All is Rosie at Mattio Communications

To engage with RMPR founder Rosie Mattio about marketing cannabis is to enter a worm hole of sorts as time doubles back on itself and I find myself transported back to 2014 when I started writing about the industry. Mattio of course was plying her trade back then as well, as founder of Rosie Mattio Public Relations, and then in 2018, as founder and CEO of Mattio Communications along with founder and President Mitch Rothschild, the father of one of her employees. The rest is history lived and made, but even as the company has experienced extraordinary growth over the past four years, the special sauce that delineates Mattio remains the same. As the mother of four young daughters put it during a recent call with CBE, the reason why people still refer to her company as RMPR is the same reason why Mattio Communications has become synonymous with pure play cannabis marketing.

“It wasn’t even on my radar,” said Mattio of the days before cannabis presented itself to her as a viable business opportunity. “I had heard a little bit about the rumblings that were going on in Colorado, but I was a mother of three babies, I hadn’t smoked weed since college. It was definitely part of my life back then, but it wasn’t until I moved to Seattle in 2013, which had just added adult-use.”

The rest was pure happenstance. “I was working for a crowdfunding platform for books, where authors would list their book, people would bid on it, and then if it was published, get a cut of it,” she said. “One of the projects I worked on was a cannabis cookbook, and that’s the only reason I got into the industry. It happened to have been a cannabis cookbook, I happened to have just moved to Seattle, Washington, and that was the project that fell into my lap.

“But then as soon as it was a project, I got a fire in my belly,” she added. “I was like, ‘I have a huge opportunity here. There’s nobody doing this, I’m very good at being a publicist., this is a new industry. Let me see what I can do!’ So, I started going to events and to networking events in Seattle, and that’s where I met the Headset guys. They were my first real agency client and are still with us today. I also started flying to Colorado for events. I went to the last huge Cannabis Cup in 2015 at the Colorado fairgrounds, and I started going to NCIA conferences. I was hooked from day one and I just started learning as much as I could by getting out there.”

It wasn’t as though she was starting from scratch as a marketing professional. “I’d been doing PR for 10 years,” she said. “I had my own agency since 2004. I had incredible contacts and a skill set, but now I had a really exciting new segment to pitch. I knew that I could bring what I was best at, and the industry just didn’t have it. I’m at the first Cannabis Cup, and there were maybe 200-300 people exhibiting, and maybe 10 percent of them had someone doing PR for them. Nobody knew how to do it, and I did.”

And there was a desire for marketing even during the earliest days of the legal industry. “The clients were receptive,” she said of her first takers. “They didn’t know what I was doing, but they were receptive because they really wanted to get the word out, get people to buy the product. The hardest part, as you know, because you were one of the only people in the beginning that would take pitches, is that it was hard to get the media on board. From the business and the regulatory perspective, it was covered. Bloomberg would write a story every couple of months about weed because it was becoming a business, but not very often. There wasn’t a beat reporter. It was the millennial reporter who was covering everything, so there was nobody covering it. But I was a food publicist so I had these amazing contact at Bon Appetit and Food and Wine and all of those magazines, and there were edibles, but nobody would write about them. Everybody wanted the press but there were just so many places to land an article.”

The barrier to mainstream entry was top-down. “The reporters were all in the millennial age group and were consuming the product, but it was their editors and compliance and legal that wouldn’t let them write about it even if they wanted to, or they just didn’t know what the landscape was,” said Mattio. “Edibles in New York City, where all the reporters are based, was you ordered from your dealer and got a suspect Rice Krispies Treat or brownie. What we did was we started showing them the beautiful packaging and the dosing, trying to counteract the Maureen Dowd story, but it took a long time.”

In fact, it took years. “I took on my first client in 2014, and it wasn’t until 2016 or 2017, two to three full years later, that I could get the real mainstream lifestyle media like Oprah and Vogue to start writing about cannabis,” she added. “But we were pitching them in 2014. I had a lot of media contacts, and clients at the time that weren’t cannabis, a lot of food clients. I remember going on a media trip to France as an independent contractor with a tea company, not cannabis, in 2016. We pitched these editors, and while I had them captive, I was like, ‘Hey, if you like flavored iced tea, you should see what’s happening in cannabis edibles.’ But it took a really long time. I’m working the angles, it’s not like I only started pitching them in 2016, and it took two years of me harassing them to start writing about it.”

Flash forward to today and they probably can’t get enough cannabis. “It’s their best-performing content,” said Mattio.

