Vice Media‘s TV channel Viceland is set to launch TV’s first ‘Weed Week’ next month with a slate of cannabis-themed originals, documentaries and comedies.
To build buzz around the programming, the network has kicked off an elaborate marketing campaign that includes shop front activations and a weed-scented ATM.
The channel is hoping to capitalise on the growing adoption of legal marijuana across states in the US, where more than one-quarter of Americans are now living in states with – or soon to have – adult-use marijuana laws on the books and millions more living in states with legal medical use.
The ‘Weed Week’ will kick off on 17 April and conclude on the 20 April – otherwise known as 420 – the national holiday for cannabis culture.
It will see the return of two of its most popular series: Weediquette with Krishna Andavolu, and recent James Beard Award nominee Bong Appetit with Abdullah Saeed.
The network will feature a special 420 episode of Action Bronson’s F*ck, That’s Delicious – The Heady New York Special.
To promote the TV event, the channel has taken over storefronts in New York and Los Angeles and filled them with fake weed, and placed a weed-scented ATM to capture the attention of passers-by at New York’s Lower East Side.
The channel is also set to run a marketing stunt at Coachella.
It will run paid media spots across TV and online, social, digital and grassroots marketing.
The initiative will be marked internationally at Viceland outposts across the globe – in the UK, France, New Zealand and the network’s most recent territory, Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). International channels will also be marking the celebration off-air and rolling-out localised out-of-home campaigns and stunts in high foot-fall areas.