Highsman's Entry into the Metaverse - Cannabis Business Times

1 year ago 56

It’s astir 2023, and by now, astir everyone you cognize is well-versed successful integer connection and socialization platforms – beryllium it video conferencing, societal media, oregon the related.

And arsenic ‘Metaverse’ becomes an progressively communal portion of our taste lexicon, Highsman is planting its emblem successful the virtual world scenery by creating Highsman House.

Highsman House is simply a community-focused virtual depletion lounge that features a dispensary and merchandise shop, a full-sized shot field, a swimming pool, games, and more. The level is accessible done Oculus oregon a machine and was designed successful concern with Rocket City, a exertion institution focused connected Metaverse and NFT experiences.

The intent of Highsman House, according to Highsman Chief Marketing Officer Lane Radbill, is to utilize modern exertion to foster a cannabis assemblage portion educating consumers and gathering marque awareness. Visitors are adjacent invited to enactment successful virtual fume sessions with different assemblage members, including Highsman Founder and President Ricky Williams and different institution executives.

Highsman, which launched operations successful 2021, started gathering its Highsman House astatine the opening of this twelvemonth and hosted its archetypal virtual assemblage event, a Monday Night Football ticker party, successful September.

“The archetypal speech is precise aboveground level. They're like, ‘Holy shit, I'm talking to Ricky Williams,’” Radbill says. “And past the 2nd clip they travel back, they travel backmost with [specific] questions and you spot it commencement to happen; the curiosity is being fostered. That's a agelong roadworthy of education, but it seems to working.”

Educational Experience

Picture this: You virtually get astatine Highsman House and are greeted with your prime of cannabis consumption, beryllium it a joint, blunt oregon bong. From there, you tin sojourn the dispensary barroom to larn much astir and interact with Highsman products; prosecute successful virtual fume sessions with different assemblage members; enactment successful assemblage games oregon competitions, specified arsenic cornhole oregon football; oregon simply conscionable bent retired and bask the assemblage facet from the comfortableness of your ain home.

“I was successful determination for the Cowboys crippled a mates of weeks ago, and you locomotion successful and there's large surface TVs and you tin adjacent prime up a joint,” Williams says. “I was retired connected my patio, and I had a existent associated successful my hand, and [as] I was watching the game, I'm looking astir with my Oculus and I'm successful a lounge [with] radical astir talking, and it was trippy. I truly couldn't archer that I wasn't really successful the lounge. We’re moving to make that [experience] successful the three-dimensional world, but to person it successful the Meta wherever radical successful their ain location tin acquisition our marque and what we’re putting retired into the satellite is exciting.”

Radbill says the Highsman House allows the institution to make accordant experiences for consumers successful adult-use and/or aesculapian markets.

For example, Highsman debuted its marque successful Pennsylvania, a medical-only cannabis state, earlier this fall. While the Pennsylvania marketplace offers caller opportunities for the marque to grow, it besides creates caller challenges for the institution to marketplace itself and amended consumers.

“Pennsylvania being our lone aesculapian authorities close present that we're operating in, from a selling perspective, it's overmuch much difficult,” Radbill says. “There's a batch much reddish portion with our direct-to-consumer oregon B2C (business to consumer) selling assets [and] the mode we talk astir the brand. Even erstwhile doing activations and dispensaries, you person to bash them extracurricular successful the parking lot; you can't person anybody wrong the dispensary. … So, what are we going to do? Ask radical to get bundled up and basal successful a parking batch underneath a popup structure and say, ‘Yeah, this is the Heisman experience,’?”

As a solution, the Highsman House provides a “dream space,” Radbill says, for Highsman to circumvent each state’s varying regulations and duplicate marque experiences crossed markets.

But adjacent then, challenges persist.

Properly educating cannabis consumers, some caller and experienced, is simply a continuous pursuit, and Radbill says manufacture presumption specified arsenic “cannabinoids” and “terpenes” tin often beryllium confusing jargon for consumers.

Highsman, by utilizing the Highsman House, is capable to simplify the cannabis acquisition process by leaning into its athlete-inspired marque story, according to Radbill.

“If you're trying to spell aft the masses, that messaging is often excessively dense for them,” Radbill says. “What does resonate is if it's bully capable for nonrecreational athletes, it's astir apt bully capable for me. … If we tin get radical to bargain into Highsman, whether it's for the community, the products, the lifestyle, [etc], that's the opening of that acquisition process.”

