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PR In The Cannabis Industry – Grasslands | A Journalism-Minded Agency

Grasslands | A Journalism-Minded Agency with Ricardo Baca, CEO of Grasslands. The company is a PR agency for the cannabis industry… Ricardo is formerly an editor at The Denver Post, producing The Cannabist for over three years until December 2016, and is known as being the first full-time marijuana rights editor for a major American newspaper. Ricardo Baca is a 20-year veteran journalist, keynote speaker, TEDx veteran and thought leader in modern media and drug-policy circles.

He served as The Denver Post’s first-ever marijuana editor and founded news vertical The Cannabist, where he extensively covered the advent of adult-use cannabis and related issues across the country and around the world, as seen in the feature documentary Rolling Papers (Netflix). In 2016, Ricardo launched Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency to work directly with business leaders in highly regulated industries, including cannabis, energy and traditional healthcare. Named Marketer of the Year by AdCann in 2019, Ricardo has received numerous accolades for his trailblazing work covering drug policy, cannabis business, and culture, and continues to columnize and host podcasts for a number of top publications.

 

Transcription:

 

Get informed get inspired and get connected.

Hello, thank you for tuning into another episode of NCIA’s cannabis industry voice on cannabis Radio, I’m your host Bethany Moore, and I’m the communications Project Manager at the National cannabis industry association today on the show. I’m happy to introduce Ricardo Baca, he’s the CEO of Grasslands. Grasslands is a PR agency for the cannabis industry. For those who aren’t in the know, and Ricardo himself is pretty well known, he’s Formerly an editor at the Denver Post, and produced The Cannabist over three years through the end of 2016, he’s also known as being the first full-time marijuana rights editor for a major American newspaper thank you so much for coming to the show record of that, then thanks so much for having me on a

I don’t know what took so long but I’m glad we’re finally here.

Yeah…

Well, I, I have introduced you a little bit, but I’m sure there’s more to you. Could you tell our listeners a bit more about your background and your experience especially the work you did before you got involved in all things? Cannabist of course, yeah, my entire life has been dedicated to journalism in one way or another. Going back to delivering the Rocky mode news in the suburbs of North Denver. Back when I was a kid. And were you a paper boy, I was A…

I love it, I had a number of routes going back to 14-15, years old.

Oh yeah, I am delivering 90 Sunday newspapers, once a week. And then that that job is such an amazing and still a work ethic on a young person, because you’re legitimately working 365 days a year and waking up at some God awful lover of the morning. But that kind of just tied me to the newspaper, I would come home every morning with newsprint on my hands, so I think I was just destined to enter this industry somehow, but… Later ended up getting a college scholarship from the Rocky Mountain News, the same newspaper, I delivered for years and studied journalism was fortunate enough to work at the rocky for four years throughout college that they paid for and rip the rocket news went by the wayside passed away about 11 years ago, which was tragic a result of a newspaper war in Colorado, I and went on to work for a newspaper another newspaper in Texas for a couple of years and came back to Denver and worked for the Denver Post, which was, the triumph that newspaper in that newspaper war.

I was the music critic at the post. I started a music festival called the US the underground music shoes, which was a lot of fun and that’s still around my last year. We had 350 bands, four days, several venues and one risk band would get you into it all. I was just in love with South by Southwest, and wanted to replicate that vibe in my own town, and then after years of writing about music and producing the Music Festival and starting Music blogs I ended up getting promoted to the entertained the editor position and a couple of years later. Next thing you know, those crazy Colorado voters are approving Amendment 64, in November of 2012 and the editors at the Denver Post had the foresight to recognize that suddenly this is a recreational substance basically traded the same way as… Beer and wine, and we had reporters not only creating entire bear vertical bear blogs where we celebrated and reported on Colorado beers, but we also had reporters reporting on the alcohol as an industry, and so they recognized we needed to change the way we discussed cannabis. And so, in late 2013, the editor I called me aside and said, “Hey we wanna cover marijuana differently and we want you to be our guy. And so that’s how I became that first marijuana editor, a major metro in tail newspaper, and it was such a tremendous experience entirely brought there through organic means after 20 plus years. In journalism and was very excited to take on the cannabis beats and of course, as you mentioned create the cannabis after that, which became a grew into an award-winning news vertical that had a larger readership, the High Times and Marijuana dot com, which was Weiss former vertical. And we did a lot of topic-work, if I do say so myself. We had a staff of seven, full-timers and we had freelancers split spanning the globe. I covered implementation of Colorado  and Washington States and just really go real journalism to the cannabis industry for one of the first times building on the backs of the work that had been done by the activist media, organizations like High Times and then the actual journalism, that had been done by David downs and a few other reporters’ but we stepped up, we held the industry accountable, we help the regulators accountable and in the course of doing things, we hopefully helped normalize this industry and cement it as an industry similar to order and gas or the airline industry.

