By Greg Hazley
Denver-based Volume PR has set up a division focused on the medical marijuana sector, a burgeoning industry pegged as high as $14 billion.
Volume, a nine-year-old firm headed by Elizabeth Robinson, has dubbed its new offshoot Grow Room Communications.
Robinson told O’Dwyer’s the entity was formed because the medical marijuana sector deserves the focus and attention of a separate firm, and also that the work requires comprehensive communications, from advertising and media buys to digital, where Volume has always been solely focused on PR mainly in the tech and telecom sectors.
“I felt it was most appropriate for both brands to stand apart,” she said of Volume and Grow Room.
Robinson, a former Ogilvy PR and Boeing corporate comms. hand, also said she didn’t want to make any Volume clients “uncomfortable” with the medical marijuana side of the business, which, she noted, carries significant public “misunderstanding.”
Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter signed two new laws in June to essentially codify and regulate a flurry of marijuana dispensaries around the state. The laws stipulate that only doctors in good standing can prescribe the drug, while outlining rules for sellers and growers.
The state’s move reined in a freewheeling industry that has spawned businesses from research and medical clinics to so-called pot stores which have questionable medical merits.
“There are some businesses that are operating with the highest level of integrity and legitimacy with a focus on regulation and on wanting to do things right,” said Robinson.
“But I also see the news constantly and how many people are denigrating the industry by having these horrible little shops with atrocious names practicing in an atrocious way.”
Robinson said because the industry is at such an early stage the opportunity exists to create a climate and environment in which those businesses that are out to provide patient care for people that are sick and “not just trying to be a pot shop.”
Among Grow Room’s clients is Greenway University, a vocational school that trains people to work in the medical marijuana sector. Robinson said Colorado’s Dept. of Education approached the school about becoming a licensed vocational institution after seeing its positive media exposure.
“This is not just about people getting high, that’s what is key. So much research and study in science is starting to be done. We’re doing work with health centers with geneticists, botanists, and other serious people doing research on all of the data coming out of these clinics and centers,” she said. “A lot of the public perception is that this [scientific basis] doesn’t exist and that’s understandable because who’s picking up the microphone to tell the story correctly?”
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