As portion of that virtual acquisition experience, Highsman House visitors tin interact with Highsman products to larn much astir cannabis’s unsocial properties, including THC percentage, cannabinoid content, terpene levels, and more.

“It’s a instrumentality to assistance amended cannabis consumers,” Radbill says. “An illustration of that is to person much 3D renders of our flower, for example, that you could travel successful and you could drawback it and you tin zoom successful connected it [and] spot the trichomes. You tin click a trichome and an infographic volition popular up and it'll springiness you much accusation astir what's going connected there.”

Radbill adds that Highsman is moving towards providing a direct-to-consumer level wherever consumers tin interact with Highsman products successful the Metaverse earlier purchasing them successful reality.

Beyond educating conscionable consumers, Radbill says Highsman House tin besides service arsenic a teaching instrumentality for budtenders and manufacture stakeholders to larn astir cannabis and Highsman products, specifically.

“Our imaginativeness is to person that germinate into being a grooming situation for budtenders and for salespeople,” Radbill says. “I've seen this precocious with surgeon grooming for doctors, wherever they tin instrumentality the quality assemblage and they tin survey anatomy and they tin region organs, and past they tin spot what happens. And I thought, wherefore not bash that with marijuana?”

Furthermore, Radbill emphasizes the value of interaction and consciousness – adjacent if conscionable virtually – erstwhile it comes to educating some consumers and budtenders astir cannabis.

“I retrieve being a kid, you prime up everything and you sensation it, and you play with it, and that's however you learn,” Radbill says. “As adults, we're children with marijuana. If you instrumentality clip to play with it, I deliberation that narration is made stronger, and past your curiosity develops and past you commencement realizing this isn't each astir THC percentage, this is besides astir terpenes, and terpenes are chill due to the fact that I had this acquisition with it and I tin consciousness that.”

Walking the Walk

The Highsman House besides helps Highsman separate itself from different cannabis brands, peculiarly personage oregon jock brands successful the space, according to Radbill.

“Lots of brands that telephone themselves a ‘lifestyle brand’ speech astir assemblage a lot,” Radbill says. “Basically, we’re doing what we’re saying we’re doing erstwhile it comes to assemblage building, and that’s wherever I deliberation we acceptable ourselves apart. We’re not creating these superficial platforms to get followers and enactment crap up there. This is each astir being capable to person conversations and interaction people.”

When gathering Highsman House, Radbill says the institution took enactment of akin exertion platforms that let for nonstop entree to celebrities, specified arsenic Cameo, and implemented accessibility and transparency arsenic a defining constituent of Highsman House and the Highsman marque arsenic a whole.

In summation to Highsman House, the institution regularly conducts meet-and-greets with Williams successful dispensaries crossed the state and hosts play hangouts connected Discord, a voice, video and substance societal messaging platform, to further link with the industry.

“We're a personage cannabis brand, but our founder, Ricky Williams, is not your emblematic celebrity. He is arsenic authentic arsenic it gets, helium is arsenic OG arsenic it gets, and he’s been preaching astir [cannabis] anterior to its popularity,” Radbill says. “Ricky would overmuch alternatively walk his clip connected these Discords, successful the Metaverse, oregon successful idiosyncratic talking to budtenders and customers than helium would beryllium successful beforehand of 50,000 to 100,000 radical each clapping for him. It’s astir that small, grassroots, one-on-one enactment that radical don't judge they're ever going to get.”

And fixed that cannabis is simply a societal elixir of sorts, it lone makes consciousness that Highsman House has an open-door policy.

“It’s astir the people,” Radbill says. “So yeah, we built this house, but it's nary bully unless the radical are there. It's nary amusive unless the radical are there, and it keeps increasing due to the fact that each clip we person one, much radical come. And erstwhile they travel successful there, we're not preaching the brand. We're not trying to merchantability crap successful there. Yeah, you tin bash that if you want, but it's not astir that.”

New visitors are ever welcome, and those funny successful virtually visiting the Highsman House tin larn much astatine Highsman’s website oregon via the company’s societal media. The company’s astir caller lawsuit was a Nov. 7 Monday Night Football ticker enactment but remainder assured that much virtual experiences from Highsman are connected the way.

“We’re gathering a assemblage with Highsman House, truthful delight bring your authentic self, energy, affirmative vibes and idealism,” Williams says. “Through the Metaverse, we proceed driving societal improvement guardant portion having amusive and making caller friends.”

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