Kim Prince
Kim PrinceProven Media CEO and founder
Before founding Proven Media more than a decade ago, there were times when Kim Prince felt like her career wasn’t heading the direction she wanted. The work had begun to feel “small.”
Getting started in the cannabis space changed all that.
“Cannabis afforded me the ability to think big again,” she says.
PR PRO | Proven Media recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary as a cannabis-focused public relations and marketing firm. Although founder Kim Prince came from traditional media and traditional industries, her company has thrived in the rapidly evolving world that connects cannabis with all forms of print, digital and social communications.
“We don’t need to step on anyone to get to the top,” she says. “I’d rather come in second or third and be known for an amazing company that had great values and treated people well than be the number one company where we had to claw to get there and push people down so we could get up.”
Since the company’s launch, she’s worked with pioneers and entrepreneurs, legacy media brands and startups, world leaders and cultural icons. She’s had a front-row seat as the cannabis industry has exploded into a multibillion-dollar industry and as the media business has evolved rapidly to keep up with our fast-paced digital world. Prince hosted her first Meet the Cannabis Press event in 2015 and has continued to bring journalists and media members together with marketing and communications professionals for regular in-person and virtual events — one of her favorite accomplishments in cannabis. Proven Media also recently launched its influencer division called Industry Blazers in response to the converging worlds of social media and traditional media.
“We’re just real people trying to connect with real people to make good things happen,” Prince says. “The methods of communication may be changing and evolving. The toolbox is changing but the messaging still needs to take place. We like to remind our clients that communication will never go out of style.”
For Prince, working in this industry has the added social value of helping shift the public perception surrounding cannabis. It’s about normalizing cannabis, removing the longstanding stigmas associated with the plant and persuading people who are anti-cannabis to open their minds a little more and reconsider preconceived notions.
And it’s personal. Earlier in her career, she was recruited to handle PR for several high-tech companies, but there was a catch: many of them required pre-employment drug screening.
“I definitely paid a price for loving cannabis,” she says. “That’s part of the reason I ended up in my own business. It forced me to pivot and do my own thing, and it turned out to be, for lack of a better word, a blessing in disguise.”
When she saw the opportunity to combine her education and her experience with her passion, she leapt at it and never looked back.
“They say follow your passion,” she says. “When I had the agency, I had some great clients; we had a chef who was a James Beard finalist, and we had Ace Hardware stores, but I could never get passionate about a can of paint. … For me, cannabis — not only the plant, but the word — has completely opened up my world again.”