Pot shop promotes neighbours to dodge advertising restrictions /

Bypassing restrictions / This campaign is a great example of how creativity can help brands circumvent advertising regulations with panache. In his book Predatory Thinking, Dave Trott talks about how challenges are often great opportunities to get creative. When presented with an advertising problem – like, say, promoting something you can’t show, or even mention – marketers have to go beyond what they think they know, and create something altogether different. In short, being forced to find a loophole can spur you to be more creative, and result in more interesting work.

Confronted with prohibitions on showcasing its products and stores, Stok’d used neighbouring businesses as a workaround, and created a noteworthy, amusing piece campaign in the process.

When it comes to marketing, creativity isn’t just a nice-to-have buzzword, it drives sales. A 2023 Kantar x WARC report highlights that the most creative and effective advertisements generated over four times the ROMI (return on media investment)  profit with highly creative ads generating a 6.62 ROMI versus 1.42 for ads with a low creative quality. For Stok’d, embracing creativity is a strategic choice – a proven pathway to enhanced success and returns.

Community member / By enlisting neighbouring businesses to endorse it in a light-hearted manner, the Stok’d campaign portrays itself as a friendly face within the community.

The humorous undertone of the ads is engaging and injects some fun into the execution, and it also serves to counteract potential negative associations with the product. This community-oriented approach contributes to reshaping perceptions, portraying the dispensary as an approachable local space. It echoes and bolsters the playful brand personality that the brand describes on its website: ‘definitely not a boutique’ but a store with a ‘neighbourhood vibe’.

This is crucial as the lack of brand recognition (due to stringent ad regulations that restrict marketing possibilities) is one of the reasons cited by some for Canada’s struggling legal cannabis market, as reported on by the BBC last year. When barred from advertising their products and locations, brands have to ‘lower their prices and offer other incentives to compete with other stores nearby’. Strong, creative ads, like Next to Stok’d, allow brands to find differentiation elsewhere than in price promotions and can help brands stand out in the competitive cannabis market. 

In 2020, Omar Yar Khan, national cannabis sector lead at the consultancy firm Hill & Knowlton, stated the issue in the Guardian: ‘There are strict rules around advertising for cannabis companies. It’s very hard to draw loyal consumers away from the illicit market to a legal market when there is very little brand identity among the consumer groups.’

With this campaign, Stok’d at once bypasses legal constraints, captures interest with humour and showcases a community-friendly image that gives it an edge in the difficult cannabis landscape.