Dear Cannabis Industry,
I write this letter to you with the utmost respect on a matter of grave importance. Please, please, please: stop trying to create new cannabis “holidays.”
On Wednesday, November 29, I received a PR pitch about Indica Day being December 8 and how Marijuana Venture should cover a particular “trailblazer in the cannabis industry” that has “curated a selection of premium indica products designed to enhance your experience and elevate your sense to new heights.”
Enhanced experience? Elevated senses? New heights? Oooh, tell me more, I thought, barely able to contain my enthusiasm.
Haven’t heard of Indica Day before? Neither had I, though a quick Google search showed a small handful of companies faithfully celebrating the special day for the past couple of years. Apparently, according to this most recent PR pitch, Indica Day is a “recent addition to the cannabis holiday calendar that recognizes the medicinal benefits of indica strains.”
Let me stop you right there. Please … stop. You sound like Lacey Chabert’s character in the movie “Mean Girls,” constantly trying to get the phrase “fetch” to catch on.
STOP TRYING TO MAKE FETCH HAPPEN!
Stop trying to make Indica Day a thing. Stop trying to make National CBD Day a thing. Stop with the ridiculous creation of new holidays that sound like desperate excuses to liquidate some of your inventory because your buyer ordered too many indica pre-rolls before the Thanksgiving weekend sales rush.
And, for that matter, while we’re at it, stop trying to make 7/10 catch on. It has no history. No cultural relevance. No reason for existing. It spells OIL upside-down. And retailers put concentrates on sale, boosting the numbers to make it look more important than it is. Whoop-dee-doo. Bust out the fine china.
4/20 is fun. It’s truly a day of celebration. It’s known far and wide, celebrated inside and outside the industry, recognized — though not necessarily observed — by consumers and non-consumers alike. It has history. It has cultural relevance. Cannabis enthusiasts and the industry as a whole need a holiday to enjoy cannabis, to celebrate the progress of legalization, to plot out the steps that still need to be taken, to get 20% off all edibles at the local dispensary.
Green Wednesday — the day before Thanksgiving — is also a different story. Green Wednesday emerged naturally, a day when people stocked up on the cannabis products they would want/need in order to endure their families during the long holiday weekend, to prepare themselves to gorge upon a Thanksgiving feast, to laugh at Uncle Ruben’s culturally insensitive jokes, to make the Seahawks’ Thanksgiving night ass-kicking by the 49ers more tolerable. Marketers came up with the pithy name, but the cultural phenomenon was already in place — and similarly capitalized upon by booze retailers for the exact same reasons for decades.
National CBD Day is not the cannabidiol equivalent of 4/20 or Green Wednesday, nor are consumers rushing to their favorite weed store on December 8 to stock up on indica strains.
I know most of these promotional “holidays” are cooked up by PR firms and marketing executives who lack the creativity to manufacture a worthwhile publicity stunt or a product/brand that warrants legitimate news coverage. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that somebody signed off on this lazy plan. And if anything, these “holidays” actually have a negative effect on an industry that is trying hard to break through longstanding stigmas and shine a light on real medical uses of cannabis.
So, for the good of the industry, please stop with the ridiculousness.
Sincerely,
Garrett Rudolph
Editor, Marijuana Venture