How to talk about cannabis? Communication strategy for the canna sphere.

Christina Rivera: Cannabis activist, worked in advertising, journalism and communications, worked on an information campaign that led to the signing of the petition and the bill.

Why should we talk about cannabis in a special way? The fact is that the whole world is built on communications. The ultimate goal of any communication is behavior change. When you speak with the grandmother-concierge in the front door, there is already communication, the purpose of which is to let you in or to make you more loyal to your guests constantly rushing back and forth.

When you try to sell your product - this is also communication: a person did not want to buy your product, but still bought it. And if you need the state to pass a bill that will facilitate your work and open up new opportunities for your business? In fact, this is also achieved by communication methods.

Let's dwell on the components of any communication.

1. The target audience. Who exactly is your target audience, how to find it, and why do you need other target audiences?

Please note that each person has a so-called metaprogram, which is also called an information bubble. These are the very thinking skills, perception filters, laws of attention, behavioral preferences inherent in every person. Each target audience has its own metaprogram, its own information cocoon, and the goal of your communication is to break through this bubble and change the behavior of your target audience. Ask yourself: do you have a good idea of your target audience?

To do this, clearly draw a portrait of who you need: a well-earned IT specialist who will buy a vaporizer and will not compare prices in different stores; an experienced grower who understands the prices of seeds or light boxes or a middle-aged housewife who needs to sell eye cream based on CBD.

Of course, each of us wants to work with a young hipster, a well-earned startup, fashionable, who understands everything, whose words “decarbolization” bounce off his teeth. But if your target is the same grandmother from the porch? Or, like activists, a government official? Or a cop?

2. Gains & pains.

After you have clearly defined to whom you want to sell your product / service / idea, understand what your target audience has its pains that need to be met and the goals that need to be achieved. We take one of the most difficult - grandmother, let's call her conditionally Maria Ivanna. We draw her portrait. And consider its metaprogram based on how we can influence it? What grandmother has pains / goals that we can help her achieve with our canna product, and pains that we can help her overcome?

3. Key messages.

The key message should be simple and clear - and do not forget to check it on the target audience!

Many of us are aware of the processes that once started the process of cannabis demonization. In order to influence our target (Maria Ivanna), it makes no sense to try to debunk these many-year-old strata of myths and fallacies, destroying her metaprogram that cannabis is a drug.

It is much easier to tell that cannabis is a medicine, the same as poppy, which, depending on the dosage and method of use, can be both useful and harmful.

4.  Channels of communication. How should one speak to the target audience so that they hear?

Each target audience has its own communication channels. The traditional ones are television, media, internet, instant messengers. Or speeches by opinion leaders (picture from Ulyana Suprun), or Hemp marches, which took place sequentially throughout the world.

For example, when we were developing a communication campaign to collect signatures for a petition, the "Defense" project reporters suggested making the "Defense" newspaper — a special issue about hemp — and handing it out to grandmothers by the subway — like the "News" newspaper had done at one time.

Why do I mention grandmothers so often? In Ukraine, according to the Pension Fund, 11.5 million pensioners. This is the real “Blue Ocean” in the theory of ocean strategies - an unoccupied niche, beyond competition. These are the people who have your canna money. In countries where cannabis is legalized, production rises and prices fall. It’s time to figure out this option before the cannon boom reached Ukraine.

But there is still a target - more difficult than your mother and even a neighbor. This is a government official / policeman. What is our usual discourse with them? We are trying to talk about how cannabis is useful, what are the advantages for the country, about all progressive countries, about California, Canada and Amsterdam. But in the light of the foregoing, we judge by ourselves, from our “bubble”. And we forget about the gains / pains of a government official, about his real goals and pains - and already from this our mistakes in key messages and communication channels result.

And finally, about the risks. Let's imagine what will happen if we get our way, hemp is now an ordinary plant, such as beetweed. It is not shrouded in a halo of mystery, a ban, from it they sell “Kiev Hemp” in every Kievhleb stall. Are you ready for this scenario - for the disappearance of all this mystery effect that makes cannabis so attractive?

Christina Rivera,

Communications Specialist BU 100% Life, Cannabis Activist