20 Ideas for COVID-Friendly Cannabis Customer Experiences

The cannabis space has retained and expanded consumer enthusiasm throughout COVID-19.

Despite its growing dominance over the illicit market, and states’ desperation for tax income buoying the fight for legalization, it is still heavily regulated in terms of marketing and advertising.

With that in mind, how can we:

• capitalize on market growth,
• take into account the mood of the moment,
• adhere to pandemic regulations,
• and make lasting, meaningful connections with our audience?

Experiential marketing can help you bring your brand directly to consumers and allows you to have more nuanced and substantive conversations. Transparency and clarity of message are more important than ever, and experiences allow you the space to focus the dialogue.

Is there a way to create meaningful customer experiences while being mindful both of coronavirus restrictions and advertising and marketing regulations?

Here are a few ideas that might work for your company in your state.

For foodies

1. Create an outdoor fine dining experience
   Take advantage of the alfresco dining trend and partner with a high-end restaurant and do food pairings, with hands-off tasting notes guides.
2. Partner with a local restaurant for curbside pickup or a meal kit
   If getting together outdoors still feels too risky in your state, work with a local restaurant to create some interesting food pairings, put together some tasting note cards, and create food experiences people can take home with them.
3. Host a cooking class over Zoom
   Lockdown gave lots of people an appreciation for taking time over their food and more people than ever are interested in edibles. Create a cooking class to produce a lightly infused meal. Don’t forget to send an ingredients list to people ahead of time so they can cook along.
4. Park a tea & toast food truck
   Maybe our outdoor dining experiences won’t last into the autumn as the weather gets colder. Mix American food-truck culture with some British nostalgia. Vend marijuana-infused tea and/or honey with high-end toasts for a warming and kitschy experience that will last through the winter.

For hobbyists

1. Host an online gardening class
   Lockdown gave us a chance to broaden our slow-living skills. For some people, that meant a stab at home growing. An online gardening class won’t rob you of customers—very few people will create everything they need—but it will position you as a go-to person in your community.
2. Create smell-o-vision for your products
   Plenty of us like to smell the flower in-store before we buy, but that doesn’t feel safe any more. Have staff make 15-second videos explaining more about the smell of each strain you sell and add them to your online shop or link to a QR code in-store.
3. History of strains
   Create a class or teach-in about the strains from the ’60s and ’70s that are still around today and how they evolved over time.
4. Host a ‘becoming a budtender’ workshop
   Cultivate a relationship with the people most excited about cannabis in your area. You might even find your next employee!

For medical marijuana patients

1. Put together some pain management resources
   Create videos, posts, and live Q&As on topics like soothing morning routine ideas, the best food and ingestibles to lower inflammation, and the strains most likely to relieve chronic pain. If there’s no one on your staff with accredited medical training, bring in guest speakers.
2. Work with local shops to create a chemotherapy gift basket
   Having cancer in the midst of a global pandemic is tough. Pull together some nice treats from local artisans like lip balms, ginger tea, and edible gummies and make them available for friends or loved ones of people with cancer to purchase. If you decide you’d like to raffle them off, keep in mind that in most states, the law prohibits giving away cannabis for free. Sometimes there are exceptions if the person has a medical marijuana card and you have an M-license.
3. Host a talk about the best snack ideas for suppressed appetites
   If people come to you because they’re on medication that suppresses their appetites or makes them feel queasy, ideas for managing day-to-day and a sense of community with others might be incredibly helpful for them.
4. Work with a local spa
   Enhance people’s post lockdown relaxation experiences by partnering with a local spa to offer combined treatments for stress and inflammation.

For the artsy crowd

1. Do a fashion collaboration
   Create a fashion collaboration with a small local brand and make it an online experience.  Send out lookbooks to press and free samples to influencers and hold a digital event dropping the exclusive pieces.
2. Host an online yoga and weed class
   More people than ever are thinking about expanding their yoga practice with cannabis. It’s a hotly debated topic in the yoga community. Find an expert and partner together for an online teach-in and gentle Hatha flow.
3. Try holding a sketch and smoke
   Instead of a paint and sip class, try a sketch and smoke. 
   
4. Host an edibles and embroideries class
   The natural successor of the sketch and smoke. Help each participant to make their own beautiful cannabis designs to let people know their home is 420-friendly.

For the peace and love people

1. Do something nice in your community
   Organize a beach clean up, food bank, or clothes drive in your town or city. Your community will thank you.
2. Participate in some advocacy work in your state
   Even the most liberal states have cannabis issues that they need to work on, like the expungement of non-violent cannabis-related criminal records or banking in the cannabis sector. Attend the meetings, do the work, and widen your reach with lots of new contacts.
3. Start a garden party club
   Mull over topics like philosophy, humanism, compassion, or justice. Pick a new topic every meeting, and make it available for anyone in your local community.
4. Create a cannabis and coronavirus healing meditation series
   This year has been a ride. Create a calm place for people to get together (virtually or outdoors and distanced), share, and heal.

Contact us to learn how we can create bespoke experiences for your brand.