The Story Behind Jay & Silent Bob’s Private Stash: How rootAffects Brought the Cannabis Brand Alive

The new Kevin Smith movie is out, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, so now is a great time to share how rootAffects helped build the cannabis brand Jay and Silent Bob’s Private Stash.

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Last year during the second week of October, I was out in Palm Springs to meet up with a client of mine, a public company called Chemesis. They have a big facility out there and they brought rootAffects on board to develop their operationals, help get their business running more efficiently and help them source materials. 

 I was out of dinner with the CEO, their head lawyer, and a couple other guys. We were all just hanging out, eating, drinking since the day was over and it was our first night there. So we're just relaxing, having a good time and and just nonchalantly, one of the guys mentioned they had a contract with Kevin Smith, and they didn't know what to do with it. 

 They just kept talking but I was interested in hearing more. I said “Wait, you have a contract with Kevin Smith? For what? What is it?”. They brushed it off and didn’t have many answers about the situation, which is how I realized they didn’t know the opportunity they had in their lap. I asked if they had seen any of Kevin Smith’s movies and they all had blank looks on their faces. So I had to ask if any of them even knew who Kevin Smith was. They all just laughed and admitted that none of them were aware of who this guy was. 

 I couldn’t believe it, I said “Oh my god, are you kidding me? You're sitting on a gold mine. This is a huge, this is perfect. Give the contract to me, let me figure something out with it.” They were okay with that plan, so a couple days later, I was talking with the CEO and one of the marketing guys. I wanted to know the details of the deal, and found they didn’t have the contract just yet, they had the introduction and weren’t sure what direction Kevin’s team wanted to go. All they knew was that Kevin’s team wanted to make their own flower, product, or something along those lines.  They didn’t know what to do with the opportunity, and that’s where I came in. 

 I asked them to line up a meeting between myself and Kevin Smith, sooner rather than later, and I would figure out what to do from there. They were trying to have something figured out in time for MJBizCon in Vegas, which was mid November. It was just over a month away, which was a lot of pressure. I knew that Kevin was about to record a new movie, he had a giant booth at this huge expo we should be promoting, and all of this stuff has to happen in about a month. I hadn't even met Kevin at this point, so I was panicking. Plus these guys didn’t even know what it was they were sitting on, so it was a lot to process, and I knew I was going to have to take the lead. 

 So first, I needed that meeting with Kevin as soon as possible, because I needed to meet with him to get in his head, figure out what he what he wanted to do, and pitch him my ideas. That meant I had to come up with ideas, and fast. I flew back home a couple days later and started brainstorming what products we could create, what was this brand going to be? 

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 They wanted to make something along the lines of Jay and Silent Bob. They envisioned a brand they could build around Jay and Silent Bob specifically for cannabis, which was amazing for me. Not only was it a great project in general, but I was so stoked because I'm such a fan at heart. I've always been a big time fan since Clerks came out. So for me, this was a double win. I took it way more seriously because of that, because I felt an affinity for these guys. I really wanted to make sure they had something amazing, I wanted to deliver awesome products for them. 

 So my partner and I wound up watching a bunch of Kevin’s old movies, brainstorming a bunch of concepts, drawing up ideas, mock ups and finally settled on what we were going to pitch. I found out a couple days later that we had a meeting lined up for October 27th of 2018. We were supposed to fly out to LA, meet Kevin at his home in Beverly Hills and discuss the idea. 

 I didn't want to show up empty handed and just talk concepts and ideas to pick his brain. I wanted to show up 100% prepared, as if I'd already finished the project. I wanted to show them as much as I possibly could, show them as many ideas as I could come up with, I wanted to put something real right in front of them, because I didn't know how much time I was going to have. I had an hour meeting with them but these projects can be killed instantly. I wanted to make sure I got the important things out. I needed to show that not only was this project meaningful to me, but also that I was the guy that could execute and get this done, not just come up with ideas. 

 For the meeting, we were supposed to be working together with these two guys from a different marketing firm. I had a couple of conversations with them about some ideas that I had, but they kept saying they weren’t sure what direction they wanted the project to go. I just didn’t trust them, because they wanted to know all about my ideas but wouldn’t share theirs. I trusted my gut and decided to just run with this project as if it were my own. I wound up to doing all the design mock-ups and everything myself. 

 We flew out to Beverly Hills and drove up to Kevin's neighborhood. This is a true story, it’s crazy. I had the address of where to meet in his neighborhood, we get there and I'm parked in a rental car somewhere near his house. Now, at this particular junction in time, my cell phone froze. It locked up, it wouldn't turn off, it just completely locked up. I had no way to reset it, I was just screwed. It was unbelievable. So I got out my backup phone, which I always carry in case things like this exact situation happen, so I was thanking myself for thinking ahead. I turned it on and it didn’t work either. I asked my girlfriend for her phone, but she had no cell signal, there’s no service where he lives. 

 I just couldn’t believe it, this kind of shit only happens in the movies, but here I was with no idea what to do next. I had this amazing opportunity to meet and work with someone I admire, flew across the country, got as far as his neighborhood, and couldn’t get to the meeting. I had no idea which house I needed to go to, I was just told to meet at this spot, and find the other two guys to meet up. 

