IG Live Interview with 270m

CVault sat down with Sarah Remesch from 270m on an Instagram live! As always, we had some technical difficulties on the live (especially getting started), but we got the opportunity to talk with a woman in cannabis who knows brand identity, social media, advertising and more. 

Sarah is the founder of and currently runs 270m. 

This is another interview in our series highlighting women in the cannabis industry. 

Can you tell us about yourself? What’s your background, where you’re from and how did you find your way into the digital marketing space with 270m? 

So, I was born and raised outside of Cleveland, spent some time in Florida, and now I live in Williamsburg in New York. I grew up when there wasn’t phones and computers and all this stuff so I was trying to always create stuff offline as I’m sure the both of you were. And that kind of progressed and we got more technology, I found myself creating stuff online. I went from being outside to being inside glued to my computer – it’s like a parent’s worst nightmare (or used to be). I got a degree in public relations, I had no idea what I wanted to do with that. I got another degree (a master’s) in media management. And, along that way, I just started tinkering around with different clients, different freelance opportunities in the social space. I essentially grew with it. So whatever new platform came along, I really tried to learn that on behalf of a brand or another potential client. And as time progressed, now 270m is where we are and the rest is history at this point. 

I would imagine that in your space with 270m, tools are changing constantly because it’s technology-based.

Totally. So that’s the piece of it that keeps it exciting. It’s also constantly on. So, you have to make sure you’re up to date with everything. I really lean on the team especially as I feel like I’m aging out a little bit even now. Like what is the cool thing on this platform now? Do I use Tik Tok? Or, Clubhouse? Which is the thing that they all want me to start to do. So, that’s where I’m at. Trying to keep up with it. 

So, what’s the meaning behind the name? 

Yeah, so, it’s 2 of us working together, 7 days a week, with 0 limitations. 270m.

I like that. I was thinking like 270 million or something. 

And the m is marketing or media. 

How did you come up with that? Did it just strike you? 

Yeah, it was a long way. I think that I named this company five different things in a 2-week period. And we were like, yeah we’re gonna run with it, but everyone is like what does it mean? 

That’s perfect because then you talk about it. 

Exactly because then we have a conversation about it and I get to try to sell to anyone to come to work with us. 

What challenges and hurdles have you had to overcome in your female-owned company, 270m? 

Yeah, so I know you guys ask this a lot and it’s always interesting to me to look at that perspective through a female lens versus just someone that’s starting a company like 270m. I think in general, the last two years have been hard. It doesn’t matter who you are, it’s difficult. It’s the 24/7 hour, all day long, you put your business first. It’s just a constant go. Instead of looking at it that way, I like to say I like to create opportunities for other people. And the only way for me to do that is to build this space within media within cannabis to then bring other people on that want to be involved that wouldn’t have an opportunity somewhere else. 

I think that you know the ideal world is that anybody starting a business, it’s the same for anybody. But I think that’s not always the case especially for females and minorities, there’s are different challenges that present themselves that not everybody will think of so I’m always interested to hear what it is that has come up because everybody has something different. 

Like just being a woman in the media landscape – aside from the cannabis landscape – is difficult. The biggest piece if you want to talk about that specifically is always standing in a boardroom with a bunch of corporate typical [people]. That’s the biggest one, but it’s so obvious at this point. 

Have you noticed a shift in media and marketing where you’re being taken as seriously as anybody which is how it should be? 

Yeah, it depends what the category is of the 270m client. So we work with a lot of cannabis clients, but that’s not everyone we work with. If the serious factor definitely weighs on who else is sitting in the room with you, I definitely like to have an inclusive team, especially male-female balance. I think it’s a smart move marketing-wise no matter what and who’s leading the company. Different age ranges. It’s just nice to have all these walks of life. Another great thing right now is that everyone’s remote so we have a team that’s getting different cultures, different state opinions, all these pieces that we can tie back to what we’re doing for our clients. 

Have you seen an increase in the work your company does post-pandemic? 

Yeah. It is so exciting to finally see it. It’s one of the best things about the pandemic. The old-school traditional people are now like, I have to pay attention to the internet. 

The pandemic really had to put that into perspective. Like, yeah, we have a website that we don’t really care about. We’ve been in business for 20 years and then it’s like oh, shit, like we better figure this out real quick. 

For us, everyone is like we need to hop online, spend some advertising dollars there. Nobody’s driving by a billboard, except they all go to the computers because they’re all working there. Last year was real rough. This year has been so different, but it’s also like you’re shifting back into it. How do we shift around and hone in on what makes the most sense? 

What do you think the most effective and essential business marketing tools are right now? We saw a lot of success in the pandemic with SEO and social media because everybody’s glued to their computers. But, what is your opinion? 

Yeah, I mean, I’m obviously biased. Social so we can put that aside we’re totally aligned on it. The second thing for me is paid media. A lot of clients will come to us and they don’t have a huge budget or a budget that they can spread over six months or a year period of time without seeing results so I’m way heavy on what can we put into advertising and how can we convert people that way? To have them add on blogging, SEO, more of the slower-term marketing tactics. 

For your clients that happen to be in the cannabis space, how do you safely market – or advertise – for them when most platforms don’t allow that? 

Great question. That’s what everyone asks me and I’m gonna give you the answer that I tell them. I don’t know if have of them believe me. We operate in a business manager account on social media or with a specialist internally with these platforms to make sure that we are abiding by their terms of service. There are dicey ways around it that I’ve seen, but doing it the right way from the beginning is what makes the biggest difference. 

That makes perfect sense because our fear is that our product isn’t cannabis, but it’s you know goes hand in hand with cannabis and we have never wanted to advertise on any social media because we don’t want to get our whole page shut down. So it makes sense that before you’re putting anything out there, you’re like this is OK, right? 

