking in the door saying "I want to buy Sparx," and the bud tender says, "I really think you should buy this cartridge over here instead," almost always that shopper goes, "well, you must know what you're talking about," and buys the recommended one. So this education phase in the funnel is really crucial, we have to be aligned with the bud tender — we do a lot to form authentic connections with them, educate them on the differences between our products and competitors', show as much love as we can, go into stores, bring swag, bring food, just to let them know we're thinking about them, and the events I mentioned, we invite bud tenders even from retailers we're not currently in, to show love and build community, so we at least have a fighting chance at the point of sale. That's something surprising for people coming into cannabis from other consumer categories — in every other category, someone goes in with a purchasing intent, and nine times out of ten they leave with that product, as long as it's in stock — definitely not the case in cannabis.

Jake Litke: On that note, the bud tender has a huge amount of sway for in-person sales, and Colorado's only recently been able to do online purchase, it's been order-and-pick-up — do you have data on the customer journey difference between walking in versus placing an online order?

Ryan Hunter: Just in its infancy, we've just started to be able to do that, really hard to measure in the real-life walk-in example, so there's no data there — I always assume the worst, and that's a safe assumption, to make sure we're continuously focused on winning the hearts and minds of the bud tenders we work with.

Merchandising and the Final Purchase

Jake Litke: And then, closing out the funnel?

Ryan Hunter: Merchandising is something we have a lot of focus and intention on, so when the shopper comes in, there's signage, product displays, educational assets, point-of-sale assets that promote the brand well. And then, finally, if we do everything else right, we get to the bottom of the funnel where the shopper actually buys — we support that with vendor days, sending a brand ambassador into the store, offering a product discount or gift with purchase. And the work really starts before all this, making sure we have high-quality products that deliver on the promise we're making with the brand, because if they go home with one of our cartridges and it leaks, breaks, clogs, or tastes funky, they'll never buy again, there are too many alternatives — so we do a lot of R&D to make sure the product is aligned with customer expectations.

Communicating Hardware Quality

Jake Litke: I know that's a big pillar for you, the actual quality of the hardware — how do you convey that on packaging, if someone's just picking it up, no one's talking to them, other than flavor, weight, and branding — have you figured out how to effectively communicate that your hardware is better than the one next to it?

Ryan Hunter: It's a little inverted, actually, because, as I said, when we recognized the opportunity for the value offering, it's because we went secret shopping, asked the bud tender, "what about that one," and they'd say, "that's the lowest price, but I've got to be honest, 25% of those come back, so save your receipt." So the bud tenders know, because they get the returns, complaints when the cartridge malfunctions. It's really hard to communicate hardware quality — I've seen cartridge manufacturers put their logo on packaging, but they do nothing to educate consumers about their technology, so it says "XYZ Hardware" and nobody's ever told the consumer that matters, so those don't work out well. Bud tender education wins the day, in our experience.

Jake Litke: Your product uses a standard threaded cart?

Ryan Hunter: We have a couple different formats, primarily 510 standard threaded, and a couple all-in-ones with the battery integrated with the cartridge.

Jake Litke: A bit of a tangent, but I'm sure you've thought about other formats out there, proprietary ones — was there research behind deciding to go standard?

Ryan Hunter: I wouldn't say a ton of data-driven research, but the data is pretty apparent — the 510 thread is the one. You have pod systems like STIIIZY's proprietary one, PAX has their own, and folks find those appealing, once people invest in a format they tend to be loyal to it, but on a relative basis it's small compared to the amount of 510-threaded cartridges out there — "fish where the fish are" is my overriding philosophy, if that's where the consumer's expressing overall preference, that's where I'm going to be.

Billboards, Magazines, and QR Codes

Jake Litke: I want to dig in more on the awareness and demand generation step, that's a big chasm to cross — you've got things listed here like emails and text programs, but those assume you've already got contact with the consumer and they've opted in somehow. How have you seen success moving someone from awareness, whether it's a digital ad, billboard, or demo day, to actual consideration?