Totally agree, yes. And you had the TV show element of the cannabis as well, which was super fun and you had different guests on interviewing them. That was probably extra fun.

Yeah, always totally was. And that was called the cannabis to show he hosted 99 episodes and it was a four-camera shoot, but less than 10 episodes in. We heard from so many people who were watching and they said, “You know what, we would be way more likely to listen to this if you released it as an audio only version of via podcast. And so we did, and it really thrived there. I definitely loved that aspect. It really forced you to get out and meet people in the industry.

In fact, I’m sure you experience that too, because… Oh yeah, so sucked up in the day-to-day. Whether you’re a journalist or you’re helping to run the industries primary trade organization that isn’t it kind of a treat, to have this time set out once a week where you just gotta sit down and get to know somebody a great totally 100% and really focus for a good 30 minutes.

I was speaking at the time, we’re gonna take a commercial break in just a couple minutes, here, but I wanna ask is there any other inspiration that you had is your reason for being in cannabis because of the opportunity or do you have another story or passion for it or just generally inspired?

I will be completely honest and that is… I didn’t know much about cannabis or the industry before I was appointed the Denver Post marijuana editor.

I don’t smoke but my lungs will not allow me to smoke anything. And so, especially in an era of largely unregulated product, I just didn’t consume this substance.

Totally have enjoyed plenty of others in my day, but I… This one, particularly, it was really about six months before I got the cannabis editor gig when a friend introduced me to an edible from the state inland instantly, it clicked with me instantly it became my preferred substance of choice and the minute I got the job and started studying Policy and history, how we got here, how we’ve been lied to it immediately became a tremendous passion of mine. And I just never wanna stop learning I just keep learning every day and I’m so thankful that I’m able to work with a lot of the brands in this industry, yeah, yeah, and speaking of working with the brands, there’s always something new to learn from these new companies. So you founded grass lands and you’re doing PR for the cannabis industry and you’re based here in Denver as well. Have been to your office, once or twice. Just tell me more about grass lands and your day-to-day and what’s going on with the company, or… Yeah, in 20 plus years of daily newspaper journalism, I learned very quickly that PR has a PR problem and it’s not specific to cannabis. PR but publicists I just recognize that there’s a trend toward lazy public relations and that is no way to connect with your partners and the media because of the… Of course, the media is expansive, it really relies on the journalists having good relationships with the communications professionals. And when I realized that there was potentially a different way to do that, I started dreaming up a different kind of agency, concept and that ultimately is grass lines.

We call it a journalism-minded agency in us to say that it’s content forward deadline-oriented, There’s active listening, there’s no taking there’s accountability. Everything I learned in daily newspaper newsrooms we won four poles or prizes during my time at the Denver Post-alone and everything. I learned there about ethics, about deadlines, about the importance of quality content thoughtful storytelling and complete narratives.

We have really implemented into an agency contract and we’re just kind of doing this differently than anybody else in the game and we love working with highly regulated industries going back to those journalism roots journalism in many ways is taking the complex and breaking it down to a general interest, readership.

And so, I have done that for years, and a lot of my colleagues on our content team I’ve also done that for years in outlets, ranging from the Chicago Sun-Times to men’s health magazine, to the Daily Beast.

And so now we do that for our clients in these highly regulated industries, primarily cannabis a technology, we also work with a client and traditional healthcare and client in city and county government grass lines that actually represents the Denver county court which is the largest court system in the rocking out in West.