Yeah, and there are a couple of workarounds – you all have a huge audience, everyone knows your products, what CVault is. So, to make sure that we’re also safeguarding the messaging you’ve had, we have some ways to implement new tactics organically that would go into your paid advertising strategies. So it’s an open conversation with people, we can talk about it if you’re interested. 

Oh, we are. Our problem right now is we have to get our supply under control. Because as soon as product comes in, it’s gone. But once we get that down, then we are going to focus on expanding as far as that goes. Once the supply issues are fixed, we’ve got lots of plans. 

It’s a good problem to have. 

It’s still a problem though. As many videos as you saw people in the pandemic learning how to bake bread, 20 times that amount decided that they were going to start growing weed for the first time. I’m sure a lot of the same people baking bread are also growing weed now. So what do you think the future of digital marketing is? Any cool new things coming up? 

Trend-wise, it’s a tough call. I think we talk about this a lot at 270, more things for people that have impairments, that can’t use online sources that we have now. That kind of falls into your inclusivity portion. Really, right now, a lot of social people are getting burnt out. We came out of the pandemic, we’ve all been on every device. So, changing how people are absorbing content, I think you’ll see a lot of stuff that’s even faster and easier to digest as time goes on. Attention time and what people want to spend – they spend all day on it, but just not on one thing. 

It’s funny that we make that point because I noticed – we just worked a trade show for the first time in over a year – I noticed that the attention span thing is also the same in-person. Someone’s walking past your booth and they don’t pay attention until you’re like, hey do you want the 30-second rundown? And they’re like, yeah ok, 30 seconds, you know. 

You’re just churning through those conversations over and over and you’re like, there’s a better way to do this at some point. People like human contact. 

It was nice seeing people and it was in Oklahoma so no masks. It was like full face, you get to see people’s smiles. 

You’ve met so many people through the pandemic or talked to them and you have no idea what they really look like. 

Exactly. So, I know you’ve worked with several cannabis brands. How has your experience been working with clients in our industry? 

Yeah. What I find most interesting about the industry – and I started working in it over five years ago at this point – is that there are people from every walk of business that you’re talking to. You’re trying to give them the best advice and work with them in the best way according to budgets. But, they’re on so many different playing fields so it’s great to see that the industry can hopefully level out and more people with more experience can help those who don’t have it enter. Or, they can have some help building brands that make sense to give consumers what they want. There’s only room to grow and working in the industry that’s one of the most exciting parts about it. 

Definitely. We see that big time. It’s exciting to take part in that. It’s like a full-blown transformation on cannabis right now. 

We’re working with a ton of great brands. We just relaunched Civilized. From 1.0 to 2.0 was really cool. And there are some other great businesses – Autumn Brands is another client of ours. 

It’s funny you say Autumn Brands. They have a strong female presence they’re on our list. [Stay tuned …]

I will connect you with Hannah today or tomorrow. 

Caron Cooper – who had me reach out to you – also told me to reach out to them. So it’s funny how the industry connects. 

That’s what’s good about the industry. We all are – the good eggs – are staying in the same basket and trying to help each other and it’s something we’re not going to get to have forever. 

It’s quite a quick pace, but there are still so many untapped markets due to legislation that as it opens up, it’s a brand new market. Who’s gonna be next. 

For sure yeah. New York, we just got legalization, everyone’s like I’ve never smelled so much smoke in my life. But businesses aren’t even popping up yet, but it’s so exciting to see people ripping bongs everywhere! 

Yeah, we’re coming to New York in January for CannaCon! So we’re exciting, it’s our first New York show! 

You’ll have a lot of really, really exciting people at that show. 

I saw they opened a new park on the water. Have you been? Is it cool? 

It looks really cool. I actually moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn so I’ve been staying out in Brooklyn to explore a little bit and not going into the city as much, but it’s exciting. Especially now that people are here too without masks, everyone’s excited to be outside. 

And the weather’s getting nice. Speaking of the weather, how will it be in January? 

Terrible! Lots of layers, gloves, maybe some heating pads for your hands. It’s not great. 

If you could give some advice to a woman entering the marketing industry or the cannabis industry, what would it be? 

It’s funny because I get this question a lot. For me, it’s just going in it and doing something you want to be passionate about. So if you want to enter the digital space, find what your passion is there or the cannabis space, why do you want to enter? Everyone says, if you love your job, it’s not work. I don’t necessarily believe that. But if you are passionate about it, it makes it easier for you to want to keep learning things, changing, adapting and growing. 

For sure. I think that specific question every person has given a completely different answer so far so that’s awesome. So, we always like to ask this question, it’s pretty fun and playful. But, if you could blaze up with any three people – alive, dead, fictional, whatever – who would it be? 

Yeah, this is definitely a plan with dinner. I selected Julia Roberts, Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Rogue from the X-Men series. 

First of all, 90’s Rogue or today’s Rogue? 

Obviously, original Rogue. Though I do love Anna Paquin in the new series. 

And why Julia Roberts? 

It’s just like a childhood thing with me. I mean, if you don’t like Pretty Woman, I don’t know what to tell you. I think she’s just this type of person who would be like why not wanna blaze up with her and get her high? 

I never thought about smoking weed with Julia Roberts. I could see her being a really cool person actually. 

I thought like if you put the three of those people in a room. Could you imagine what that would be like? Getting them all high together would be a good combo. 

On Instagram, we’re @thisis270m and online we’re thisis270m.com. Of course, send us a DM at 270m. We’re always happy to connect with new clients and people working in the space, and have conversations like this along the way!