Ryan Hunter: A lot of what we try to do is partner with our retailers, ask them what programs are effective at getting shoppers to come into their store — that's really what they want from us, because if they've already got somebody in their loyalty program, that shopper's coming in anyway, and we're not adding much value, since they could sell them something else instead. They want us to bring net-new customers in, that's really the job of the brand. We've used billboards effectively, when there's one near a retailer we'll co-brand with them, and in some cases display pricing or a promotional offer, very effective for those retail partners because they're already aligned with it. We did a test with one of the magazines widely distributed to dispensaries in Colorado, Rooster Magazine — I'll maybe date myself, there's an old adage, "the Wanamaker curse," John Wanamaker, creator of the Wanamaker/Woolworth stores, famous for saying, "I know that 50% of my advertising budget is wasted, but I don't know which 50%" — I carry that mindset into magazine advertising, but we did a test with Rooster where we promoted one of our events, put a QR code in the ad for people to RSVP to one of our big parties, so we could measure engagement with the magazine ad that way, since we didn't have another way to see it through to an actual purchase, and we were very pleased with the response. We've since invested more in Rooster advertising — it was actually a retailer that had said they'd had good success with people coming into stores based on that publication's advertising, so we followed their lead. A couple of examples where we've tried to be thoughtful, and seen pretty good results.

Jake Litke: Have you experimented with digital out-of-home? We do all kinds of digital marketing, basically anything with a screen on it — campaigns in a radius around a retail location, whether for the retailer or co-marketing, trying to drive sell-through, there are a lot of screens out there now, gas stations, elevators, even bathrooms at restaurants and bars — have you done any digital out-of-home yet?

Ryan Hunter: We've done billboards, not the small-screen sense — in Colorado we can advertise in restaurants and bars, that's where most of that inventory lives, but we've done digital billboards for large-scale, roadside.

Jake Litke: Have you done QR codes on out-of-home, or just print?

Ryan Hunter: We haven't yet, but I love the idea, definitely something we're testing.

Jake Litke: There's always a bit of a thing with billboards, you don't want to encourage people to take their phone out while driving, works better in venues where people aren't driving, or a gas station where they're not driving at that second, but QR codes are a good way to measure engagement for sure.

What Is a Fighter Brand?

Jake Litke: Now, earlier you mentioned your brand as a "fighter brand" — I'm going to close down the slide if we're good on the funnel. The category I hear most when people talk about this is "challenger brand," like Pepsi versus Coca-Cola, there are books and videos about being a challenger brand — maybe you could talk about what a fighter brand is.

Ryan Hunter: Sure, a couple of examples — car companies are a good one, airlines too. In the '80s and early '90s, Japanese car manufacturers were seen as inferior quality relative to European manufacturers, and luxury brands tended to be exclusively European, with the exception of Cadillac and Lincoln in the US. So the first Japanese automaker to launch a higher-end brand was Honda, with Acura, and now you see the same with Toyota and Lexus, Nissan and Infiniti, and in the European market, Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche are effectively the same company. The idea behind a fighter brand is to address an opportunity in a market segment you can't address with your current brand, and to be disruptive, take market share in a segment ready for more competition — you have an established brand in one segment, and the same company introduces another brand at a different segment where they see opportunity.

Jake Litke: Like X Vapes, your value brand — that's something you introduced going after a different segment, but it's still your company. Most people know Acura and Honda are the same company, but is your customer base aware that Sparx and X Vapes are the same company, or do you run them separately?

Sparx vs. X Vapes: Personas and Positioning

Ryan Hunter: That's a really important question — one of the risks of this strategy is cannibalizing the incumbent brand already in the market, so, as I've said, we're very intentional about product quality — there are important quality distinctions between X Vapes and the Sparx brand. Typically, distillate potency in X Vapes is less than in Sparx, and the amount of terpene dilution is higher in Sparx versus X, so Sparx is more potent and flavorful, X Vapes is slightly less potent, slightly less flavorful — customers get more when they pay more, value at every level. That said, the opportunity we saw in the market was that the brands already at that value tier had inferior hardware, retailers reported 25% return rates in some cases, taste wasn't as good, distillate wasn't as refined — we knew how to solve those problems, so X Vapes hardware is very high quality, less than 1% fail rate, and good flavor, even if not as flavorful as Sparx. Retailers know they're buying both brands from us, and appreciate the quality of service, but we don't inform consumers they're produced by the same company — a bud tender may, and we try to be diligent, but some retailers list it on the menu as "X Vapes by Sparx," and when we see that we ask them to change it, because we want to avoid a shopper going in saying "I'd like Sparx," and the bud tender saying, "well, this is a less expensive product that's virtually the same thing." Marketing-wise, completely separate, different personas for each brand, different activations, we don't show up the same way with both brands anywhere.

