Advertising, Storytelling, and Content Marketing in the Cannabis Industry

Ricardo Baca is a 20-year veteran journalist and cannabis futurist, widely respected in both modern media and drug-policy circles. He was appointed The Denver Post’s first-ever cannabis editor in 2013 and founded the news vertical The Cannabist, where he extensively covered the advent of the U.S. adult-use cannabis market and related issues around the world, as seen in the feature documentary Rolling Papers. Ricardo launched Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency in 2016 to work directly with business leaders in highly regulated industries, from cannabis and psychedelics to spirits and healthcare. Grasslands is a journalism-minded marketing and public relations agency working with bold brands in cannabis and psychedelics. Named one of Fortune’s 7 Most Powerful People in America’s Marijuana Industry in 2016 and Marketer of the Year by AdCann in 2019, Ricardo has received numerous accolades for his trailblazing work. They talk about the challenges of advertising in cannabis, social media plays a crucial role in this. Recently Twitter sort of “opened up” some of the cannabis advertising capabilities so we dive into that and much more.