Brock Ollie

Clio Cannabis 2022 Gold winner.

The biggest night for advertising, Super Bowl, featured an array of consumer brands in regulated industries, from alcoholic beverages to sports betting, yet legal cannabis retailers, brands and businesses — including non-plant touching businesses like Weedmaps — were boxes out as they are not allowed to advertise on network TV. So, Weedmaps took this opportunity to showcase the illogical omission of cannabis in most mainstream advertising, and used a personified head of broccoli, Brock Ollie, to get the message across (the broccoli emoji is often used as a stand-in for the cannabis plant). The objective was to insert Weedmaps into the national Super Bowl conversation to highlight the issue of cannabis censorship.

In the ad, Brock notes the usage of his likeness as a “substitute” for cannabis, and laments the ill effects it has caused him. Weedmaps took an integrated approach across earned media, social, and in person events to amplify the message - the call to action of #SaveBrockOllie brought a sense of humor to the issue, and helped bring the conversation to the forefront, especially on social media. Weedmaps made shareable and comedic #SaveBrockOllie memes utilizing freeze frames from the ad, and tagged all social content with #SaveBrockOllie - consumers across platforms embraced this hashtag and organically drove conversation around cannabis censorship online. The brand also created @broccolimaps Instagram account which became the "censored" hub within the main social platform that seemingly has given cannabis content and brands a lot of trouble in the world of censorship.

The digital spot broke through the immense Super Bowl news cycle and raised awareness around cannabis marketing restrictions brands and businesses within the industry are faced with everyday, resulting in nearly 354 million media impressions and approximately 250 editorial, social, and broadcast placements including Adweek, Forbes, Bloomberg, Benzinga, and Digiday. The video also garnered nearly 200k views organically, and even resulted in a panel at the 2022 SXSW conference about the 'Crisis of Cannabis Censorship'. The video and content were also amplified via paid online media strategies.