Data is the core of many modern businesses. From making business decisions to promote growth and profitability to developing sales and customer service strategies data has become integrated into empowering businesses. Harry Brelsford of The CannaTech Group sits down with Eric Meth to discuss data, branding, customer experience and more.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
Hey welcome back to the Cannatech podcast we have another logo so first of all, Eric, I want to congratulate you and Surfside, you made the cut over at marijuana venture magazine you are on the 2022 in tech stack ecosystem chart. So congratulations we did a lot of research and we one of the main things is we needed to seek commitment from the logo to the space so you know it’s easy to say boy I saw Dell laptop at a dispensary Dells account a tech company. They’re not. But but you are. So tell me about sir side, what’s your business model?
Eric Meth
Thanks and appreciate you giving us the time here. It’s great to be on the show. Surfside is in short, a marketing and data analytics platform. And obviously we have a keen focus on Cannabis industry and specifically cannabis consumer behaviors. So what we do is we activate and manage digital media campaigns across a variety of multi state operators, single state operators, brands, delivery platforms. And as my, as my shirt says, our mantra is exactly that measure what matters. Yeah, we measure outcomes. And that’s really one of the keen differentiators in how we go about being able to show what the investment on the data enrichment side that leads to media activation to reach specific consumers that translates to sales. That’s really what we do at our core.
Harry Brelsford
So your core, what I’m hearing is me, well, maybe your split 5050, a marketing agency that can do placements, paid media placements and 50% analytics. Is that Is that about right? Or were one more than the other
Eric Meth
Yeah, the media, the media activation and media agency, we do offer manage service media. And I think a lot of it I come from more of a traditional retail marketing background, with big, branded CPG, manufacturers, consumer electronics, automotive, a lot of times they have their own agencies, my experience with like the insurance industry, they tend to take things in house where they wanted to really hold on to a lot of what they were doing and really control how they buy media. And given the limitations from a regulatory standpoint, and also, just from a policy standpoint, internally, with some of the larger platforms like the Googles, Facebook’s Instagrams, meta, everyone is pretty understanding that that’s, it’s funny, because it’s doable, and some that we work with try. But it’s not a very stable environment. You hear lots of stories of brands and cannabis retailers getting shut down, they lose their following. I think one time in my history, I listen to someone on a panel, they say their Instagram strategy should be to set up about 10 Instagram accounts, because nine of them are going to get shut down. Like that’s not really a good strategy, we seek qualified inventory against qualified consumers across big branded publishers. And that was really the turning point where we saw probably like 2018, is when we got up and running. Combined, the pandemic combined more states coming online combined, publishers understanding that this is a viable category that can generate real revenue for them from an advertising standpoint, that’s really where we started seeing an inflection point COVID. And the pandemic really accelerated that in a lot of ways. But the three, the three components is really a data management platform. So we can ingest consumer data, first party data coming from these retailers and brands, we can give them more visibility around what these consumers are doing. Because effectively we see about 300 million total people, consumers tied to digital devices, desktop, laptop connected TVs, we string all that together. So we in essence, see a much wider view than the core of first party data that a large multi state operator or a big brand has, and that might be through their customer relationship management, their CRM, their loyalty programs. So we’re able to string all this together, give them more specificity around those, those consumers and their consumer behavior. And then really serve ads to them on these devices, and then measure the outcomes because of integrations that we’ve done over the past several years. Across the ERP. So the E commerce platforms, the point of sale platforms, the loyalty and CRM, email platforms, we were pretty agnostic in that regard. So we’re able to see everything hooked together, serve ads to consumers, and then measure what those outcomes look like.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, I think I’ll keep my day job. So Tommy, tell me about the New Jersey cannabusiness Association. You’re the Marketing Committee lead. What’s the story over there?
