On this Cannacurio episode, Ed and Lisa Buffo of the Cannabis Marketing Association discuss how she got her start in marketing, why she decided to start CMA, the benefits of being a member, their awards program, and so much more!

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Cannacurio Podcast Episode 56 Transcript

Ed Keating

Welcome to the Cannacurio Podcast powered by Cannabiz Media, I’m your host, Ed Keating. Today we're joined by Lisa Buffo CEO of the Cannabis Marketing Association. Lisa, welcome to the podcast.

Lisa Buffo

Ed. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Ed Keating

Excellent. Excellent. So as I've sometimes read up on these podcasts, I spent a good part of my career working in it in an association. So I appreciate how they work and all the challenges they have. So I'm looking forward to today's conversation and the first place I wanted to start really is tell us about your background and how did you decide to create the CMA. I mean, that, that is not for the faint of art to, you know, go out and create a whole association.

Lisa Buffo

Yes, that, that is correct. My background is in marketing. So I studied psychology and English in undergrad, and I've always had an interest in business and entrepreneurship, but really thought learning psych and English was, was gonna help me with, you know, whatever my next steps ended up being after college and I sort of fell into marketing, which kind of will lead you to how we got here. But, one of my first jobs out of college and I graduated right when Insta was becoming a thing, social media and viral, social media marketing was just becoming realized as a really potent force in marketing. I actually worked for a start-up nonprofit that was working with service dogs, and part of my job was to be the educational side on the internet. So I was taking pictures of the dogs and posting them on social media, and educating people about what that organization was doing, which was training service dogs to be assistance dogs for veterans. And in that process, we started seeing our social media accounts gain a following and gain a following really quickly. And that led to increased donations for the organization, increased engagement, and signups for volunteers, increased education around the model that we were doing - it ended up like taking on a whole world of its own where we created a line of merch that we could sell, that helps fund the organization. So I kind of fell into it in the sense of like a young person, social media at the right time. But then doing it, I saw the power that social media had, on a business and something that needed to bring in revenue or, you know, donations for a nonprofit at the time. And it was really powerful and I kind of got hooked on marketing then, particularly on the tech side in this like engineered virality if content and storytelling is done, right? Because it was so powerful in taking an organization that had just started and, you know, we thought was going to take this amount of time and, and this way to fundraise and to kind of shortcut that growth through this platform was just, it was so powerful. So then I, I really, so I got my start in marketing like that. And then over the next 10 years, I worked in various different roles in marketing for different organizations, both in the public sector and, in private and nonprofits. And I ended up joining the cannabis industry that like I, I can get into the story but to just answer your question quickly, once I got into cannabis, I had a CMO role. So I had sort of worked my way up into different marketing roles. I had a CMO role for a cannabis tech start-up. So it was an ancillary business helping to facilitate wholesale transactions online. And I taken what I had learned in marketing in that space or in my prior roles into cannabis and realized that that playbook did not work in this space at all.

Ed Keating

Oh, interesting.

Lisa Buffo

In theory, it would, right, you're like, oh, this is the content is amazing and it's such an obvious story and I started working in the industry in 2014. So, right, when adult youth had started in Colorado and it felt perfect. But then I started to apply that playbook in real. You can't talk about cannabis on social media. You can't, you don't have the same places where you can post content, take out ads because of the nature of its federal status. So I had started having meetings on the side. And I'd say, “Hey, Ed, you're the, you know, say you're the CMO of this dispensary. Can you talk about how you pulled off this campaign or what did you do when your Instagram account got shut down?” really to help teach myself and my peers at the time. We called it Cannabis Marketing Association because it sounded professional and, but it was a very informal thing and that was how we got started.

Ed Keating

So, for people who aren't familiar with how associations they usually, they often fall into two or maybe three, some of them are professional associations for people or they are sometimes trade associations for companies and some are both. Where do you fit into that or what is your association fit into, into that in terms of who is, is going to be a member.

