Best Consumer Goods Integrated Ad Campaign

Canada legalized adult-use cannabis on October 17, 2018, imposing strict advertising guidelines at the same time. AHLOT, a company of 5 employees with a very modest marketing budget, did something no one else thought to do. We deployed a national mass-market cannabis brand campaign within a country that forbids mass-market cannabis campaigns, including Google's digital ad platform, which also forbids cannabis campaigns. The mere inclusion of the word “cannabis” in an ad results in shutdown. So how did we launch a highly visible national campaign with over 167 million impressions and media pick-up on six continents? Well, we discovered that corporate recruiting is exempt from cannabis advertising restrictions, and that there’s no law against using euphemisms to signal the category. AHLOT is a company with a unique specialization. We curate and sell the only multi-packs in the country, with competing brands side-by-side. And so we came up with the idea of hiring a Cannabis Curation Committee: a group of cannabis experts from different walks of life. The CCC campaign was a national recruitment drive, never mentioning cannabis explicitly, and never straying from the main message of “we’re hiring.” Our audience spans generations, from university students to university professors, young entrepreneurs to retired professionals, artists to government officials, and so on. Given the subject, we knew they would be receptive to a playful approach. And we knew that the news media would generate the headline we were unable to run ourselves: “AHLOT paying people $50/hour to smoke weed.”

Contributors:

Chad Raymond:	Creative Director
Martin Strazovec:	EVP, Chief Creative Officer
Kaitlyn Ho:	Marketing Associate
Greg Pantelic:	CEO

AHLOT

Location: Canada