So, you know, there’s a lot of applications from what you learned in J school, at newsrooms in your time in the mainstream media, and I’d like to think that we’re practicing a more responsible, a more strategic version of public relations at grass limits.

Awesome, yes, thank you for breaking that down awesome, so… Alright, we’re gonna hop off or a quick commercial break, here, but we’ll be right back to talk more with Ricardo about some of the challenges in PR and advertising in the cannabis industry. So, stay tuned will be right

Alright, we’re back on NCIA’s cannabis industry voice on cannabis radio, and we’re chatting with Ricardo Baca, of Grasslands a journalism-minded PR agency.

So there are definitely some advertising challenges for the cannabis industry even that.

And CBD products. So from your perspective and your efforts to help these clients get their product or their service out there, can you talk a little bit about some of the limitations and the challenges? I know with substances like alcohol, cigarettes, you can’t smoke a cigarette, on a TV commercial or something like that or whatever, so I’m sure there’s something like that with cannabis. What’s that look like?

Yeah, there’s a lot of that, especially when you take into consideration that we have our regulatory construct in Colorado and then there’s 30 plus other regulatory situations, and schemes throughout this country alone, it’s completely dissimilar in Canada and other legal countries. So, it’s infinitely complex, but what it boils down to is any business in any industry, needs to know needs a way to get the word out and generally that is done at the A, the media and you have earned media, which is public relations so that is getting your name into news articles where people find you organically, because they’re reading about something that they’re interested in, and you just happen to be involved in what they’re interested in. There’s owned media, as well. And so, for example, this podcast is a great example of that. This is owned media for ncia. Or your website, your blog, is owned media, there’s also paid media, which is advertising. And when you think about it, the cannabis industry, the hemp industry as well is really him strong right now in terms of what they can actually do.

Yeah, teary paid media outlets out there right now, of course, Facebook and Google are not taking money from any THC marijuana businesses and they’re taking very little money from any of the hemp-derived CBD businesses as well.

So I, this is entirely about federal legality.

This is about their being risk-averse, Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues over at Google, they’re just being extremely cautious. That’s created this situation where the cannabis industry has a hard time buying ads on the most important advertising platforms in the world.

The struggle is so real, even we’ve been trying to advertise lobby days for ncia. We yeah, struggles real.

Oh, real I know, and you’re like… We are not plant touching we are bringing the industry to Washington. Do you see… Yeah, it’s ridiculous. Since we can’t boost posts, on our Instagram account, simply because we work with a lot of great “Cashin SES and that’s okay, because we recognize that we’re on the right side of history and Zuckerberg is not, but one powerful tool that you can turn to in that.

And actually, I spoke on this at your show Bethany in Boston in February, the seed-to-sale show, which is always one of my favorites.

This is such a ripe opportunity for earned media for these businesses, whether they’re plant touching or non-plant touching their ancillary brands to really get their name out in the media, in the earned media. And of course that involves hiring a PR professional, whether you’re hiring that person, internally on your staff or contracting with an agency, this allows your brand to get seen in newspapers and blogs on podcast.

And so how this works given what you and I are doing right now to break it down a little bit. This podcast is owned media for you and ncia. It’s earned media for me and grass lands and we’re very appreciative to be on here, but earned a meat is valuable from that perspective, that somebody made the editorial decision to talk to you to ask you your thoughts.

And so you made that editorial decision because you felt I had something to add to the conversation for which I’m tremendously grateful but you… is earned media is the most trusted media in the world and it has been for decades ever since Pew and Gallup, have been asking these questions about what media people trust. Of course, they trust earned media more than they do paid or owned because anybody can buy an advertisement except for the cannabis industry when it comes to Google and Facebook, but anybody generally confine advertisements, not anybody can secure earned media. And that, so that’s what we specialize in and that it’s such a tremendous opportunity for us to help these great brands get seen raise their bill visibility raise their presence among their target market places.