Lisa Buffo

So both as far as membership, we do serve individuals and we do serve businesses. So we have two different membership tiers in literally individual and business. And that is the nature of where the industry stands. We have a lot of solopreneurs in the space. We do have a lot of businesses in the space and we have a lot of solopreneurs that will scale up. And particularly on the marketing side. When it comes to marketing services, you can be a solo founder doing you know, creating content, social media, and whatnot. You could be an agency of any different size. So that was where that came from. But associations are also typically or can be lobbying organizations that actually represent a group of people in a government to or like a lobbying capacity in order to change laws and, and do that. We do not do that. We are more focused based on education and content and best practices from the that educational side of the industry as opposed to changing the the laws. So we, we had the name first admittedly and then kind of built the model around that. But we work, we really focus on helping those who produce marketing content for cannabis businesses to put their best foot forward from a compliance standpoint and also just marketing practices in this space which do follow that of other industries to some degree. But also there is a level of specificity in cannabis that I haven't quite seen anywhere else yet as well.

Ed Keating

Sure. No, that's absolutely true. So with that in mind in terms of, you know, what the ethos is of the association, what kinds of people and, and titles if you will join or are attracted to that. Like you mentioned, some of the solopreneurs were wearing every hat in the building. But you know, at large organizations where there might be more role specialization, you know, who makes up your membership roles in terms of titles.

Lisa Buffo

Yeah. So it's marketers so that can be the founder and the CEO who's doing marketing, you know, for the organization, it can be kind of your typical marketing roles, VP marketing, VP brand, CMO, director of marketing. you know, head of content, there's a lot of different roles within marketing kind of depending on the size and specialty of the organization. We work with a lot of agencies as well. So those can be, you know, the account reps, the account coordinators, those who act as outsourced or like air marketers that aren't in-house, but you also have a lot of on the license holder side. So cannabis businesses, there's a lot of brands and dispensaries who have small teams where they might have. And this was even the case when I, I was doing it when I was the CMO I was everything. I was the CMO but I was the entire marketing team. And we've seen that it's very common where there will be one marketing person and they might be managing contractors or, you know, working with agencies on behalf of that organization. But internally they are it and they may have other jobs. We have marketers who are, CMO and COO, they're CMO and, they do various admin work or they do, different forms of operational roles. So because of the nature of the industry, which I'm sure we'll get to in a little bit. it's, it depending on the organization and how they're structured, just depends on who that point of contact is for marketing. But we really focus on those who are producing content for cannabis businesses and we do focus on more of that senior level. So we're not really talking, we're creating content around like marketing 101, our members are generally experienced seasoned marketers to varying degrees who are, are tasked with driving that top line or top funnel in the business.

Ed Keating

That makes sense. And it's interesting the way you describe people really having multiple roles on a recent podcast. We had the CEO of Cannabiz Staffing and they do hiring. And one of the themes that she touched on is how many companies now are doing fractional roles or temporary hires or gigs because that's, you know, people buying sort of what they need instead of everything. And I, I think on the marketing side, that's probably true as well. Now one question sort of ties the people and the membership companies together is how are you guys split between, let's say license holders or ancillary companies? Like, are they both welcome within the umbrella of the Cannabis Marketing Association?

Lisa Buffo

Yes. Yes. And there's a lot of overlap between them too. We will have you know, if Ed was our member, you, you might be with this dispensary this year and then the next year there's a change and you're with this agency and then, you know, two years later, you're with the brand, but you're all still within the ecosystem. So we really focus on our members as individuals and as champions, given how much change there can be within their own careers within cannabis. As well as folks who are coming in, we get a lot of folks who say, hey, I've spent, you know, 10 years in CPG, or 10 years in you know, maybe more traditional tech and then they get into cannabis and CMA will be their first stop as far as learning about what is different in marketing in this space before they do what I did, which is build out this beautiful marketing plan that will not work in this industry, whether it's for regulatory constraints, budget reasons or you know, that all the other reasons where marketing doesn't, you know, copy and paste over to this space that you kind of learn on the job. So, so answer is, it really can depend - but we do serve both license holders, those who work in-house, and, the service providers who service them. But they are ultimately doing the same job which is creating content on a licensed business.

