As the head of growth for Hawke Media, a full-service marketing agency based in Los Angeles, Madison Fiore is busy partnering with some of the largest players in the industry and taking the lead on strategy and business development for those clients.
The company broke $20 million in revenue last year, with cannabis clients accounting for about 15% of the business.
“We think that this part of our business can be probably a $10 million business over the next couple of years,” Fiore says.
Hawke Media was founded in 2013 and since then it has grown to become a two-time Inc. 500 business, employing 200 people and helping more than 1,000 clients revamp their e-commerce. Fiore started at the agency in 2017 and while Hawke had previously worked with cannabis clients, his work on Papa & Barkley’s e-commerce business brought the agency a new level of visibility in the industry.
“From that experience I realized how much opportunity was there in the space and how much growth was going to be happening,” Fiore says. “Once you start working with big logos and names, your name starts getting passed around the industry.”
In addition to developing strategies for email, social media, advertising and blog content, Fiore is developing partnerships with the nation’s leading cannabis venture groups and the brands they represent.
“If we are working with a venture group and with a brand, then we are all using the same compass to head in the right direction,” Fiore says. “If the investor wants to see different things for the brand, that conversation starts together and then we are all working toward the same goal.”