For cannabis companies, cultural relevance is difficult to manufacture. A brand can sponsor a concert, recruit an influencer, or attach a familiar name to a product, but consumers have become adept at recognizing partnerships that begin and end with a transaction.
Dialed In is taking a more involved approach in Colorado. Its three-month Summer Set campaign combines limited-edition products, local musicians, live events, artist-driven product decisions, budtender engagement, and concert giveaways. The campaign offers a useful case study for an industry seeking ways to build loyalty in mature markets where product quality alone may struggle to distinguish one brand from another.
Colorado, where the company began in 2020, serves as both Dialed In’s home market and proving ground. Products, activations, and partnerships tested there can become templates for expansion into other states.
“We believe if a product can do well in Colorado, it could probably do well in other markets because Colorado has so many other options for the customers to choose from,” Dialed In President Max Vansluys told Cannabis & Tech Today.
That makes The Summer Set more consequential than a seasonal promotion. It is an experiment in how a cannabis company can build around local culture and then determine which parts of that strategy can travel.
Building Around the Market
The Summer Set grew from an idea by Dialed In state sales leader Spencer Beymer, who saw Colorado’s music scene as a natural extension of the company’s existing collaborations and limited-time offerings.
The campaign incorporates hip-hop and electronic music through collaborations with artists including Ray Reed, parkbreezy, and Artifakts. Dialed In also worked with DJ NotLö on one of its “Dialed In Mini Mixes” and brought artists into its Digging Deeper podcast. AEG helped connect the company with artists and managers.
The significance for cannabis operators lies in the structure. Rather than attaching an artist’s name to an existing SKU and treating the partnership as a celebrity endorsement, Dialed In brought artists into the product and creative process.
Artists selected from the company’s flavor portfolio, choosing combinations based partly on products they already enjoyed. Visual identities also informed the releases. parkbreezy, for example, had input on color palettes used for his collaboration. Dialed In’s portfolio of 32 flavors gave the company enough manufacturing flexibility to make those decisions without creating an entirely new product platform.
That involvement creates a degree of ownership that conventional sponsorships often lack. It also gives cannabis companies another way to think about limited releases. Product development can become part of the activation itself.
The company deliberately concentrated on Colorado artists despite having access to larger touring acts.
“We could have chosen big name artists that are coming through Colorado because we know there are plenty, but we really wanted to hone in on the local artists,” Vansluys said. “I believe that’s where the authenticity of this all comes from.”
For operators accustomed to pursuing the largest possible audience, the strategy points toward a different calculation. Relevance within a specific community can carry more value than raw reach.
Turning the Dispensary Shelf Into Media
Cannabis advertising restrictions have long forced brands to reconsider where and how they reach consumers. The Summer Set treats one of the industry’s most valuable existing touchpoints, the dispensary shelf, as a media channel.
Vansluys described the collaboration tins as functioning almost like small billboards inside dispensaries, giving participating artists visibility across stores where Dialed In already has distribution.
That approach turns packaging and retail placement into components of a broader content campaign. The product can promote the artist, while concerts, podcasts, social content, and artist audiences direct attention back toward the product.
Dialed In adds scarcity to that loop through its small-batch model. Vansluys compared the philosophy to streetwear drops, where limited availability and collectability become part of the appeal. The company has used limited collaborations in Colorado and in markets including Arizona, Missouri, Massachusetts, and Ohio.
The Summer Set pushes that concept further with “golden tickets” hidden in select batches. The tickets provide access to different concerts, meaning the reward changes depending on the release.
The mechanism is familiar, but its application to cannabis addresses a persistent marketing challenge. A compliant package sitting on a retail shelf has limited room to communicate a brand story. Scarcity, collectability, and an experience attached to the purchase can extend that relationship beyond the transaction.
The campaign also targets both sides of cannabis retail. Vansluys said The Summer Set includes programs for consumers as well as budtenders, an important distinction in an industry where frontline retail staff can heavily influence product discovery and purchasing decisions.
Colorado as a Test Market
The deeper industry lesson may be Dialed In’s approach to localization.
Cannabis remains a collection of state markets governed by different regulations, competitive dynamics, consumer habits, and retail structures. A campaign that works in Denver cannot simply be copied into another state.
Dialed In instead uses Colorado to develop the framework.
“Colorado is where we start everything and then we expand it outward,” Vansluys said.
The company is already considering versions of the Summer Set model elsewhere, provided local regulations allow them. The transferable element is less the music theme than the underlying system: identify a community with genuine cultural relevance, collaborate with participants inside it, create limited products around that relationship, connect retail with experiences, and adapt the execution to the market.
Music happens to offer an unusually fertile starting point in Colorado. Vansluys noted that Denver can host a compelling concert on a Tuesday, a level of live entertainment he has not encountered consistently in other markets.
Future campaigns could move into other cultural communities. Dialed In is exploring action and mountain sports, including a potential snowboarding concept, while Vansluys also discussed collaborations involving chefs, comedians, and athletes.
The broader ambition is to give people with an interest in cannabis a way to participate in the industry without requiring them to launch their own cannabis businesses.
“We’re really going to bring in a ton of different voices that want a voice within cannabis, but don’t have the ability to have it,” Vansluys said.
Product Innovation Beyond the Gummy
That focus on experience also extends into product development.
Vansluys pointed to Dialed In’s rosin drops as an example of a product that can be positioned around use cases rather than a single consumption ritual. The company has been developing content showing how the drops can be incorporated into drinks and food. Vansluys has used them himself in a vinaigrette for a watermelon-cucumber salad.
For the industry, the concept is worth watching. As cannabis products mature, differentiation increasingly depends on how products fit into consumers’ existing routines. Edibles can compete on formulation and flavor, but products designed for flexible consumption open additional occasions and potentially different customer segments.
The same logic underpins The Summer Set. A gummy becomes connected to a concert, an artist, a retail discovery, and a limited release. The product remains central, but the value surrounding it becomes larger.
Dialed In’s experiment suggests that the next phase of cannabis brand building may depend heavily on that surrounding ecosystem. In a crowded market, companies need reasons for consumers and retailers to remain interested between purchases.
For Vansluys, the long-term objective comes back to community.
“Quality product, community driven,” he said when asked what he hopes people associate with Dialed In five years from now.
The Summer Set provides one blueprint for pursuing that goal. Its larger test will be whether a strategy rooted so specifically in Colorado can retain its relevance when translated to communities elsewhere.