Ed Keating

Yeah. And what's interesting is I've always found that it's good to have that hybrid model where you get people from different parts of the industry as you articulated because there's a lot of learning and sharing and, and that career path that people may amble on from left to right. It’s helpful to have a place to go back to or that's sort of a home base in a way where maybe they'll find their next job through a member or, you know, they, they, they move through the market getting mixed in a different way of being at the agency or ancillary company or, you know, at a license holder. So yeah, that cross-pollination always helps. We find a Cannabiz Media that sometimes people may leave one of our customers and then they'll go someplace else and become a customer because they hopefully have a good experience like, yeah, I need cannabis media to do my job. So I'm sure it's true of the CMA as well in terms of benefits. It is sort of a big-picture question. What are some of the member benefits that people enjoy by being a part of the Cannabis Marketing Association?

Lisa Buffo

Yeah, so our three big things are education, community, and best practices. So we lead with education because in order to be successful in this space, you have to understand the space that you're playing and that, that comes from both the compliance perspective. But also understanding that each market each vertical in this industry can have its nuance. And that's also changed over the years as the industry has matured as more states and markets have come online and the regulations have matured a bit as far as understanding which ones are consistent, which ones might be a little different depending on where you are and you know how, how that evolves. So we lead with education, we I will say there's sort of like a pre-pandemic CMA and a post-pandemic CMA. Pre-pandemic we were doing a lot of in-person events in local local. So we had nine different cities that we were hosting events in. Obviously the pandemic, you know, we had to go all online for a few years and we had built in that online component where all the content before the pandemic, all the content that we were creating ultimately would live in our member portal or an online library, which is very standard of associations and organizations like ours. So you can go back and reference it. But there's then there's also that in-person component for the networking, the connecting in the learning live. So during the pandemic, we moved obviously completely online for some time. And then instead of doing as much of the smaller local events, we moved to doing a larger national conference. So we do have a conference in June in Denver called the Cannabis Marketing Summit, which was actually in the works in 2020. So we did it, we had to be online in 2020 and 2021. We were those things panned out at the same time, which was a fun learning curve as all those in the event space that year. But we were able to do it in person in 2022 and this year, of course, so we have the education component which is webinars. We have a pretty extensive blog. We have a member slack channel - so we'll do like ask me anything in there and we do online networking. The community aspect, so that's our in-person events. And we do virtual events or networking, connecting things as well. And then the best practices which kind of falls in between both of that whenever we do content at our conferences or produce something online, whether it's a checklist or some research that we've done. It's in the effort of creating that North star of saying while we are sometimes I think in the industry, we love to think, oh, we're doing everything for the first time and this is all new and like, it's like nothing else we've ever done before. And while some of that is true, there is also like, hey, this is what is the best practice in another industry or in marketing as a whole. And so we can get 80% of the way there and then take our 20% that we know of what is unique about cannabis. And that kind of leads us towards what we know is the best possible way to do this type of marketing campaign or initiative. And we've seen that pretty clearly with social media there, there's a, a lot of this space exists in the gray and so you have to be comfortable working in cannabis in the gray, and cannabis marketing is no different. So what, what can and can't you say that is marketing a product without selling it, is very subjective in a lot of different ways. So we try, to answer that question, that third component is best practices, and say, here's like the most true North that we know exists, but we don't claim C MA to know that that comes from our members. So we ask our members to speak from experience and we have standards from that and say, “Hey, you know, Ed's been doing this a long time, here's what he's learned”, and we'll give Ed that platform, and then, you know, go from there. So really the core of our commu of our model is the community and we see ourselves as responsive to them. We create content based on what they asked for and we create with them leading to a degree. We, we kind of see ourselves more as the producers and the facilitators for that space as opposed to we know best because we, we don’t. And every year it changes.