The Blossoming of Mattio Communications

But first RMPR had to become Mattio Communications. “I was really a solo practitioner,” said Mattio of her early cannabis years. “I had Mitch’s daughter, but I was really alone. I had seven or eight clients, which is a lot for one person. They were great clients, and I was doing really good job, and in 2017 there weren’t that many of us that were doing this. A few more than in 2014, but really there was just a handful that you probably can name them. I remember I was crying to my husband because I had eight clients and that was it. That was my feeling. I couldn’t take on a ninth because I had kids, I was still half-mom and not quite full-time CEO, and I was pulling my hair. I was like, ‘What am I going to do here because I saw the opportunity that was within my grasp, but I didn’t know how to scale. I just didn’t know how.

“And I remember showing up to MJBizCon in November 2018, and I’m walking into a media event that somebody had thrown, and everybody was coming over to me and they knew who I was,” she added. “They were like, ‘Oh, you’re Rosie Mattio. Oh, you’re Rosie Mattio.’ And I was like, wait, why do people know who I am? I was just this solo person who was doing the work, but I guess I had built a name for myself, and people were coming over me. And it was actually the scariest moment in my life, because my biggest fear is that I never want to over-promise and under-deliver. And my fear at that moment was that I wanted to be exactly what people think I am. People think I’m great at what I do, and I couldn’t be greater because I didn’t have any help. So that ended up being a really scary moment for me because I wanted to live up to the hype, and I’m always like, don’t believe the hype. Then Mitch came in 2018, we hired our first employee just around that same time, and the growth went from eight clients in November of 2018 to, well, it’s now June 2022, and we have 75 clients, and we are a team of 65 people. That is crazy growth, if you think about it.”

When Mattio brought on Mitch as a partner, she had one skill set, she said: pitching stories and media relations. “Somebody can tell me something about their product or about their story or their life or about their founding, and I can find a really, really good angle out of that that will resonate with the media,” she said.

But there seemed to be more to it, something that bonded her to her clients in a special way. “It’s three things, actually, and these things remain true today, which is what I’m most proud of,” she explained. “Even as we’ve grown, these are the things that I stand by, and I think are the reason we win. Number one is that us every single one of our 75 clients will tell you that they feel like they’re our only client. Because it was such a small group of eight and we were all just so early in it, I forged deep relationships with these clients and they trusted me, I trusted them, and we became friends. I was their only marketing because it was so early, so was that personal touch that we still have today. That’s part of the model.

“Number two is that I did take a different approach. I had a mainstream background. There were other people doing it in the space, but they were only pitching mg or MJBiz and didn’t realize that they could be going to Vogue and Oprah and Bloomberg. I would say the bulk of the work we did was in mainstream media, and some of the early people realized that’s what they wanted from me and that’s why we were growing. And again, I want to be exactly what people think I am, and I want to deliver on exactly what I say I’m going to do,. And to this day, over-promising and under-delivering is the only thing that keeps me up at night.

“So those are the things that I built my reputation on, and to that point I’ll tell you a funny story we were talking about today. One of my early clients when I was alone was LeafLink, which is still with us today. Back then we were RMPR. In 2018, when Mitch joined me, we changed it to Mattio Communications. So, I’m doing an event with LeafLink next week and Ryan, the CEO, who is not involved in day-to-day with the PR stuff anymore, replied in an email that the RMPR team is going to be there. RMPR is what we built it on, and now we’re Mattio Communications, but people still think of me as a solo person.”

Building on her core values and talents, with Mitch’s ability to scale and organize supporting a long-term strategy for growth, Mattio started breaking barriers in both b2b and b2c cannabis marketing. “We did place the first few stories in Vogue and Oprah,” she said. “It had never been done before we did it. That’s one thing, but on the b2b side also, with Bloomberg and Forbes. Deborah Borchardt is now at Green Market Report, which was acquired by Crains. When I met her, she was one of the only the reporters or contributors at Forbes writing about cannabis. Of her first ten stories, I think we were part of the first three. Because I hadn’t worked in cannabis, my media contacts were Forbes, Business Week, Bloomberg, all of those. That’s what I bought to the space, and I always say, even when I’m pitching a business now, I wouldn’t have 75 clients today if I was only doing b2b trade. And we love b2b trade, obviously. That’s the first place we go, because where does the mainstream media learn about stuff? They learn from you guys, from Cannabis Business Executive; that’s where they’re getting the SEO, that’s where they’re getting the education. It’s still totally a part of the model and is a super-important part of when we’re pitching and do media strategy, but because we took up the mainstream approach from day one, that’s really where we built our credibility.

