Winning the hemp rush with agile marketing at scale

About the Company

How to market hemp seeds to farmers

High Grade Hemp Seed (now part of element6 Dynamics) is the leading provider of high-CBD hemp seeds. When the 2018 Farm Bill passed and legalized the growing of hemp for industrial agriculture applications, High Grade was at the forefront of the “Hemp Gold Rush” to gain market share in this booming new industry.

When they turned to the experts for help, their marketing team consisted of just their Marketing Director, so they needed full-service marketing. But before they could dominate the hemp market, they needed a rebrand.

Challenges

HGH Seeds had a problem. Their name was being misunderstood as “Human Growth Hormone” instead of “high grade hemp”, and their logo and marketing didn’t convey the high quality that their industry-leading hemp genetics stood for. So they turned to our team for support.

Beyond the branding hurdle, marketing hemp to industrial farmers who are used to corn and soybeans was an interesting project. The Farm Bill meant that a new hemp market was legal overnight, and opportunists rushed to get high-CBD hemp seed product into market. The rush led their audience to become warry of false advertising, bad seeds, and dealing with shady companies who had pivoted from the cannabis market. Our team had to build a new brand and message for High Grade that established trust and professionalism in a market desperately needing it.

Another intricacy High Grade faced was an advertising landscape that had decades of policy banning anything that looked like cannabis. So even with hemp now federally legal, navigating ad channels to sell hemp seeds for industrial farming was like playing Operation and trying to avoid the algorithms auto-banning your ad account. It required finesse.