I began freelance copywriting for cannabis companies just before federal legalization in Canada. What a magical time. You could feel the buzz in the air about this exciting new frontier. The budgets were huge. The sponsored events were unbelievable. An intimate Queens of the Stone Age show at the Commodore in Vancouver? Yes, please! Erykah Badu DJing at the Carlu in Toronto? OMG! Premium swag and immersive activations everywhere. 

No one was even selling weed legally yet. Everyone was so excited about the prospect of making bajillions of dollars that they were throwing around investment money like it was growing on bajillions of stanky trees. Having grown up dabbling in cannabis, the opportunity to get in on this excitement and combine my love of the green with my love of the written word was intoxicating.  

After legalization, reality set in, and it was time to get to work selling drugs legitimately. I decided to take a chance and make the jump from my cushy PR copywriting job in Toronto to join the marketing team at a cannabis start-up in Vancouver. Just three brands and a small handful of products quickly ballooned into nine brands and more than 100 products. And I was the only copywriter for all of them.

It was a wild ride to say the least. I had done some pharma copywriting before, which was pretty strict, but cannabis was on another level. The Canadian government had essentially regulated cannabis like it was tobacco. Health Canada restricted where we could advertise and how we could promote our products. Everything had to be age-gated. There would be no billboards, no TV ads, no radio ads, and we were permitted to say very little about the products we were selling. We were left with websites, social media and trade marketing. Social media was extremely shaky ground considering brand accounts were being deleted all over the place for even mentioning cannabis-related words. 

How were we supposed to get the word out about our brands, let alone build customer loyalty?

A small sample of rules our marketing team had to memorize and follow:

• No copy or images that could appeal to children in any way, such as characters, faces, or neon colours
• No copy or images that made consuming cannabis sound “exciting” or “daring” 
• Nothing associating cannabis with “lifestyle” activities
• No reference to product effects or benefits
• Nothing that could be perceived as an inducement to buy

Break the rules and you could be forced to redesign entire websites, burn hours of work to the ground, or pay devastating fines. Even worse… your license could be revoked. On top of the federal regulations, there are also provincial ones, and guess what… they’re all different!

Thankfully, we had in-house legal counsel at the time who reviewed every word of every tweet, which helped us stay out of trouble, but also ruined every joke I attempted to make. I’m happy to say that I did get into a groove of legally compliant but still funny social media content.

How do you make a product sound compelling when you can’t talk about its benefits? 

This went against everything I had learned as a copywriter. We were limited to communicating features only, such as physical appearance, flavour, plant type, cultivar name (aka strain), growing practices, and of course, THC content. We could never say or depict anything like “This sativa is perfect for an afternoon of crafting” or “Try this indica when you want to unwind after a long workday.” 

Not to mention the misinformation around what indicas and sativas actually are, and the lack of accurate information available about the real characteristics and effects of these plant types. It all depends on each plant’s unique combination of compounds and how they interact with your unique endocannabinoid system – thank you, Cannabis Sommelier Level 1!

Add to that, the industry was (and is) still figuring itself out. We had to constantly learn on the fly, pivot and react to changes in government buying patterns and the slowly trickling stream of data we were able to get our hands on.

Despite these restrictions and the steep learning curve, our team still had tons of fun making cool shit we were super proud of. Peep my portfolio for a few examples. I got to make a ‘zine, which is something young Jessica always wanted to do. But don’t expect to see it anytime soon if you’re a normie because that would be illegal! It’s for budtenders and industry eyes only.

It may sound like I’m bitter but that’s not the case. Writing copy for cannabis has been one of the greatest creative challenges of my life, which is something I needed this far into my career. 

So what did this rollercoaster ride teach me?

Playing by the rules can be FUN

Working within constraints challenges you to find creative solutions. It took time to figure out Health Canada’s rules but once we found the sweet spot, it was such a rush for our team to be able to come up with innovative ideas that tiptoed on the edge of them in a cheeky way. When a lawyer laughs at something you’ve written and it’s not immediately followed by “NOT APPROVED” that’s a huge win. 

Don’t get too attached to your babies

This is a general rule for creatives but in the cannabis world, it’s on steroids. Whether it’s lawyers kiboshing your campaign, Meta flat out deleting your carefully curated Instagram grid, industry trends shifting dramatically and making your work irrelevant, or Health Canada dropping the hammer on your website – you have to get used to your work being killed brutally, and often. Let’s just say my delicate skin is now super calloused!

When you can’t talk about product benefits or effects, it’s time to flex your storytelling muscle

I became well versed in telling stories that communicated the product’s benefits in a creative way without spelling them out explicitly. Take this product description, for example, in which I tell a story about an experience one may or may not have after smoking an infused pre-roll:

You’re in the produce section and all the little fruits start blasting off into space out of nowhere leaving little clouds of apple, strawberry and guava in their trail and no one seems to notice like it’s all perfectly fine and normal and then you wake up in a shopping cart at the other end of the parking lot and wonder if anything is real. Anyway, the Apple Bubba x Strawberry Guava Jet Pack includes two pre-rolls infused with distillate and botanical terpenes to boost their potency and fruity and sweet flavours. BYO shopping cart.

When there is no standard, it’s exciting to be able to set it

When I started copywriting in cannabis, there was no playbook. Everyone was figuring things out as they went. It was scary but also kind of exhilarating to do things no one had done before. Now that several years have passed and creatives in this industry are getting into a groove, the work is getting even better, and it will only go up from here as regulations are revisited and revised to (hopefully) give us a little more room to explore possibilities. 

I’m no longer working in cannabis full time, but it makes up a big chunk of my freelance work. If you need cannabis copywriting support, holler at me.