Ceria Brewing Co. — The Illegal Ad aka “The Weed Playlist”

****Shortlisted for One Show Awards in the following categories****
Direct Marketing —— Non-traditional & Guerilla Marketing
Out of Home —— Innovation in Out of Home

PROBLEM
How do you create an OOH campaign for THC-infused beer in California, where it’s illegal to mention beer and THC in the same ad?

INSIGHT
We can’t tell people about our weed beer, but we can deliver the message through a stoner-approved Spotify playlist,

IDEA
Get around the law by creating a Spotify playlist whose song titles say what our ad legally couldn’t.

————Spotify Extension + Out of Home

We applied Spotify’s native QR code technology to a series of wild postings that went up around Los Angeles. To access the playlist, all people had to do was take out their phone, open the Spotify app, and scan the poster.

With a zero dollar ad spend, a minuscule production budget, and a product we were legally prohibited from talking about, we were able to create awareness for this relatively unknown brand of cannabis-infused craft beer in Los Angeles, a crucial but saturated market within the cannabis industry.