Ed Keating

Yeah. No, I agree. When I used to plan conferences, it was always under the, we are smarter than me and I, you know, we would just get a great, let's say steering committee and you get great ideas or they knew people that nobody else knew and you get great speakers. So it sounds like you've got a great model there. One of the things that I'm really intrigued about, because a lot of associations do these (but it's hard to do them well, and it sounds like you have a neat model) is your awards program. So could you tell us a little bit more about that because you have some very specific criteria as to, you know, the kind of awards that you will bestow upon somebody who's an ran into that program?

Lisa Buffo

Yeah. So thank you for that question. So awards can be tricky. And I've been a submitter to awards, I've been a judge of awards in different spaces marketing and otherwise, they can often be seen as a popularity contest or like sometimes what I call big shiny object syndrome where it's like, oh, that's the, you know, that looks the best or that's the, you know, the latest hottest thing. And we really wanted to create a program that was in line with our mission. And, I would say this for all entrepreneurs and all organizations when you start as early as possible, write a mission statement, and get very clear on that. That will help you manage your team. But it will also help you when you're leading a group, particularly like us where we have members who have a million different ideas for what we could do, what we could do better, and how we can serve them. You know, you, you can't do it all. So you've got to pick and you gotta pick and do those things well. So for us, our mission statement is to bring a positive perception to an authentic understanding of cannabis and its consumers around the world. And we basically are interested in changing the narrative around cannabis and positively rebranding it. But we say as opposed to doing that, if we help our members do their jobs better, they are the ones who are putting out the content that the public sees. They're the ones educating folks who walk into dispensaries about their products, about what cannabis does, and what it is. So if we can help them better communicate more effectively. We will have that, that net change kind of from the background if you will. So our awards criteria was ee effectiveness and efficiency and then is it advancing the image of cannabis? So a lot of, so the efficiency part was saying to our entrance, you know, make the case, but it's marketing, right? And we're still running businesses, you, you can have nice pretty things. But if it's not ultimately driving your top-of-funnel or an organ organizational goal, you're spending money just to spend money. And that is what gives marketing either a bad rap or when times get tough, economically, marketing can be the first to go. So marketers also have to learn how to defend the work that they do and really speak to it. So the effectiveness part is saying, you know, what was your goal? And did you accomplish it? And how does that tie into your organization? And then the other part is along with our mission, is it advancing the image of cannabis? And we really say that in the sense that the conversation up until this point has been about dest stigmatization, which is, you know, in really simple terms, like cannabis isn't as bad as we've been told, but it, it doesn't end there like we are no matter what moving forward, 20/40 years down the line, we are still going to be responsible about how we talk about it, what you know, what is that message and where is that coming from? So, for us, we want to see content and campaigns that are advancing that image, not detracting from it. And there have been marketing campaigns in this space that are quite controversial. They may show you know, I would say older school marketing techniques or imagery that is either not inclusive can be, you know, a little bit biased or have, you know, haven't been fully thought through. We don't want those to we, we basically want to uplift those who are putting in the thought and who are doing, the workers are being conscious about that. So that's where our award program is, it, it's not one or the other and it's not necessarily who's the most expensive, but it can be, you know, we've seen small businesses do really fantastic, impactful, powerful campaigns that have a good net for their business, but they may not cost millions of dollars and have, you know, a celebrity in them and those should be able to play in the same on the same field as those that may have more resources or visible recognition.So that's, that's where we try to come at it.

Ed Keating

Got it, got it. Now, one of the most important tools we have in the space I think part of it is because of the age of the industry there's a lot of data out there, and much of it is driven by the software platforms that maybe handle menus, texting, rewards, point of sale. I mean, there's a bunch, a lot of those companies are our customers. So, you know, we're familiar with, you know, how they work, but I would imagine from a marketer standpoint, that could be a rich trove of information to really help guide those efforts, and hit those efficiency and efficacy goals, is that right?

