Tara Falk, Founder of Aim & Fire – Interview Series

As marketing and brand recognition become increasingly crucial to a cannabis company’s success, brands across all state markets are finding clever ways to both advertise their products and connect with customers. Whether it is an innovative new beverage brand or a pre-roll company that has been around for years, effective marketing and strong customer rapport make all the difference in such a personable industry. One unique strategy that some cannabis companies are utilizing is the brand activation event.

For a deeper look into the potential of brand activations and other unconventional yet effective methods, MyCannabis.com had the pleasure of speaking with Tara Falk, Founder of Aim & Fire.

What subjects did you study at the University of Wisconsin-Rock County, and which courses would you say provided you with the best understanding of the fields of marketing that you’ve made a career in?

I attended three different community colleges between the ages of 16 and 18, from my hometown UW-Richland Center to Saint Paul College in the Twin Cities, and finally UW–Rock County in Janesville. I graduated with an Associate’s Degree a month before turning 19. 

My higher education was largely general studies, but the most valuable pieces were the creative and social disciplines like philosophy, creative writing, sociology, history, theatre, and choir. Those gave me a strong foundation in understanding people, behavior, and storytelling which are all core to marketing and business.

That all clicked once I started working. I got into field marketing early, traveling first to Chicago and Madison for gigs I found on Craiglist and learning in real time. 

From 19 to 25 I lived in Minnesota, Massachusetts, Illinois, and working on different mobile tours during those years carried me across 47 States. Experience compounded quickly and ultimately shaped my career more than formal education.

When did you first see the power in brand activations and similar marketing strategies? Why do you feel that those very in-person strategies are more successful than simply placing some ads or posts on social media?

I saw it immediately in the early activations. You’re face-to-face with someone introducing a product, answering questions, watching their reaction, and adjusting in real time. That level of connection is unmatched. I loved the data and insights I personally got to absorb. 

In-person experiences create a full sensory spread: taste, touch, conversation, energy.

Digital has scale, but it’s passive. Field marketing is active. It builds memory, trust, and conversion in a way a scroll or ad placement simply can’t.

How have you had to adjust your services and strategies depending on the industry your client works in, such as Nature Valley or KitchenAid? Do businesses of one type have more specific needs than other types?

At a high level, the fundamentals stay the same: clear messaging, strong execution, and meaningful consumer interaction. That doesn’t change. What changes is how you apply those fundamentals depending on the industry.

With mainstream brands, there’s typically more established infrastructure, clearer guardrails, broader distribution and a higher established standard. The focus tends to be on amplification and efficiency, executing at scale within an already well-defined system. I’ve represented brands like these both directly and through dozens of agencies, so I’ve seen how that machine operates from different angles.

With emerging or regulated industries, especially cannabis, there’s a lot more nuance. You’re navigating compliance, educating consumers, and in many cases helping define what’s even possible from brand identity to go-to-market strategy. Those clients require more strategy consultation alongside execution. Emerging brands often also need guidance on how to structure and use external partners effectively, which varies based on stage, resources, and goals.

What inspired you to found Aim & Fire? What gap in effective marketing services did you hope to fill with the company?

Aim & Fire was built to bridge the gap between ambition and execution. I saw too many brands with strong products and real potential, but their efforts were fragmented, inconsistent, or misaligned with what actually drives results. There’s an over-reliance on aesthetics and hype-driven tactics that generate impressions, but don’t build credibility or create systems that scale.

In cannabis especially, there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of brand representation and what experiential marketing is meant to do. A lot of activity being promoted as “sponsorship” or activation doesn’t hold up under compliance scrutiny, and in many cases introduces unnecessary risk for the brands involved.

At the same time, there’s a dynamic where agencies or partner organizations promote their own identity within the same environment they’re supposed to be representing a client. That blurs roles, confuses power dynamics, and ultimately dilutes the impact of the work.

When a client invests in field marketing, every interaction should be in service of their product, their message, and their growth. If attention is being split or redirected, it undermines the entire purpose of the investment.