“I think the way to think about it is that everybody is a media consumer,” she added. “It’s like when we’re pitching a business, an operator that is only in Michigan, and they only want to focus on Michigan media because that’s where their consumer is. But if you live in Michigan, you’re probably also reading Complex magazine and the Wall Street Journal. The cannabis consumer is everywhere, and you need to meet them where they are. Then think of businesspeople. Yes, the CEO is reading Bloomberg, but if he wants to read about cannabis, he’s going to MJBizDaily and Cannabis Business Executive. I’m not saying every cannabis company should be in every single publication, that just doesn’t make sense; if we were doing that we wouldn’t be good at our jobs. But that being said, people read a lot of different media, and you have to tailor the client or the product or the pitch or the story to all types of touch-points.”

For Mattio, one big whoa moment of her career was the scary experience at MJBizCon, but other whoa moments now come more frequently. “They happen at the end of every year now that Mitch has joined me,” she said. “In terms of revenue numbers, what we did in 2018, when I was still on my own right, is now our monthly payroll. That is like a pinch-me moment, and I still can’t believe it. How did we do this? Well, how we did it is we worked our butts off every single day, and we think about everything super-critically. But those are the moments.”

She recalled other such moments. “The Inc 500 and Inc 5000 were actually one of the most woah moments in my life,” she said. “I don’t know if you know the story, but I used to work for Mitch before he worked with me. I was a publicist for some of his companies, and for one of the companies, Vitals, every year we would pitch and win the Inc 500, and do the press release, and it was a huge celebratory moment and the biggest deal for us. And I always thought in the back of my mind how cool it would be one day to have my own agency, like a real agency, and not just be a solo practitioner. It was not something I ever could have dreamt up or thought was a possibility for me. And then when we applied, and we were named 190th in 2021 and then the fifth fastest in the northeast, it was a moment I dreamed about my entire career. It’s hanging on my wall right now, and I’m still like, no, it just can’t be.”

Revenue has indeed increased for Mattio Communications as the company has expanded its client roster and its services. According to the company, 2018-2019 revenue growth was 290 percent; 2019-2020 revenue growth was 105 percent; and 2020-2021 revenue growth was 98 percent, with a CAGR of 98 percent. Over the past year, the company also has positioned itself for the future by adding new entities to supplement Mattio Communications, including Oak PR, (CPG), MATTIO+FIORE Media (Paid Media), and the Confluence Agency (Influencers). The resulting embrace of the expansive nature of marketing infiltrates every aspect of the company, allowing it to offer an array of services that go beyond traditional marketing like social media, thought leadership, influencers, event production, and SEO to include investor relations, crisis communications, and most recently, paid media.

A Full-Service Agency

I asked Mattio about the increasingly sophisticated services she now provides, and why they were added. “You asked me earlier about what my skill set was, what I was good at, and that was media relations,” she replied. “You also asked how this took on a life of its own and as I mentioned, it was because I became a trusted partner to these early clients. And as we were growing together, and I was listening to them literally from launch day one, as they become bigger and more sophisticated and using more services, they would say, ‘Hey, Rosie, we really need to start doing social media; do you know anybody who’s been doing that?’ And being entrepreneurial, or just being a little crazy thinking that we can do it even though we didn’t know how, we built social. Then they raised private equity and are ready to go public and needed a investor relations firm. I could refer them out to a traditional IR firm, but I said, ‘Hey, we’ll build this for you.’ So that’s how the eight services came to be. We’re growing with our clients, because they trust us to do what we say we’re going to do, and if I’m going to do something I’m going to do it right. So, when it came to building these other services, they just trusted us. We bult Social, we built Influencer, we built Investor Relations, Content, SEO. All the services you see on our website, we built them.

The only service not yet listed on the Mattio Communications website is paid media, the most recent addition. “About four or five months ago we announced that we launched paid media, or performance marketing, with the Hawk Media people. Madison Fiore, who handles the cannabis division at Hawk, a big performance marketing paid media agency, joined Mattio in March or February. So now we’re doing paid media for our clients. What’s the next phase of growth for the cannabis companies and these brands? Like I said, they weren’t taking pitches, and they certainly weren’t taking advertising dollars, because the world was changing very rapidly, so when our clients want to spend money on outdoor or programmatic or direct buys, or any other paid media service, I said, okay we’ll do that for you, too. So, we built Mattio/Fiore.”

