40 Under 40: Brittany Hallet

Hallet joined SLANG as an executive assistant in 2014 when the company was operating as O.pen Vape, and her critical eye for consumer trends and effective marketing strategies became a key component of the company’s success.

Hallet is proud of the many individual campaigns and brands she’s helped launch, including a campaign where the company provided branded trays to TSA security at Ontario International Airport in Southern California, but she says her biggest achievement is being part of SLANG’s ongoing success.

“This is a tough industry to operate in from pretty much any angle you look at,” she says. “I’m really proud of our ability to take O.pen, one of the first cannabis brands in the industry, and be able to grow and evolve that brand while continuing to maintain a market leadership position within the industry and particularly in our home state of Colorado.”

Q&A

How have consumer expectations changed from when you first took a marketing position in cannabis?

When I first started working in cannabis 10 years ago, it was still very taboo and there was a lot of stigma around the plant. Cannabis had long been in the shadows so early on, 1:1 conversations via pop-ups were the name of the game. We focused on educating people on the potential benefits of the plant, how to responsibly use cannabis and why they might reconsider their stance on cannabis. Additionally, we focused on building trust for our brand, O.pen; we focused on communicating that our brand was backed by science and a quality product. We also focused on building trust with a customer satisfaction guarantee and driving trial by offering our vape batteries for free when buying a cartridge. These are business practices that seem fairly standard but at the time were uncommon in our industry.

How has driving consumer engagement changed? Has it become easier?

The landscape has become more cluttered and fragmented, which in some ways makes it more difficult; your playbook and rulebook from market to market are completely different. However, the channels available to engage with consumers (digital, events, cross-market awareness, etc.) have increased and the general interest in the space has increased too, so it’s exciting to see that engagement and education among consumers growing as cannabis becomes more mainstream.

Can you tell me a little about a favorite brand, market or campaign that you’ve helped to launch?

There have been a lot of fun ones over the years, but my favorite campaign that I’ve worked on while at SLANG has been our TSA Airport tray campaign. We bought the advertising space in the TSA trays at the airport in Ontario, California. It was a public service announcement that said “CANNABIS IS LEGAL.” Then in much smaller letters, “Traveling with it is not.”—accompanied by our brand logos. It was really a watershed moment for cannabis as an industry in terms of mainstream industry exposure that garnered a lot of media attention, and I was honored to help lead that effort.

What would you say has been your biggest milestone in the industry thus far?

That’s a tough question; there’s been a lot of small wins along the way that have added up. This is a tough industry to operate in from pretty much any angle you look at it, so i’d say i’m really proud of our ability to take O.pen, one of the first cannabis brands in the industry, and to be able to grow and evolve that brand while continuing to maintain a market leadership position within the industry and particularly in our home state of Colorado.