Lisa Buffo

Data is always a good thing to consider when you're running a business, when you're running a marketing campaign, I mean, the language of business is finance and the language of marketing is also numbers, right? You are also talking about, you know, how is this showing return? So you need to be able to speak to that I will say in the early days of the industry, that data didn't exist. So there were several years, you know, when I started in 2014, it was the first year of adult use. There was no, here's what our sales last year it was, here's our baseline. And then over time, we got to see what are the trends, how are things evolving. So it is important, I think as an industry and as organizations and as professionals to incorporate data into our decision-making, particularly when so many businesses are either bootstrapped or they have much smaller financial resources to pull from to execute, given, you know, 280E and some of these other things which I'm, we'll talk about that you have to make as informed of a decision as possible. So using data is a good thing. But what I like to say, and I have found to be true is that you know, good data in, means good data out. So you need to make sure the resources you're using whatever it is, whether it's internal or third party that it is good data and you're, you're reading it correctly and interpreting it correctly. And that takes time, particularly when it's a larger data set or something that may be new and is still kind of, you know, figuring out how clean it is or what the story is there. But data does tell a story and as marketers, we want to be able to understand that story so we can make better and more informed decisions going forward.

Ed Keating

Got it, got it. Well, sort of leads me to my next data question about Cannabiz Media because we started a little bit after you came into the industry in 2015. I'm curious if you or your team has had a chance to utilize Cannabiz Media in your efforts to see sort of size shape and growth of the industry.

Lisa Buffo

Yes, we have used the email platform for our own conferences and our own events. And it has been really helpful. I mean, and we have found the data to be accurate as far as I can understand and tell, that you update, you know, the licenses regularly that the contact information is clean. And being able to understand and have that resource as opposed to going out and, you know, spending the time to do your saved our team time. And we did see a return from it. So, we used it from the email campaign side. But we were very happy.

Ed Keating

Cool, cool. Well if the data is not good, you're talking to the guy who can get it straightened out. So that's good to hear. Now, looking more broadly, I'm curious because the cannabis economy has been a challenge. We've been in a bear market for about two years now, it seems even longer. So, you know, what kind of challenges does that create for your association? You know, what do you have to contend with? And, and you know, or even just the regular challenges, not just economic ones, but I'm, I'm just sort of curious, you know, what are the headwinds that you run into at this point?

Lisa Buffo

The economic ones are a big one and, I will put this in context for I'm guessing this, this might be a bit more informed of an audience on this podcast. But for those who don't know, from the biggest thing in the marketing conversation to understand is 280E, which basically says that for licensed cannabis businesses, their marketing expenses cannot be written off. So you cannot deduct your marketing expenses when it comes to paying your tax bill at the end of the year. So therefore marketing budgets are fractions of what they should be. And we have, CMA has, data on this. So, outside of the cannabis industry, for the larger marketing organizations, the average marketing budget is around 9 to 10% which dropped during the pandemic. It's starting to recover in cannabis, it’s like 1% or 2% tops of gross revenue. So when you're talking about budgets that small to execute on your campaigns to join associations to see a return, you have to know where every single dollar is going and you have to see it come back to you. So you know, when things get tight economically as a whole cannabis and other industries including marketing can be one of the first functions that gets cut because it has seen as it can be seen as you know, something that would go first.

Ed Keating

Yeah. Discretionary.

Lisa Buffo

So yes, which you know, everyone's got opinions on that because if you don't have top of funnel, sometimes you're the bottom of funnel but it, it, it does. So marketers do need to understand again, like I was saying, how to be able to say no, this isn't discretionary. We are a core function of a business and we're able to show return directly tied to revenue. So, so from the industry perspective and CMA’s perspective, we feel when things get tough economically because even when things are good, they are small and they are lower compared to everybody else via 280E from a spending and budget perspective. But cannabis also has like what, what I sometimes say of our team is like a phantom tax where anytime you are trying to like launch a campaign or work with the service provider or you know, add technology, you tell them you're in cannabis and sometimes, oh, it's 30% more because you're high risk. And so things like that also have economic impact because it is still the, the federal status of cannabis hasn't changed. And that's assuming you can work with all the vendors you would want because they're open in this space. I mean, we've seen payment processors kick people off, we've seen payroll companies, you know, kick businesses off. We've seen…