Jake Litke: Can you share a bit about the consumer archetypes or personas for each product line, and how you came up with them?

Ryan Hunter: On-the-ground research, talking to retailers, plus demographic information from our social media channels — Sparx skews slightly more female, slightly higher income, slightly higher education levels, the vibe is, I wouldn't say bougie, but "affordable luxury" is how I'd characterize it, not our premium tier, which is the rosin, but close. X Vapes skews much more male, a shopper consuming cannabis more frequently, daily or throughout the day, slightly lower income and education level, and different interests — for Sparx we're doing roller skate parties, for X Vapes, car shows and skateboarding events, different vibes.

Lessons Learned and Early Missteps

Jake Litke: Have you had any early, notable misses, where you thought you had the right persona for the right activation, and learned afterward there were things you'd change?

Ryan Hunter: I love that question, we can circle back to it if you want to think about it. We've had a pretty good run, I have an amazing team at Sparx, I've only brought two people on since I've been there, everybody else has been there a long time, best team I could hope for, so not a ton of missteps I'd say, let me think — I'm a big fan of being self-critical in a good way, but I'll see if something comes to mind.

Jake Litke: I've definitely learned the most in my career from mistakes, to make fewer of them.

Ryan Hunter: I think a general one, not really persona-related, is in vapor cartridges there's been a trend from half-gram cartridges to full-gram, and now larger-format two- and four-gram cartridges — I've seen mistakes made, both at Sparx and other brands I've worked with, over-ordering hardware and getting stuck with a bin that consumers aren't interested in. I was actually a little concerned when we did our first roller skate party — I had the idea, thought, I don't know how this is going to go, I was trying to tap into a retro vibe I thought would land, crossed our fingers, and I knew it was going to be okay when we cracked open the door and people were lining up with their own roller skates. I was nervous before that first one, but so far, pretty good with Sparx.

Jake Litke: Did you get some good earned social out of that event?

Measuring Success Without Overloading on Data

Ryan Hunter: Oh yeah.

Jake Litke: How do you measure that — for the roller skate party, for example, people would take selfies on roller skates, how did you measure the net effect as a brand?

Ryan Hunter: I love that question — I tend not to be, and this might break your heart with MediaJel, overly data-driven, we're just trying to keep up with sales right now, we've been very fortunate to have a lot of success, so I don't spend a lot of time in the data — my experience with data in the cannabis industry is that it's really noisy, hard to find a solid trend. We have a really good social media team, they track mentions, we do see a spike around these events, we look for that, but it's mostly to reassure ourselves we're on the right path — it doesn't keep me awake at night, there are plenty of other things that do, but not that, at the moment.

Jake Litke: Well, that's the world I live in, lots and lots of data, every direction.

Trademark and Intellectual Property Pitfalls

Jake Litke: We're coming up on the hour, one question we can address — from Mary, a trademark attorney who works a lot with cannabis brands, asking about making sure, before you launch a brand, that it's actually something you can do — case in point, X Vapes, although that's fine because it's its own phrase, obviously Twitter is now X — how did you manage that process, did you do a patent search? I've seen people get their heart set on a brand name and not even check if something like that already exists in their own state.

Ryan Hunter: That's exactly right, we did a search, we did have a clever retailer come out with "Z Vapes" not long after we launched X Vapes, a direct dig at us. We looked around the state mostly, since that's where we operate, and there are other vapor hardware manufacturers out there called X Vapes too, not a direct one-to-one competitor, but intellectual property around cannabis is very complex — I applaud the attorney, they're in a good spot, lots of business there, really hard to navigate those waters, so my advice is lawyer up, get an IP attorney, and seek advice.

Jake Litke: That was specifically Mary Shapiro, at evoke.com. That's obviously not sustainable if you get any level of success — like, you know, McDonald's or whoever would come up with puns or variations of other existing brands — I've seen less of that, do you see much of it still in Colorado?

Ryan Hunter: Oh sure, we've got Starbuds dispensaries all over the state.

Jake Litke: Yeah, still a thing for sure.

Packaging Innovation on a Budget

Jake Litke: All right, we've got another question here from Jeff — how do you approach packaging innovation, and how does it link to the overall brand experience, especially positioning as a value player?