On the other side, many traditional agencies don’t fully understand the nuances of this space whether it’s compliance, retail dynamics, or cultural context so brands are often left choosing between teams that don’t understand the environment and teams that don’t operate with enough structure.

Aim & Fire was built as a clean, focused alternative. We operate with clear boundaries, strong on-the-ground awareness, and a commitment to executing the work well without distraction whether for startups or household names.

We flex across a wide range of needs. In some cases, we act as a reliable external arm supporting internal teams. In others, we build the structure and systems a brand can depend on or eventually take in-house. There’s no one-size-fits-all model, and forcing one usually leads to inefficiency.

Ultimately, Aim & Fire brings structured, scalable execution into environments that need it while maintaining the integrity of the brand and the clarity of the work. Our clients don’t just need staffing. They need guidance on what’s actually feasible and effective within their constraints.

What are some of the most popular brands you’ve worked with on behalf of Aim & Fire? Your portfolio is quite impressive, given the number and diversity of brands.

Early work included launch support in California for Mary Jones and TSUMOSNACKS, along with experiential reinforcement for brands like Raw Garden and Pacific Stone.

We’ve also supported retail operators like Embarc and Eaze, building community presence and brand awareness outside their dispensary walls, and moved into broader production ecosystems through partners like Creative Artists Agency and CNC, supporting international brands like T-Mobile, Kaiser Permanente, eBay, and L’Oréal. What’s worth noting is that this expansion happened in the opposite direction people might expect. It was strong work and relationships in cannabis that ultimately opened doors for Aim & Fire into those mainstream spaces. Even after a decade of navigating those environments myself, Aim & Fire became the best container to represent my capabilities.

With your cannabis clients in particular, what are some issues that both Aim & Fire and the client themselves when trying to utilize brand activation and other clever marketing strategies? While the many cannabis advertising issues with Meta-owned platforms are infamous at this point, what are some other common roadblocks you’ve faced?

This is ultimately a people business, which makes consistency one of the biggest challenges. There’s natural turnover in field teams, heavy coordination and a lot of moving pieces so we focus heavily on building a reliable system of delegation with backup support.

Compliance is another factor. A lot of ideas sound exciting and look flashy but don’t hold up under scrutiny. There are plenty of examples in this industry of corners getting cut, which creates risk for everyone involved. Regulations and interpretations have changed quickly and by region, so it’s important to stay on top of those intricacies. 

There’s a level of nuance in deciding how to show up: what’s allowed, what’s effective, and what actually aligns with the brand goals long-term. This is also about trust. There are countless ways to approach the same challenge, and trust isn’t something you have to sell. It’s something that gets built over time through delivery. Successful partnerships require alignment on both sides. We rely on our clients for accurate information, timely assets, clear communication, and proper lead time. This isn’t a “set it and forget it” type of relationship. The strongest outcomes happen when there’s active collaboration and respect for the work that happens on all sides of an agreement. My role is to create structure and support so founders, teams, and partners can focus on what they own and delegate reliably, knowing the field is handled.

From your own experience, what is so exciting about working with unique beverage brands such as Jones Soda and CANN? And because there’s a good balance of cannabis-infused and non-cannabis infused beverage brands you’ve worked with, how have you had to change your operations and strategies

Beverages is one of the most dynamic categories to work in because it’s inherently social and experiential. It’s designed to be shared, sampled, and integrated into real-life moments.

Before entering cannabis, I worked across the category from coffee to cold-pressed juice, along with regulated industries like alcohol and tobacco. That foundation translated naturally, but cannabis requires an additional layer. The key difference is education versus amplification.

With traditional beverage brands the foundation already exists. Consumers understand what the product is, how to use it, and where it fits into their lives. Field marketing is focused on driving awareness, trial, and preference within an established category.

With cannabis beverages, you’re still building that foundation. Every interaction carries more weight. You’re guiding dosage, timing, effects, and context, while navigating compliance and lingering stigma. That requires more intentional environments, more informed staff, and tighter control over how the experience is introduced.

