Social Media Internship
May 2021 - Jan. 2022
Unlike High Buds Club's ability to reach and influence budtenders, the Cannabis Council of Canada (C3) focuses on the political agenda of bringing cannabis issues to the public forefront. With an ex-politician-turned-cannabis lobbyist, George Smitherman, CEO of the Cannabis Council of Canada, manned the helm of the association and where it steered.
OBJECTIVE
At the start of my internship, a campaign called #TheFutureofCanadianCannabis was already underway to underscore the unbalanced legal framework around cannabis beverages. The #TheFutureofCanadianCannabis campaign was created in collaboration with spark*advocacy, a creative firm primarily working on advocacy. Unfortunately, the Cannabis Council of Canada's social media presence lacked a digitally uniform presence and needed more support before their beverage campaign was shortly released.
In addition to the beverage campaign, an annual report called the "Not Done Yet Report Card" detailed the current state of cannabis and scheduled to be released on October 17th, 2021, the third anniversary of legalization. This report was in collaboration with Cannabis Amnesty, Medical Cannabis Canada and NORML Canada, and then designed by myself.
#TheFutureofCanadianCannabis and the Beverage Equivalency Campaign
The #TheFutureofCanadianCannabis Campaign had a multi-pronged plan to disseminate information and increase local political support, tackling major cannabis issues plaguing the community. One of these issues were the limitation on beverage purchases due to confusing calculations between the legal 10 milligram limit on edibles and the volume of liquid present in a beverage. The second issue was encouraging cannabis companies and organizations to attend C3 digital conferences to understand the Canadian political system and voice their opinion about the cannabis industry prior to the federal election of September 20, 2021.
#TheFutureofCanadianCannabis: Election Ready
Using source material from the unpublished Not Done Yet Report Card, I created a set of 1080 x 1920 Instagram Stories and posted them on C3's LinkedIn, Twitter and my personal page. The design elements were made in Adobe Illustrator, applying C3's logo colour scheme to tie in the branding.
On August 15th, 2021, a press release was published detailing C3's campaign objectives on its main website. I designed the press release's information into an infographic, posting it on LinkedIn and my personal page to gain more traction within the community.
Results
LinkedIn Analytics
Instagram Analytics
Not Done Yet Report Card - Canada's Third Year of Cannabis Legalization
The Cannabis Council of Canada's third annual report on the Canadian cannabis industry was created and released on October 19th, 2021 in collaboration with Cannabis Amnesty, Medical Cannabis Canada and NORML Canada. The report included categories specific to cannabis issues that were given a grade and an explicitly detailed rationale attached to each one. With a lot of information readily available, I used the association's Twitter account to show a sneak peek.
Excerpts from the Not Done Yet Report Card
The Beverage Equivalency Campaign
With the help of spark*advocacy's skillset in creative political advocacy, digital assets were produced previous to my role as the Social Media Intern. The idea behind the Beverage Equivalency Campaign was to set into motion local grassroots activism at a retail level, encouraging staff and customers to contact their Members of Parliament, highlighting the confusing equivalency calculations that limited the purchase of cannabis beverages. Here is a link to C3's landing page for the beverage campaign built by spark*advocacy.
On July 7th, 2021, George Smitherman wrote an article for The Hill Times titled "Cannabis beverages in Canada: the glass is not even half full", explaining the disastrous consequences of Health Canada's dried cannabis flower to beverage calculation. To drum up more support, I transformed the article into another infographic to be easily shared over LinkedIn & my personal Instagram page.
Results: LinkedIn & Instagram
LinkedIn Analytics