Which method in their toolbox is the most effective in the current environment? “Obviously, it depends on the client, because a b2b [client] is not the same as a brand,” she said. “Not in terms of revenue for us, but definitely the first ask is social media. Just as quickly as you’re looking at the Mattio website, you might look at our Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn before you even go to our website. So social media table stakes your company no matter what. If you’re picking up a sneaker, you’re going to their Instagram page to see what it looks like, so I would say that’s number one.

“I would say more than half of our clients do PR and social media with us, but it’s not the brand social media,” she added. “People immediately think of pretty cannabis drinks on Instagram, but it’s actually a lot of corporate social, and this sort of ties into the Investor Relations part of it. We do investor relations for probably 15 companies, and so that’s obviously the regular block-and-tackle: the bank-sponsored events or getting ready for the IPO or getting ready for their quarterly filings and all of that. But also, because it’s the retail investor base, a lot of the fodder and the information content around investor relations is happening on social networks. You see all the retail investors and the analysts interacting on Twitter and reddit, and so doing corporate social media is everything from posting corporate news or taking on the persona of a CEO or sharing your thought leadership on social becomes part of the marketing mix.

“It’s not social media as most people might think about it, as a pretty brand on Instagram,” she reiterated. “It’s also LinkedIn and Twitter because this is the new world we live in and cannabis is being born in this new world, 2012 on. We’re in a different landscape. When I started, media relations were just getting something placed in the New York Times. So, social as a part of the mix is a really big part of it and then with investor relations, a lot of these companies went public so it was just the natural progression. Communicating with the media and communicating with investors does go hand in hand, and a lot of our clients take us up on the integration of PR, social and IR.”

Does she still have clients who think that Instagram is sufficient for their purposes, and are resistant to new, innovative forms of marketing? “I believe in the power of social media and I’m very active on it, so it’s just a part of the maturation of the space,” she said. “Some people have never marketed a product, or they have their own view of what works. It’s definitely my job to try to get them to do more services, but it’s also my job just to do what’s best for the company. Some of our clients are just social media or media relations because we want to be respectful of what they see work, but if we feel strongly that they need something, we’ll push them on it. We’ll educate them just like we educate the media, about what the value is of having a marketing mix, especially in cannabis, where you really can’t pay for media. It’s so hard. There are other avenues out there, but you can’t boost an Instagram post, you can’t pay for that Instagram post. If you do, you run the risk of shutting it down, so having a marketing mix when we’re working with our hands tied behind our back just makes sense. It’s our job to try to get them to understand it.”

Mattio also has added psychedelics to its list of target industries. Is it the same market as cannabis? “There are absolutely differences,” said Mattio. “For one, it may end up being regulated, and it’s never going to be a recreational market. We’re not going to see mushroom dispensaries pop up. Even though you’ve seen some things in the market look very pretty, it’s not the same type of commerce. It’s a medical product, but the similarities are that it’s highly regulated, it’s a plant-based solution, and it’s popular. We also see all the health benefits, just like we saw the health benefits in cannabis. A lot of the same reporters covering cannabis are also covering psychedelics, and we really believe in psychedelics and the power of that plant, just like we believe in the power of cannabis. It’s something we definitely can get behind and are very passionate about. Some of the people in our agency want to use it as a mental health option, and we want to make sure that we’re giving access and options and education to plant-based medicine that we believe in. That’s why we did it.”

Will it be a big enough market? “Pharma is huge,” she replied. “I don’t know, but if you told me in 2014, when I took on The Stoner’s Cookbook, what the cannabis industry would look like today, I might have had an inkling of it, but I would never have imagined the progression of the industry or our agency. We’re just starting with psychedelics, we’ve got a few great clients and will do great work for them, but the sky’s the limit. I’ve got to think that way.”

Crisis communications service also was implemented to meet a need in the industry. “It came out of a need, and also because it was one of my skill sets,” said Mattio. “My first job out of college was as a Rubenstein associate, which is known as one of the best crisis agencies in the country, maybe the world. So, I cut my teeth there and understand how to do it. I hope we never have to use those skill sets setting up a plan to combat a crisis, but we’ve done it, we’re good at it, and it’s definitely something that is in our wheelhouse.”

Would companies use a service like this to mitigate potential bad press from litigation? “Yes,” she said. “It can be everything from litigation to an employee dispute, to a product recall, to a troll on Instagram. It runs the gamut depending on how damaging we feel it is to a company.”