Eric Meth
So the story is, it’s a story of ups and downs as Jersey and a lot of other states have gone through a pretty arduous process. So I got involved with this as I took what I was doing in the traditional retail marketing and advertising world. And this is 20, late 2017. When our or our fair Governor Murphy just got elected to office and he was going to legalize cannabis in the first 100 days of his governorship it took about 1000 days to do that, but we got there. So hats off to Governor Murphy. Um, so I saw an opportunity to get involved. And as I’m seeing more people come into the industry, really, the first thing I tell them is like, look, get involved with a local commerce, the Chamber of Commerce. We do that a lot at Surfside, we’re involved with a lot of the chambers in the different states and municipalities. But for me, it was more personal. I grew up outside Philadelphia, I resided resided in New Jersey for about 16 years, 17 years. And I just started getting aligned, I was going to their events, and I just saw an opening and Scott Rutter, who was one of the leads at the time. We just struck up a conversation and told them what I was doing, which was prior to Surfside, it was very similar, I launched a platform called good harvest company which was acquired by Surfside just before the pandemic hit. But between my marketing background, which was a knee that they had a few of the other individuals that are involved with different skill sets, we just kind of banded together. And I thought it was a good use of volunteer time to get involved. And now we’re getting closer to adult use actually coming to light and people can actually start purchasing once the, the levels of product are there to keep the medical market satisfied. I see a lot more opportunities coming where we’ll really start doing more and get more amplified.
Harry Brelsford
Absolutely. And I’ve always I concur. I’ve always felt the same three, three years ago at South by Southwest, and I’m just finishing up the one this year. But three years ago in 19, they had yet again a cannabis track. And there was a mom there who didn’t didn’t want marijuana legalized, you know, kids in high school. And I talked to her, you know, in the hallway for about 15 minutes and said, you know, you really should get involved, you really should get involved with either, you know, the Texas trade groups or the meetups or whatever we have here in Texas, even if you’re a post get involved, because I think it makes for a better results. Right. You know, what I’m trying to say? It’s education.
Eric Meth
I mean, so much of this is education. And, and, and I had very similar experiences, some of it being involved with the njcpa and going down to Trenton and listening to like Senator Scutari getting up who was really leading a lot of the initiatives. And you know, like anything, there were constituents in the galette gallery that I would interact with, and it was the same thing, but no pot buttons. And this is this is just another thing that’s going to get into the hands of our children. And I just I, I tried to appeal to them as a parent, I tried to appeal to them as an advocate, I had a medical card for a number of years use it, you know, effectively for different treatments. And once you kind of get on that level and have more of a discussion, it’s amazing how that opens up. Because the reality is your kids if they want it are going to get it. And do you want them? Yeah, do you want them getting it from questionable sources, where it’s not tested, it’s not sold in, in an environment. And you can also benefit from the taxes and in a regulated environment, you have so much more control. And I’ll even translate that even further, when when we’re working with marketers, I hear a lot in the marketing world, especially in the cannabis vertical. Everyone wants that, that brand identity and brand loyalty, it’s like, the first thing you have to do is educate the consumers on not so much the brand, your brand means nothing if they have no idea what your product does, or why they should be using this strain versus that strain, or this consumption method versus that consumption method. Once you start dialing that in, and the consumers and a lot of times when we work with brands, particularly in new markets, it’s less about the noise that can be created about what a cool logo This is, or what a cool brand is, is it’s really taking it takes a little more time. So it’s getting the brand awareness down and getting a lot of this upper funnel awareness that can bring those consumers in educate them on why and once they understand why then they’re more willing to try it. And then once they understand that this can actually help them maybe even more effectively than some other remedies they’re utilizing, particularly, you know, pharmaceuticals, which obviously there’s there’s a lot of addiction issues around on that. That’s when you can really start getting into the outcome driven opportunities and showing that we show this ad to the right cohort of individuals and we saw actual transactions has happened as a result and there was a multiple on that and that’s really what a CMO or head of marketing really wants to see how many dollars Am I putting in and how many dollars Am I getting out? Is there multiple I’m going to reinvest that multiple back end so I can now reach more people.
Harry Brelsford
Alright, we’ll make that the final word. Hey Jenny, if you could, Eric Well let me invite you maybe the the second half of the year we could check in on how New Jersey is doing if you don’t mind like
Eric Meth
fall quarter. Absolutely. I’d be great love to come back all right. All right. Well,
Harry Brelsford
thank you for your time and again congratulations serve you are a logo didn’t quite as Iron Man.
Eric Meth
Right here. Always it’s if it’s in good company. I’m happy to be part of that logo group.