Good, it makes sense. So it sounds like utilizing earned media and owned media might be the way to kinda work around some of these other… I had media challenges. Gosh, we… We share a lot of things to figure out along the way and I think this world of PR content strategy, advertising, social media is definitely one of those components that we’re trying to navigate as things continue to change. So in what ways do you see companies making mistakes that could be easily remedied or address? Obviously, we’re not getting our post boosted on Facebook, so I don’t know what do we do.

 

Yeah, that’s a great question. So let’s go back to that. Owned media, because so much of the owned media is really within our control we create the content that occupies our websites or social media channels and so that’s great. If you have a blog on your website, and you’re a brand or a business that is already a huge win. And you should pat yourself on the back to that, if you have a podcast, even better, big props to you but are you… I love it. So what are you doing these things strategically though, because if you’re putting out 200-word blogs twice a month and you’re writing about whatever you wanna write about just to get content out there, to make a log active. Yeah, puppies, that’s valuable but it’s not smart and it’s not strategic, ’cause you need to understand that unless your blog entry is at least 350 words then Google is not even Spider. That specific blog that the… Of content, and at least, unless your blog entry, is specifically formulated with keywords and phrases that are attuned to the search habits of your target customer at which if you’re creating a blog you want it to be red, ideally you want it to be found at beyond just people finding it, your social media, and so if you’re not targeting it with keywords and phrases employing tactics belonging to the fields of search engine optimization like SEO, SEM, the…

You shouldn’t is doing it at all. Yeah, people will not find it unless you are giving them the tools for them to find it through organic search.

Yeah, I think there’s lots of mistakes being made. And here’s a fun one. Even for podcasts. So if you’re doing a podcast that is tremendous, that is so above and beyond, but let’s talk about how people find the media. We find it via search, we find it through the search functionality of Apple’s podcast medium as well as Father but also online in general.

And so one thing we do for my podcast, I currently host Cannabis and Main, we write transcripts of every single episode, and we publish the transcript alongside with the audio because of course, audio is not searchable but words and content are searchable and so on, making that audio file suddenly searchable in the hopes that more people will find it. So it’s just all about employing strategy on your earned media or your own media. And we find all too often that are prospects and the people we’re talking about doing work together are not strategically approaching this in which case sometimes they’re wasting their time and effort.

Yeah, that’s good advice. And I believe we at NCIA actually are going to take that in place and get some transcriptions up so that this valuable information is searchable a little bit more, so we only have about a minute or so before the end of this segment. So I do wanna emphasize, of course, we have a huge responsibility to be responsible as a cannabis industry betray ourselves as legitimate. we’re maturing, we’re growing up, we’re glowing up, we’re investing in things like a public person. So any quick advice for a business who is looking for either an agency or a person in order to step things up absolutely of course if you’re in the market for any form of contract or whatsoever, you wanna shop around, do your due diligence. I get them on the phone, ask ask the hard questions, and then ask for a proposal, and see which one works best for you? And your budget, your needs and your challenges. I think that that’s necessary for everything, but I also think that you can do some of this work before you start working with an agency partner, so Google public relations, see what other businesses in your space, whether it’s cannabis, or hemp or nail it down, and we can talk about cultivators retailers and manufacturers. What are other people doing that you think is smart and emulate that? And then your future agency partner will be all that much more ready to take you on and help take your communications program and your PR strategy to the next level makes perfect sense. Awesome, alright well we’re gonna take one more quick commercial break and then we’ll come back and wrap up our chat here with Ricardo Baca. So stay tuned, we’ll be right

All right, with that on NCIA’s cannabis industry voice. We’ve been learning about PR, and advertising in the cannabis industry with Ricardo Baca, from grasslands PR firm. So as we’re wrapping up here, I’m curious, are there any interesting stories coming out of the cannabis world, from the public relations perspective? Any other signs that the industry is maybe maturing, that’s worth talking about?

Definitely when you think about PR, it encompasses so many different things including reputation management, as well as crisis manageable and I think, you know, as well as I do, crises are not industry specific that they end up happening to businesses in all spaces. And some… We’re seeing these crises erupt on a national scale, whether we’re talking about what’s happening with “medmen currently, and some of the accusations there or with other businesses that are dealing with their own internal external conflicts. So we are seeing things happen in the PR space in cannabis that are both good and bad, but overall we’re seeing this industry step up its game on the PR front, and I think that’s a very good thing because candidates like anything else is an industry and it needs to treat its business platforms, as such. So maybe a good example here would be CSR. So there’s lots of them, but I’ll start with CSR Corporate Social Responsibility, and we are starting to see brands in this cannabis and hemp space start to step up and recognize that if they are successful, if they have the wherewithal, it is their responsibility to give back to the communities in which they operate.

