Worcester Business Journal

18 Worcester Business Journal | April 30, 2018 | wbjournal.com 10 T H I NG S I know about . . . Marketing your marijuana business By Amadeus Finlay Amadeus Finlay is director of corporate communications and business development at Worcester creative agency Paris Marketing. Reach him at amadeus@ paris.marketing. 10) Social media isn't your friend. Sponsored content is prohibited, and platforms do not care to make the distinctions between THC and CBD. 9) …but SEO is. Since paid advertising is not an option at this point in the cannabis industry, get around the restrictions by taking full advantage of organic SEO techniques. You can support your endeavors by creating a blog with relevant and valuable posts. 8) Email marketing works. Cannabis will attract the eye of your email marketing targets. 7) Open rebellion: cannabis industry channels. It's the brave soul daring to challenge the Google-Facebook duopoly, but a number of channels support the promotion of cannabis: Weedmaps, Ganjapreneur, Cannabis Business Executive, Marijuana Business Daily and Women of Cannabiz. 6) Be intelligent. This is an industry attracting individuals from across the social spectrum. Tailor your content for greater effect. 5) Understand the product. Unless you can position yourself as an expert, the audience will know. 4) Understand the restrictions. Cannabis may be legal for recreation and medicine in Massachusetts, but that is not the same for Rhode Island. Confuse the two and your marketing is going to be in big trouble. 3) Your client may not be compliant. Ensure your client is compliant before you dive in. Those few minutes could be invaluable in the long run. 2) Society needs educating. One person I spoke to feared "legalizing pot will bring America to its knees." Marketing agencies have the important, but delicate task, of educating society. 1) It's good to cross pollinate. By becoming visible in industries such as craft beer, you can benefit from an industry with an existing footprint. K N O W H O W Why you should care about GDPR 10 1: T E C H T R A P I n about a month, Europe will begin enforcement of its General Data Protection Regulation, to prevent businesses from mis- using or mishandling people's information. While GDPR was imple- mented on another continent, it will have a real impact on Central Massa- chusetts companies. Privacy is one of the most import- ant human rights we cherish. GDPR is essentially an enforcement of our right to privacy in the digital world. e creation of the GDPR regulation demands a conversation focusing on data ownership and control. Who owns the data and who controls it? e importance of privacy may be best understood by examining the invasion of privacy in our daily lives. ink of invasion of privacy in terms of physical intrusions (i.e. planting secret recording devices) or informa- tional intrusions (i.e. employer reading personal email). Confidentiality, personal data protection, data encryp- tion, data security, anonymity, and adherence to fair information practices create an informational dimension to privacy. GDPR is the European law governing how your personal data is protected. e regulation defines rules relating to the processing of personal data and the free movement of personal data. If your business deals with personal data from a citizen of the European Union, then your business falls under the requirements of GDPR. ere are no exemptions for small organizations. If your organization collects or processes data from EU citizens regardless of their location, then GDPR applies to you. As the enforcement date of GDPR nears (May 25), any company caught in non-compliance may face fines of up $24 million (20 million euro) or 4 percent of previous year revenues, whichever is higher. e so cost of reputational damage could be even higher. In the aermath of British tele- com TalkTalk's data breach, the com- pany lost more than 100,000 customers and was fined $500,000 by English authorities. e news was noteworthy for being one of the steepest fines ever levied on any company. PwC reports 92 percent of U.S. multinationals named GDPR as a top priority. Most of these companies surveyed plan to spend $1 million or more on compliance. Nobody can tell you what non-compliance with GDPR will cost a business, but there's a good chance it will prove more expensive than abiding by its rules. Be smart, reach out to a GDPR consulting firm to perform a risk assessment and business impact analysis so you can fully under- stand your exposure. Privacy concerns among consumers is top of mind like never before, compelling businesses to invest in GDPR. Like all regulations, this is complex. ere are 99 GPDR articles to be examined for appli- cability to your business processes. GDPR requirements formalize a set of principles you should already be following. If this prompts companies to review the data they collect and assess whether they need to store it, then that's a good thing. Too many compa- nies neglect to protect customer data, so this creates unnecessary risk. ere's no excuse for neglecting to create privacy policies. Companies should not treat data protection as something optional. Matthew O. Fisch is senior vice president at Framingham data security provider Towerwall. Contact him at mattf@towerwall.com. BY MATTHEW O. FISCH Special to the Worcester Business Journal BY SUSAN SHALHOUB Special to the Worcester Business Journal T echnology in the workplace helps us all get things done fast- er, more efficiently. It's difficult to remember what life was like at the office before email, smartphones and computers – How did we get anything done, anyway? But there is a point where using tech for tech's sake is counterproductive. Some things to keep in mind for your company's culture when it comes to tech. Craft a culture of sensible tech in your organization. Even seemingly minor changes can help cut down on possible distractions for employees and boost productivity. For instance, "a fair amount of 'FYI' email-messaging can be cut down by simply giving people guidelines about when they should copy team members and when it's not necessary," writes Gwen Moran at Fast- Company.com, quoting productivity expert Maura omas. Know tech distractions add up and impact business. A CareerBuilder manager survey on personal internet and cellphone use shows compromised quality of work (45 percent); lower morale with other workers picking up the slack (30 percent) and a nega- tive impact on employee-supervisor relationship (25 percent) with missed deadlines and lower revenue also reported. "Security of company data is lessened as more access points are added," notes an article at MoneyTalk- sNews.com. "Opening a single infected email can spread a virus across the office network. Files may be corrupted and critical data stolen." Still put people first. "Putting people at the center doesn't necessarily mean that tech (data for example) is removed from the process – it just means that you are leading with a deep under- standing of the people you are trying to connect with, reach or transact with," writes David Armano at Forbes.com. A wealth of customer data won't make any difference if the information isn't acted upon to engage and serve these customers, he writes. e human factor needs to still be prioritized. W W W "There are no exemptions for small organizations."

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