Building a brand where none of the rules applied.
Building a brand people could understand, trust, and choose—in a market where the usual rules didn’t apply.
ROLE / Co-Founder & Director of Marketing & Business Development
How do you help people choose a product you’re not allowed to explain in the usual way?
The Strain Dating Profile
You, only brighter.
A market without a map.
Legal cannabis in Washington was new. Consumers were skeptical, regulations were severe, and fifty years of prohibition had left a gap in understanding. Paid digital advertising was unavailable. Wildwood was removed from Mailchimp after its first send. This was a true build-from-nothing.
People buy how they’re going to feel.
The product needed to become human, familiar, and legible before it could be sold. I rooted the brand in the plant and the people behind it, made regenerative farming a visible brand value, and translated technical differentiators into something people could actually use.
Meet the Strain Dating Profile.
Regulations prohibited therapeutic claims. If you can’t tell people how they are going to feel, you can let them know what they could enjoy doing with this new companion. Framing each strain as a personality turned clinical restrictions into an experiential invitation. Color signaled strain character before a word was read; aroma, pairings, and activities gave consumers an immediate, tangible point of connection. One artifact became a buyer’s sales tool, a budtender’s training resource, and a customer’s guide.
Listen. Learn. Make it better.
We started relationship-first: tailored samples, in-person retail visits, and language budtenders could use. Packaging and product information evolved through real market feedback. Organic Instagram, retailer education, and earned coverage in Cannabis Now built trust without a paid media playbook.
For founders and leaders building brands with personality. Let’s compare notes.