So CSR is not basic philanthropy, it’s more 360 degrees than that. It is taking into consideration the industry where you operate your target audiences and the history associated with that, and then giving back, strategically and also in some form of consistent sustainable manner and with the programs that we’re starting to see, from businesses, including good chemistry in Colorado is doing tremendous work. I was hanging out with a colleague from Bloom farms that the great California cannabis brand in Canada last week and he was telling me how they’ve surpassed 15 million meals donated to food banks across the state of California, and that’s part of a one-for-one program. You buy a bloom Farms product in a dispensary and they donate a meal to a California Food Bank. It’s just simple reciprocity. So they’re doing community good, it’s tied to their customer behavior and they love talking about it as they should.

We have a CSR program, we give money to different organizations for each full-time employee once a month, so it’s a modest donation. Each multi-employee picks their non-profit of choice, and it just gives our colleagues that sense of ownership and also just let the world know that cannabis is here doing good work, not only spreading this medicine that is helping so many people, but improving the communities in which we exist.

Absolutely, yeah. Another example that came to mind was Denver relief had the green team, they would go on clean-up missions.

That was a good one, yeah so… Yeah, I am as we’re wrapping up the show Here I am really looking forward to the cannabis business Summit, an expo, it’s our six-annual conference, this is our original conference and our biggest one, it’s in San Jose, California, “ncia members get 50 off tickets. By the way the website is cannabis business Summit, dot com. Will I see you in San Jose Ricardo, you know you will. Bethany had such a blast with you and your team last year. It was fun to explore such a different aspect of the Bay Area, but… And as a great city we had a total blast out there. Lots to keep you busy from the expo floor during the day and then a great slate of events and parties at night and on.

Who knows, maybe we’ll even throw a little grass lines party while we’re out there.

I would love that, and I definitely will go to that.

That’s a real awesome… Yes, the parties are kind of the frosting on the cake. When it comes to the cannabis industry conferences, it’s such a great opportunity to kind of exhale, explore in heroes, a lot.

Oh, that…

Oh, inhaling and exhaling, let’s be real, in a knot, like when we got a breeze. So let’s go to these parties and breathe together.

Agree, Ricardo thank you so much for you and your team’s membership with “ncia it’s great, we’re all kind of this big happy family here in Denver that have been watching the maturing of our industry and the struggles, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and we’re all in this together, and I really enjoy the sense of community and camaraderie that that the have in our industry, NCIA builds that not only through our conferences, but we also host regional networking events across the country or cannabis caucus events in our industry. socials. They’re a great way to get connected, get informed get inspired and to make this industry the best it can be.

So, wouldn’t you agree?

Yeah, I’ve said this to you before, and a number of your colleagues thank you for the work that you do. We’re very proud to be “ncia members. For all of our cannabis, and hemp clients, we very much encourage them to join and to enjoy those membership.

Have a… Because membership does have its privileges, and I’m a big fan of the Cannabis Caucuses. We’re hoping to be able to sponsor some quarterly cannabis causes here in the future, but to in the meantime we continue to attend through the occasional after-hours party afterwards to happen in a… As Roca this… What I hear is what it’s being called.

But yeah, we had a good… We brought a 100 people into the office that when you threw it at the History Colorado Center a couple of months ago. So, I entertain I eat and so thank you for the work you guys do. It’s just so necessary. And so much of the progress, we regularly see legislatively happens because of the hard work that you all do. So thank you, thank you, we’re all in this together. Alright, well, we have run out of time, but thanks again for being on the show. Where can people find out more about grass lands?

You can check us out and learn more at my grass lands dot com awesome, thanks again Ricardo and thanks everybody for tuning in to another episode of NCIS cannabis industry voice until next time.