Which of these services is most profitable for the company? “Definitely media relations,” said Mattio. “Of our 75 clients, I think 72 of them do that as their core service, so that’s our biggest bulk. I think second is investor relations, third is social media, and fourth is influencers by revenue. Those are the top four.”

Future Marketing

When Mattio looks to the future, does she believe success in the industry will be all about the brands that win? “We are firm believers that cannabis will be a CPG branded product, “she affirmed. “Just like people make a choice between the 12 different yogurts they see in the aisle, they will be making decisions on their cannabis. Same thing when they go to a liquor store; there’s Grey Goose, there’s Belvedere, and there’s Smirnoff. So, we’re firm believers in that. Now, there are a lot of people out there that call themselves brands out, and that just means to them that they’ve got pretty packaging and a product. But 10 years from now, will there be a thousand different wines and vodka brands in cannabis? I don’t know what the number is going to be, but we’re still in the early innings. Let’s say there are a couple handfuls that are brands in the true sense of the word – everything from look, feel, consistency, messaging, data around who the consumer is – but that is where it’s going, and it’s a part of the maturation process. There are many brands you and I saw five years ago that we don’t see anymore, but that is what the brands and the MSOs are trying to do, create lasting consumer brands”

Can marketing truly replace the basic hands-on experience that is intrinsic to cannabis? “There are very few products that can deliver on the promise of the feeling like cannabis, where you can actually create a feeling, where you’ve created a connection to the brand through the actual experience,” replied Mattio. “So, let’s talk about a sneaker company. If I’m launching a sneaker company, what am I going to do? I’m going to pitch the footwear editor at Complex, I’m going to go to the best dancer or athlete that uses that type of shoe, I’m going to send them a pair of shoes and I’m going to pay them to be an influencer. Then I’m going to have a slick-looking Instagram or Facebook page, and I’m also going to be doing programmatic advertising so when I’m on Facebook, and they know I’m a woman who likes working out, I’m going to be serviced two ads.

“We’re taking that exact same discipline and bringing it to cannabis,” she added. “Even though we’re early and there’s still very few national brands out there, we are setting ourselves up and setting our clients up for success when we get over that hump, when people are using it in more and more states and after federal legalization we can ship it across state lines and advertise more, we’re acting as if we are launching the hottest sneakers that just happens to be cannabis.”

I asked Mattio what her day-to-day schedule is like these days? “My day-to-day is a mix,” she said. “I don’t get to do as much as what am I known for and like, which is pitching the story. There are some reporters that I have dealt with since day one, and it’s my pleasure and my treat, and they expect to hear from me, and I expect to be the one pitching them. But really my day-to-day is leading strategy across the agency. When we sign a new client, I’m in every original pitch, and I’m setting the strategy, but most of my day is spent managing the team. I tell the story about when things were getting a little out of hand, and I was by myself, and my husband said to me, ‘Imagine one day you come into the office, you’d dropped the girls off at school and gone to the gym, you had a cup of coffee, walked in the office, and you have 15 people doing the work,’ and I was like, that’ll never happen. Then it actually happened, though I still spend a lot of my time guiding the business, a lot of personnel, and a lot of just working with the team. In the mix with my partner, Mitch, he does the infrastructure part, the billing, and the hiring and all that, but my day is spent guiding the team and dealing with personnel all day long.

What about the new Mattio+Fiori project? Did she spend a lot of time on that? “My number one job is growth,” said Mattio. “Every piece of business we have signed – the 75 clients – I signed, and over the years I signed every new piece of business. I tell the story, I pitch every business, and that’s the number one job, business growth, business development. Number two is working with the teams once we find the clients to make sure that we are doing the best job possible, and then a lot of my time is spent talking to the CEOs of these companies, spending time with them and helping them with their strategies. They may be thinking about starting a brand and doing initiatives, but what are the implications on the marketing side? It might be a great business idea, and they think it’s going to be a world-leading PR idea, but I have to tell them, ‘If you think it’s actually like going to work for the marketing, it’s not.’ So, I do business development, review the new businesses, guide the team and strategy, and then provide executive relations.”

I noted that those CEO conversations provide Mattio with a unique insight into their thinking, and asked Mattio what are the things that are top on their minds these days. “That the market is so terrible, the stock market, and that people are concerned that the company is down because there hasn’t been much movement on the federal side of things,” she said. “But the number one thing they think about is building the best team possible. They do the same thing I do, which is strategy and making sure that they have the best team in place. Number two is, we’re still in this highly siloed industry where you’re making a product in Ohio, and you’re making a product in Illinois or California, and making sure that you’re creating a brand that will provide a consistent experience and making sure the SOPs are where they need to be. So, it’s personnel, the quality of the product, and actually building a brand. How do you build a brand when it’s a federally illegal product? It’s extremely hard, and those are the things they think about most.”