Ryan Hunter: It's challenging, especially in our category, where shoppers are so price-sensitive — we really have to find the lowest-cost packaging possible, unfortunately meaning less sustainable, we're using Mylar packages, go out to bid for the lowest prices we can get, and do the small things, make sure they have punch holes so they can hang on a flat wall with hooks, and a gusseted bottom so they'll stand up in a display, but apart from that we don't get too innovative — we want them to look nice and fit the tier we're in, but it's challenging in our category. In flower, you can get more creative, and even in edibles we've seen brands like Wyld have success largely based on interesting geodesic packaging, not the product itself. Those things matter, but for our segment, shoppers are really focused on price, so we have to be very price-oriented with packaging.

Jake Litke: Have you had internal debates where a version of the packaging is more aesthetically pleasing but costs, say, 10 cents more — a conversation about whether you'd sell more with slightly less margin but cooler packaging?

Ryan Hunter: Not in this company, but in other companies, definitely, I've had those conversations. I was consulting with a luxury edible brand for several months, and packaging was crucial, because it was a top-tier, differentiated product trying to establish itself at that Louis Vuitton level, a lot of attention to detail for every element. It has its place, but at Sparx we know what we are, there's a lot of alignment, not really an argument — we do have a lot of thought and consideration around how the packaging looks and even its texture, but not a lot of debate, we're all on the same page.

Jake Litke: That's good, you don't have to waste time arguing about it. I've definitely bought a few edibles where the packaging or form factor made me think, "I don't know that I'll buy this again," a gummy smashed between pieces of plastic, sticky — I don't think that product's around anymore, maybe that's why.

Ryan Hunter: Well, I don't think I'll hurt any feelings, they're the number one brand in most markets, but with the Wyld products — I'll make a controversial statement — the geodesic packaging, we hear from retailers all the time that they love it, you can get really creative from a merchandising perspective, you open the inner container and everything's stuck together in one big glob.

Jake Litke: The other one I've seen, where you buy gummies and it comes in one big strip — I guess there are people who eat 100 milligrams at a time, but I'm not one of them, I like them in 5- or 10-milligram sizes.

Ryan Hunter: Much easier to work with — well, Space Gems in California is my favorite edible brand, they have a tape-like segmented strip, easy to tear pieces off, I think that's clever, though you could throw the whole thing in your mouth and it wouldn't stick together otherwise.

Jake Litke: That does work out — Space Gems is a good product.

Closing Remarks

Jake Litke: I don't think we have any other questions, and we're wrapping up on the hour — any other parting thoughts, or maybe you've remembered an activation that didn't go as well as you wanted?

Ryan Hunter: I haven't — the activations have normally been pretty good, I tend to be pretty thoughtful about those things, we haven't had too many misses there, but I'll send a note if one comes to mind.

Jake Litke: Please do. Any parting comments on general approach, or a question I didn't ask that you wanted to get into?

Ryan Hunter: No, I think, as I said a few times going through the funnel, I have so much appreciation for the bud tenders — be present with them, know what they care about, win the hearts and minds there in an authentic way, not self-serving, they'll know if you're full of it. Be real, make sure they know what you're up to, and make sure you're going to live up to their expectations — if you don't, you have almost no chance.

Jake Litke: It's interesting, because the focus of your marketing and consumer journey is different from what MediaJel is normally focused on, since we're generally doing digital advertising, driving people to online orders, and we can measure foot traffic and offline orders too, but primarily pushing people toward delivery or pickup, which works differently in different states, and there's a different thought process — pros and cons, you don't have a bud tender who could sway the decision, but you've been able to create relationships with bud tenders so that becomes a strength rather than a weakness, and I applaud you for figuring that out and being effective at it.

Ryan Hunter: Thank you.

Jake Litke: Well, we're right on the dot here, at noon, at least in California — Ryan Hunter, thank you for your time, I think you had a lot of good wisdom to share. If anyone wants to reach out to you, how can they get a hold of you?

Ryan Hunter: Just hit me on LinkedIn, and try not to show up in the "other" message box, that's an easy way to reach me, I'm on LinkedIn.

Jake Litke: Fair enough. Well, thank you everyone, again, this is Jake Litke, I'm the CEO at MediaJel, and this has been an illuminating edition of Cannabis Marketing Live with Ryan Hunter.

Ryan Hunter: Jake, thanks so much for having me on.

Jake Litke: Absolutely, thank you, bye everyone.

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