The Emjays Haven’t Happened Yet. We’re Already Feeling Like Winners.

Most industries have an awards night. Cannabis has the Emjays - and this year, Marino has four reasons to watch.

The Emjays recognize the businesses, organizations and professionals working across cannabis, including the agencies, service providers and advocates whose work often happens behind the scenes. Marino is a finalist for Agency of the Year for the third time! More importantly, three of our clients are also finalists: Rudick Law Group for Business Service of the Year, Realm of Caring for Advocacy Organization of the Year and ayrloom for Cannabis Infused Brand of the Year.

We’d love to come home with a trophy. But that’s already a ballot worth being proud of.

Our fellow agency finalists are CannaContent, Grasslands Agency, KB Cannabis Consulting, PufCreativ and Zoe Wilder. We’ve worked with every one of them at some point. We know their work and respect the people doing it, which makes rooting against them a little inconvenient.

That’s cannabis for you. The agency competing with you for an account may also be working alongside you on an event or helping bring attention to an issue you both care about. You can want to win the business and still want the other team to succeed.

There’s a practical reason for that. Cannabis companies need to distinguish themselves from one another, but they also face questions that no single company can answer alone. How do we build public trust? How do we explain the value of a regulated market? How do we get people to look beyond the stereotypes? Those conversations benefit from having more good communicators involved.

So being nominated alongside this group means something. We’re honored to be back.

The client nominations make it even better. Realm of Caring, ayrloom and Rudick Law Group do very different work, and that’s part of what makes seeing all three recognized so satisfying. A nonprofit, a consumer brand and a law firm each have a place on the same industry ballot.

Working with them, we see how much goes into the accomplishments people eventually hear about. By the time there’s news to share, someone has usually spent months making it happen. We get to help tell those stories. The recognition belongs to the people behind them.

Since launching our cannabis practice a decade ago, we’ve built relationships across this industry that have lasted well beyond any one announcement or campaign. This year’s Emjays bring a number of those relationships together: our team, clients we’re proud to represent and competitors we’re glad to know.

That’s how you find yourself feeling like you’ve won something before the awards are announced.

Of course, an actual win would save us a lot of explaining.

Vote for Marino, Realm of Caring, ayrloom and Rudick Law Group in this year’s Emjays.⁠