Strategically, you’re not just marketing a product. You’re helping define a category. Operationally, that means more training, more guardrails, and more precision.

The upside is significant. Once someone has a positive, well-guided first experience, adoption tends to follow quickly. Beverage becomes an accessible entry point that can shift perception and open the door to broader acceptance.

Cann played a major role in normalizing low-dose, socially positioned cannabis beverages, combining premium branding with strong distribution and pop-cultural relevance. For many consumers, it was their first experience with cannabis in a beverage format often introduced through sampling outside dispensary walls. Leading their home-market field team during rapid expansion shifted my perspective and ultimately solidified my commitment to this category.

Working with Jones Soda on the launch of Mary Jones was another defining moment. It marked one of the first legacy beverage brands fully stepping into cannabis and backing it with real infrastructure. Being part of that transition felt both validating and forward-looking.

More broadly, it’s been meaningful to apply my work to the normalization of cannabis, especially as it expands beyond legacy markets and reaches places like the Midwest, where I’m from.

What have been some of the most memorable events that you’ve organized with Aim & Fire and other companies, too? Where were those events hosted, and why were those venues so historic?

Clients are often stepping into environments that already carry meaning across festivals, sporting events, and community gatherings where the audience is fully present.

We’ve provided the on-site team for sponsor activations across Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits, both of which are iconic not just for their size but for their cultural legacy. These are multi-day environments where music, identity, and brand discovery all intersect. Similarly, working activations around the US Open and tournaments that lead up to it places us inside a globally recognized institution with decades of history, international audiences, and a level of prestige that raises the bar for execution.

On the sports side, we’ve also supported partnerships tied to teams like Los Angeles Football Club, San Diego Wave FC, and the Golden State Warriors and Valkyries. These are rooted in the community. Fans show up emotionally invested, and brands have the opportunity to become part of that ritual rather than interrupt it.

I was proud to route and manage a statewide mobile marketing tour for Jones Soda’s Mary using the Jones “Cool Bus.” That program wasn’t tied to a single venue, it was more about meeting people across California in different contexts. In one month, we visited and sampled over two dozen key accounts plus events like PuffCon and Skate Safari.

Earlier on, before moving to California in 2020, I worked on a historic activation with Republic Brands, hosting the JOB lounge backstage at Riot Fest. That stood out because it was a 150+ year-old brand’s first in-person activation, and still the only to-date. Bringing a legacy brand with such a long legacy of innovative, art-forward marketing into a live environment for the first time and translating that heritage into a physical experience was powerful. 

Ultimately, what makes a venue or event “memorable” isn’t just scale or prestige. It’s relevance. The best activations meet people where they already are, in moments that matter to them, and integrate into those environments in a way that feels natural, not forced.

How do you envision a federal cannabis rescheduling and its subsequent ripple effects changing the operations of Aim & Fire and the cannabis brands you work with?

Federal rescheduling, particularly on the medical side, won’t dramatically change our day-to-day operations in the immediate term. We’re not reliant on gray areas to function, which is a privilege.

Where things get more interesting is how the framework evolves for adult-use.

As the cards are dealt, you could hopefully start to see increased normalization and crossover with mainstream CPG. I’m looking forward to the point where this can be integrated into broader experiential and cultural environments in the same way alcohol is today: thoughtfully, compliantly, and as part of the overall experience rather than something siloed or workaround-driven.

That shift will raise the bar. Brands will need to operate with more discipline, more consistency, and a stronger understanding of how to show up in shared public spaces. It also means more scrutiny, more competition, and higher expectations across the board. 

For Aim & Fire, that’s a net positive. We already work at the intersection of regulated cannabis and traditional CPG, applying proven field and experiential execution systems from mature markets into emerging ones. As those worlds continue to converge, the need for experienced operators who can navigate both fluently will only increase. We’ll be ready for that transition.

Thank you for joining us, Tara! For more information on Aim & Fire, please visit its website.