 As we're trying to figure this all out, this guy pulled up behind us. I told him who I was and that I was there to meet up with Kevin. It turned out that he worked with Kevin, so that was a relief. His name was Dan, and he was a super awesome dude out of Toronto. He runs a cannabis company, but his main thing is licensing for musicians and celebrities. His cannabis company is called Budding Equity, awesome company. If you're in Canada or in cannabis licensing for celebrity brands, you should definitely check him out. 

 So we were talking with Dan and happy to know that we were at least in the right place, then finally the other guys show up, the lawyer and the other marketing guys. We all go to Kevin’s house, go inside and up the stairs. As soon as Kevin Smith walks in, I had an instant fanboy moment, like holy shit, this is awesome, he’s right there!  As quick as that moment came, it disappeared and mentally I was like ok let’s go, it's business time. I probably had a couple of minutes to get and keep his attention, so everyone made their introductions, and then I just jumped right in. 

 I showed him the full mock-up that we had made and what we wanted to aim for immediately. The very first product was going to be pre rolls, because pre rolls are super popular out in California, they're a really easy market to get into, and you're not just selling flower which allows more marketability. The pre rolls out there aren’t just about the brand, the flower or the strain. Out in California, you have to make a gimmick of the pre roll, which I was aware of.

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 I came prepared with a bunch of ideas, and I wound up pitching this one particular type of packaging that was really unique. The packaging almost looked like upside down test tubes that would hold the joint right inside the window so you could see it. It was all clear acrylic, had a child safety and tamper evident seal, all that fun stuff. My idea was to put stickers on them so it looked like Jay, Silent Bob and the characters from the movies, all the guys. 

The displays were going to be backdrops of the old movie store, the convenience store, and the Stop and Shop, then you put “the guys”, the pre rolls in front of that. The display becomes a small scene that we built of all the different characters. I wanted to make the convenience store with a Jay joint and a Silent Bob joint standing in front of the convenience store. I thought that would be the coolest display in the world, and I wanted to have one of those displays, so that's how we knew people would love it. I was so excited to be a big part of Kevin’s product line, because I could bring my knowledge as a fan to build a brand other fans would go crazy over. I wanted to do this right for Kevin, for his brand, and most importantly for fans of Jay and Silent Bob

The final display with scenes from the movies and packaging highlighting the characters

The final display with scenes from the movies and packaging highlighting the characters

We even came up with some concepts for the Buddy Christ stuff, we were going to do Buddy Christ, Holy smokes! I basically just went crazy, I was having so much fun with it and Kevin loved all the ideas. He was like these are great, how long have you been working on this? I didn’t have a lot of time to develop these ideas, so it was awesome that they hit the target so well it seemed like I worked on it for months. So we got the green light, he loved it and said let's do it. 

We had to come up with the brand name, logos and all that other fun stuff. Rather than trying to sell specific strains, we came up with a different plan. Strains are very tied to particular grows or certain growers, some people even own certain names, so it gets to be restrictive. We didn’t want to grow a Jay and Silent Bob strain. I wasn't keen on that, because I wanted it to be a national or worldwide brand. We decided to sell Indica, hybrids, and Sativa, but everyone sells like that and it's boring, so I needed a gimmick to make it stand out.

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I came up with the name of the brand, Jay and Silent Bob's Private Stash which was a stroke of genius. Obviously the name is tied to weed, plus they have their comic book store in Jersey called Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash. I wanted to play into their existing brand because fans recognize it and the product becomes something to add to their collection. It’s not just any cannabis brand, it’s something fans everywhere will want to own. Then, I tied the whole design to look like the hockey jersey embroidery, which fans would recognize as a classic part of Kevin’s brand. For names, what we came up with was Berserker for Sativa, Snoogans for Indica and Snoochie Boochies for hybrids. This way, customers could go into a dispensary and say “I want to get a Snoogans” or “give me a fucking five pack of Berserker”. How fucking cool is that, just to even say that you want one of those? Everything we planned had the fans in mind, it was all for people who love Kevin Smith’s work. That's how we came up with the whole brand and how we built it out. 

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We actually got mock-ups done in time for the convention, and Kevin flew out to Vegas for the day to talk and take pictures, it was really cool. Everyone loved it. We even came up with five pack boxes to demo there. Two were based off of Bluntman and Chronic, so we made a mock-up of a five pack of joints to look like their outfits. The other one was more standard, it almost looked like a cigar box. It wasn’t as movie-esque, more just branded, because we were going for both crowds. It was a lot of fun to come up with, we had a bunch of ideas like Golden Tickets to get people into the new movie.

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 Actually, another badass part of this is that the cannabis brand became a prominent role in his new movie. Kevin Smith made The Jay and Silent Bob Reboot and the can of his brand is actually in the movie, that’s so fucking cool. It’s cool as a fan, it’s cool as a business owner, everything about this has been amazing for me. 

 If you want to see how rootAffects developed a brand for Jay and Silent Bob called Jay and Silent Bob's Private Stash and got it all the way into a movie, go check out the movie and see the brand for yourself. Check it out online, follow us on Instagram. They're selling all over California, actually possibly selling nationwide. Kevin is now partnered up with Caviar Gold for his concentrate infused pre rolls and those are throughout most of the U. S., about 400 dispensaries now. Check out Jay and Silent Bob's Private Stash and check out where you can get some of their pre rolls and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. So go get it and let me know if it's good weed.


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Cheers!

.: Adam

CEO

rootAffects / Caribbean Green