Will she also have conversations with them about potential M&A? “I don’t advise them on that,” said Mattio. “We don’t do business strategies. Our lane is when would be the best time for us to announce this, or what will be the best tactic, doing it via a media exclusive or a social post, or maybe we’re teasing out a video. So, helping them take their business ideas and figure out how they’re going to communicate that to the different stakeholders. And sometimes the stakeholders are not media; we’ll do internal comms for them; we’ll help craft their town hall scripts; if there is a crisis among their employees, we will help them craft those type of comms. So, it’s helping them take their ideas and vision and communicate that to different stakeholders. That’s our lane. However, we have made introductions where a brand met a client and there’s been some sort of transaction or merger or partnership, and we love partnerships. We do a lot of that.”

Will someone come to you for advice, and say, ‘There’s the brand I could buy but maybe I can develop my own brand in house? What should I do?’ “They will,” said Mattio. “We understand the data because we work with Headset and LeafLink, and we just have a good view of what is doing well and where. So that is part of what we do. The value of working with Mattio is the fact that we’re good at our craft because we are so connected, that we’re able to understand the nuances and just have a bigger macro view of what’s happening in the space. And that’s not just with the brands. On the ancillary side, we know when marketing departments are looking to hire a whole staff, which means that they’re investing in growth and in the marketing of their brands. That gives us intel on what’s happening in the space, and it just makes us better at our jobs.”

I noted that while it sounds like she stays in her lane, the lane is widening, and Mattio now offers full-service marketing within it. “That’s why people choose to work with us,” she said. “A lot of the big agencies, because they’re publicly traded or they rep pharma, they won’t take on cannabis. It’s just not worth it for them at this point. But it’s also because we understand the nuances. We see what’s happening, so it just makes sense to be able to work with us because they don’t have to explain everything to us. We’re in the weeds because we work across the supply chain, not just brands. We work with big analytics, we work with DNA testing, we work with every part of the industry. I certainly don’t know everything, but we just have a very different perspective.”

I asked if she has seen any tightening of marketing budgets? “Not yet, but we think it’s coming,” she said. “When the stock market goes down and people have less cash, the first thing that goes is marketing. Luckily, we work with really strong companies that understand the value of keeping yourself out there in the news, and business can’t stop when there’s a hiccup in the market, but it could happen.

“I will give you some data around that,” she added. “In the past couple years, there have been three ‘Oh, my God’ moments. One of them, a pretty dark time, was in 2019 when the Canadian market was sort of melting down and it seemed like the whole industry felt the reverberations of that. And then we came back a bit in early 2020, we’re hitting our stride again, and COVID hits, and we’re like, ‘Oh, my God.’ I think we lost like six or seven clients the first three days of the COVID lockdowns, and I’m like, ‘Crap, are we going out of business?’ But then it ended up being our best year ever, a year of explosive growth for us. And now is one of those times too. The highs were last February, when the Dems took office, and everybody felt this exuberance, that we’re going to get federal legalization because the Democrats are in charge. But it hasn’t happened,. MORE has not passed; SAFE has not passed, and there isn’t a catalyst right now. The fundamentals are still there, the company is doing great, but because it has a retail investor base and not institutional long-term holders, it’s tough out there right now. If you’re on Twitter, it feels a little dark. Luckily, our business hasn’t been affected yet, but there’s always the unknown.”

Way over our allotted time, I asked Mattio if she had anything to add that people needed to know. “Just that the two big things this year are that we launched Oak PR, the CPG-focused agency, and that we did performance marketing, which is like the next phase,” she said. “It has been a pretty big year for us launching these two businesses. It’s the continuation of the ‘if you build it they will come’ model, or ‘would you like fries with that?’ by adding on the services as they need it. This has been a banner year for us because we launched these huge ventures and both have been really profitable in the first six months, so it seems to be working.”

Unable to resist one last question, I asked Mattio if she thought performance marketing will dominate the industry going forward. “I think that is the future,” she said. “It’s early, but paid media is opening up and we are going to be on the forefront of it with this venture. Just like we were on the forefront of mainstream cannabis PR, I believe we are going to be on the forefront of paid media and helping cannabis companies spend their money through advertising. That is the future, and that’s why we’re investing so heavily in it.”

You can probably take that to the bank.

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