Ed Keating

Mastercard

Lisa Buffo

Mastercard! That was this year, it's 2023. We're, you know, almost a decade into adult use legalization. Like these have big impacts on business owners who are already dealing with you know, an uphill climb. So economic headwinds is a big one. Yes, I do think that we have been in a bear market for quite some time. Don't know when and how things are gonna change hopefully sooner than later. But from my experience with almost 10 years in this industry. It, it goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down, it will probably continue to do that but there is urgent need for reform at a federal level.

Ed Keating

Yeah, totally agree. Now, looking at just at other trends, like on the technology side, are there any other trends that we should be looking out for? Especially those that might be like impacting marketing specifically.

Lisa Buffo

Biggest thing we're hearing about like almost every day is AI like Chat GPT changed everything. There are plugins, AI plugins for everything. We have completely internally re-evaluated our whole tech stack now with an AI lens that, it is a big deal. What would have normally taken, you know, an employee or someone, you know, X amount of hours to do something that can be reduced with the right AI tools, and those tools can help you get data and information faster than and more efficiently than perhaps that was the case two or three years ago. Not to mention just pure content creation. I mean, writing emails, blog posts, researching keywords, like those things can happen way faster and cheaper now through AI tools than not. So it's still early, I think for me to definitively say, you know, here's where things are heading or whatnot. But I think what I can say is ignoring AI is a big mistake both from a marketing perspective and an organizational perspective. And we're going to continue to see it impact businesses and in different ways.

Ed Keating

Excellent point, excellent point. All right. So the last bit of advice for you to give out to everybody is what do you see as some effective marketing strategies for cannabis businesses? Because you know all the points you made about challenges, economically, challenges sometimes buying for your budget within your company, tough times. So, so what advice do you give to people in terms of good strategies, to help them?

Lisa Buffo

First thing I will say is like, remember your customers are sentient breathing human beings like you can hit them with all the fancy design you want and all the like creative copy you want. But if you aren't really treating them as emotional sentient beings, like they can see right through that, and none of that stuff will work. You have to do, put the two in context to each other and really build trust in community within them. We've seen businesses spend millions of dollars on fancy campaigns who don't treat their customers that way and there's no amount of money that will make up for that. It, is just community and that thoughtfulness really does still go a long way. All fancy tools aside. The other thing I will say is that, the tried and true method of inbound marketing does work and does take time, and that involves creating content that your customers are searching for and helping answer their questions. Cannabis still has a big educational component. And even as, and again, we'll continue to and as it gets more competitive, you are gonna need to tell consumers why your brand is better than the others or what makes it unique and what makes it stand out and why should they continue to purchase from you. And so to continually create content and be thoughtful about your messaging again, paired with that. Remember, these are still humans on the other side of the screen or package or you know, point of sale, I think is ultimately like, remember that as the North Star and then the tools and the process and strategy all will assist with that, but to not forget like what marketing is at the end of the day. And it's, it's just thoughtful communication from an organization to its customers or prospective customers.

Ed Keating

Excellent point and good advice. And you know, the the thing that we often remind ourselves too is that despite all the challenges the industry is going through, it's still a gigantic market that's still growing. I mean, it it's tens of billions of dollars and it's continuing to grow every day, every month, every quarter. So, you know, hopefully, we can get through the economic challenges including the 280E prep scheduling and a lot of other things are getting in the way. So, Lisa, thank you so much for joining us today. I learned a lot and, and it's great to hear there's an organization that can serve as kind of that, that North Star and, and just a great place for like minds to be who want to learn more about the best and most effective ways to market into the, into the cannabis industry.

Lisa Buffo

I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. It was a pleasure speaking with you. Excellent.

Ed Keating

Thanks so much for joining us on today’s podcast. I’m your host Ed Keating, and stay tuned for more updates from the Data Vault.