For Cannabis Month™ here at Marketing Brew, we talked to a lot of cannabis marketers. And while some of them have been eating, sleeping, and smokingbreathing cannabis for their entire careers, others are new to the space, hailing from companies that sell more “traditional” products.

After diving deep on all the idiosyncrasies and annoyances of marketing a heavily regulated product like cannabis (or CBD…or hemp…), we couldn’t help but wonder: What would make someone leave the relative simplicity of marketing a product like socks, or weddings, to start their own cannabis brand—which requires jumping through a million legal hoops just to run a simple digital ad? We chatted with a few of those exact people to find out why they joined this industry, and what they’ve learned in the process.

Their responses below have been lightly edited for clarity.

David Fudge

Former marketing gigs at Oasis Collections, Bonobos, Esquire magazine

Current role: cofounder and CEO of hemp-infused spirit brand Aplós

Biggest learning from past roles: Building trust with the customer is paramount. It’s important when selling any product, but it’s crucial in cannabis because there are a ton of dubious products and misinformation out there.

Amanda Goetz

Former marketing gigs at Teal, The Knot

Current role: cofounder and CEO of House of Wise, which sells CBD products like gummies to women

Similarities between current and former gigs: Something that has been core to my thesis when marketing to women—both across The Knot and now House of Wise—is that women are looking for ways to feel less guilt and shame about things that they’re experiencing in everyday life. With The Knot, for example, the guilt and shame came from wanting to do something for their weddings that was “not traditional,” or something that their families might not approve of, like not doing traditional vows, or not having her dad walk her down the aisle.

Emily Onkey

Former marketing gigs at CB2, Estée Lauder, Bonobos

Current role: cofounder and CMO of Aplós

The main difference between the cannabis sector and past industries: Hands down the regulatory constraints in paid channels for cannabis and CBD. It is a new ball game entirely and forces us to be disciplined in our storytelling and really clearly communicate a strong value proposition because we are asking a customer to take a roundabout path to purchase. It is exciting to find our way and especially rewarding when you figure out how to make it work.

Hear way more from each of these founders by clicking here.—PB

On Wednesday, some news broke that dropped Facebook’s stock roughly 4%. No, it wasn’t another bombshell report from the Wall Street Journal. Nope, it wasn’t because senators grilled the company’s VP of public policy and privacy this week.

It stemmed in part from a blog about its advertising platform, published by Facebook’s VP of product marketing Graham Mudd.

• Mudd wrote that Apple’s recent privacy changes—which allow users to opt out of targeting—have affected Facebook advertisers more than they might have initially expected. Specifically, he said Facebook is “underreporting iOS web conversions” by about 15%.
• “We believe that real world conversions, like sales and app installs, are higher than what is being reported for many advertisers. We are committed to helping you better measure these outcomes and improve your performance,” he wrote, detailing best practices to brave the storm.

None of this is necessarily a surprise. Facebook execs made it clear that Apple’s changes would cause “increased ad targeting headwinds” for the company, specifically in the third quarter.

Still spending

“We’re essentially blind to Facebook’s reporting data. Making optimizations has become very difficult,” Simon Wool, a performance manager at baby food brand Little Spoon, told us. Before these changes, “if we doubled our Facebook budget, you could expect to double your volume of purchases, with only slight cost-per acquisition increases.” Now, if Wool doubles his budget, he said he’s likely to see only a 30% increase in volume, with a much higher cost per acquisition.

Avi Ben-Zvi, VP of paid social at performance marketing agency Tinuiti, said he’d also seen his cost of acquisition on Facebook rise and that revenue attributed to marketing on the platform has fallen (he declined to provide specific figures). But he said he’s been bracing for changes. “They’ve been preparing for this for quite some time,” he told Marketing Brew.

• In fact, of the $3 billion Tinuiti spends across Facebook, Amazon, and Google, Tinuiti is expected to spend 39% more on ad spend with Facebook compared to 2020, partially because it’s more expensive, but also because customer behaviors haven’t changed.

“Those people are still coming to the site, they’re still converting,” said Ben-Zvi. He just can’t see it.—RB

On Tuesday, Marketing Brew’s virtual event series, The CTA, was back and better than ever (read: there was a cat there this time) for a convo about making the most of tight marketing budgets.

At the event, Marketing Brew editor Minda Smiley spoke with Cathy Shaffner, chief investment officer at Cincinnati-based agency Empower. As Shaffner puts it, her team essentially serves as “personal investment bankers” for Empower’s clients, which include Bush’s Beans, Ashley HomeStore, Brooks Running, Famous Footwear, The Body Shop, and more.

Watch the full event recording here, or keep reading for our biggest takeaways.

On media spend: “No matter what platform you use, or if it’s paid or organic media opportunities, we look for ways to drive awareness for our clients—to drive sales—and then marry that with the benefit of really getting closer in audience targeting,” Shaffner told Marketing Brew.

On the shift to e-commerce: Shaffner said Empower has helped client Bush’s Beans build its commerce strategy over the past year. “Largely what we’ve been helping them do is ramp up their first-party data, so that when we do go to market in some of these new and alternative platforms, we’re speaking directly to the bean purchaser, or potentially a heavy bean user, or maybe a lapsed bean user.”

On budgeting: “The theme is really around change…Rethink how you’re currently buying media,” Shaffner said, adding that she tells her clients they need to move away from all historical norms about measurement, channel distribution, and media mixes.

Click here to read the full recap.—PB

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

YouTube: The platform is all about video, but don’t sleep on that video description. Here’s how you can write an effective one.

LinkedIn: This guide gives you all the ins and outs of LinkedIn Ads, like types, costs, and how to actually run ads on the platform.

App tracking: The Washington Post and Lockdown found that some apps are sidestepping iOS’s privacy protections.

Your DMs are flooded: Your schedule doesn’t have to be. ManyChat’s Instagram Automation replaces tedious manual effort in answering FAQs, boosting engagement, and more. Better yet, they won’t make your brand sound like a cyborg. Never miss another DM again.*

Mark your calendar for Commerce+: On October 13, the most talked-about brands will be dishing deets on how to influence the next generation, sell globally, and grow boldly at Shopify’s Commerce+ livestream event. Register for free here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content}

Do your trips to the grocery store also include time spent looking at product iterations in wonder?

If so, on September 28 at 12:00pm ET, Retail Brew is speaking with PepsiCo’s Emily Silver on the consumer packaged good (CPG) life cycle—exploring ideation, packaging, and marketing.

Register here.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Comscore says it can narrow down who’s watching what within a household
• Hot sauce brand Truff’s first billboard asks who makes the best cheesesteak
• Ad Council releases emotional PSA targeting vaccine-hesitant young adults

There are a lot of questionably named companies in the murky marketing universe. Two of these are real ad tech companies. The others are planets from science fiction. Keep scrolling for the answers.

• Zemanta
• Jakku
• Xandr
• Sakaar
• Caladan