The Brand Tender’s Guide to Brand Operations: How Holistic Industries Is Building for Scale

She resources projects, assigns creative support, coordinates contractors, manages timelines, and looks for places where the process itself can improve. When a workflow creates friction, she documents a better approach and helps the team adopt it.

Even a strong brand can lose consistency when information changes hands.

Someone starts with an outdated reference file. An agency never sees the latest package. A team in one state uses the packaging created for another. The approved copy lives in a spreadsheet while the approved image lives somewhere else. A rushed request reaches the person doing the work without enough context.

Marcone is addressing those gaps while the work is still being planned and produced, so teams have the context they need before an asset is approved and distributed.

The Product-to-Brand Baton Pass

One of the clearest examples of how Marcone’s role connects different parts of the business is the way she works with her colleague Natalie, who supports project management for product, packaging, and compliance. 

Before a campaign reaches Marcone, a significant amount of work has already happened upstream. The product has taken shape. Packaging has been developed. Compliance requirements have been worked through. The details that define how that product can be presented in the market are beginning to solidify. 
Once those pieces are ready to move outward, the work shifts. Marcone describes that transition as “almost a baton to me.”
Her role is to take what has already been established around the product and carry it into campaign execution. That can mean coordinating creative, shaping the supporting materials, and making sure the product enters the market with messaging and assets that reflect the decisions already made upstream.
From there, she gets to “release all those gorgeous assets into the world.”

The handoff can lead to highly specific campaign work. 

Last year, for example, Hellavated’s mystery-flavor vape, Snowbody Knowz. The creative shows how a product concept takes shape as a market-facing campaign after the product, packaging, and compliance work has been handed off.
A useful handoff also makes the boundaries clear. The campaign team needs to know which product details and compliance decisions are settled, along with where it has room to develop the creative. Keeping those decisions visible helps product information and brand execution stay aligned. 

Build the Process So Someone Else Can Run It

Marcone’s approach starts with context.

When assigning a project, she considers which designer understands the brand, but she also thinks about who understands the market. A packaging partner familiar with a particular state may be better equipped for that work than a designer encountering its requirements for the first time.

She is also building processes that make the work less dependent on one person’s knowledge.

One early example was the creative brief.

Holistic did not have a standardized brief template when Marcone arrived, so she began creating one that could give a designer or partner enough context to move forward: reference files, previous work, objectives, competitive examples, and the direction the team is trying to reach.

The same thinking carries into the team’s operating rhythm.

Brand leads and operations come together for a Tuesday status. Later in the week, they regroup around brief planning so everyone can see what is coming and where their work overlaps.

“We're all kind of holding hands, if you will, and making each other aware of what we're all doing,” Marcone says.

For a brand manager building a similar workflow, the creative brief is a useful place to start. It gives each project a clear owner, identifies the market where the work will be used, and includes approved references. That context should travel with the assignment, whether it goes to an internal designer or an outside partner.

Holistic is carrying the same emphasis on context into Lingo, where its team is organizing approved materials for the people who need them.

Holistic’s Massachusetts Portal brings together Kits for brands available in the state. 

The Massachusetts Portal gives market teams a focused view of the approved brand materials relevant to their work. That organization reflects the same decisions Marcone makes upstream: who needs the information, and what context will help them use it correctly?

Designing for the Versions Cannabis Requires

Marcone’s previous MSO experience taught her to expect versions.

Cannabis brands rarely create one universal piece of creative and distribute it everywhere unchanged. State regulations, disclaimers, packaging requirements, and retail lockups can create multiple approved versions of the same basic material.

“There are so many different versions that are potentially needed,” she says.

That gets harder to manage as the company adds products, campaigns, retailers, and markets.

The problem is not simply producing the variations. The team also has to make sure the right variation reaches the right person.

“Where Is My Maryland Portal?”

Marcone describes state organization in very practical terms.

Campaigns and approved assets accumulate throughout the year. Without a deliberate structure, those pieces can end up distributed across folders, launch files, email threads, and other systems.

For the person who needs to use them later, the question becomes remarkably simple:

“If I am a marketing person in Maryland, I would love to be able to have a clear place to go to that's like, all right, where is my Maryland portal?” Marcone says. “Here are all of the marketing campaigns and assets that are very specific to brands sold in Maryland for the Maryland retailers.”

Pennsylvania creates its own variations, including retail-specific brand lockups.

The same principle applies in either market: the person doing the work should not have to understand the company’s entire file architecture just to identify the correct asset.

That is one reason Holistic Industries is organizing materials in Lingo around the audiences and markets using them.

The same approach can guide any brand’s asset organization: start with the audiences who need access, identify which materials apply across markets, and separate versions that require state-specific approval. Give each audience a clear place to find the materials it can use.

One Place People Can Trust

A cannabis brand can create beautiful product photography, write a detailed description, and get every piece of copy approved. The product can still appear on a dispensary menu with the wrong image, an outdated name, or barely enough information to distinguish it from the next option.

For the shopper, that listing may be their first introduction to the product. For the brand, it means the information carefully developed by its internal team has lost something along the way.

Getting it corrected creates another round of work. Someone has to identify the error, locate the approved information, contact the retailer, and check whether the change was made, if the retailer is willing to make the change at all. Meanwhile, the same product may appear on other menus, each maintained through a different process.

Marcone knows how persistent that problem can be. Retailers and markets use different menu systems, and product information can become inconsistent across them. She wants Holistic’s teams and retail partners to have a dependable source they can use when building and maintaining those listings.

That work begins with the information the brand makes available.

“A Spreadsheet, Of Course”

Holistic Industries is building a structured catalog in Lingo Products to bring product details and their associated imagery together. While that catalog takes shape, much of the information still lives in a familiar place.

“A spreadsheet, of course,” Marcone says.

The Google Sheet contains brands, strains, and SKUs organized by state, along with menu descriptions and associated product cards. It provides a starting point, but Marcone describes it as relatively bare bones.

Her team is also developing sell sheets that establish how each brand’s products should be presented. That work helps assemble the content needed for the catalog, including descriptions and supporting materials that wholesale and retail teams rely on.

An example of a sell sheet for the Holistic Brand, Stash.

The value of bringing this information into Lingo Products becomes clear when you follow a product through the business.

• Creative needs accurate details to develop its campaign. 
• Wholesale needs approved information to represent the product to buyers. 
• Retail partners need descriptions and imagery they can use in their own catalogs.

When each team gathers those pieces independently, every handoff creates another opportunity for information to become outdated or mismatched.

Marcone wants people to be able to find a description and use it with confidence.

“We could just straight up copy and paste this product description,” she says. “We know it's the latest and greatest. We know it's compliance approved... and we can trust it.”

A shared product record gives those teams a consistent starting point. Another brand manager can begin by assigning ownership of each record: who maintains the description, who verifies the product details, and who approves market-specific language? Clear responsibilities make the information easier to maintain and safer to reuse when creative or wholesale needs it.

Getting the Right Materials to the Right Retailer

Holistic Industries is changing how its approved assets reach wholesale partners and retailers at the same time.

Marcone has been distributing launch materials through Dropbox, with folders for individual launches and supporting content such as menu imagery. The team is now uploading those assets into Lingo, with the goal of giving wholesale curated Kits to share with partners.

“We're right at the precipice of this,” she says.

Consider the person responsible for creating a dispensary listing. They need to identify the correct product image, locate the approved description, and make sure the information applies to the product and market they are working with. If those materials arrive separately, that person has to piece them together.

A focused Kit gives retail partners a clearer path to the approved assets they need. As Holistic develops its catalog in Lingo Products, structured product information can support that same distribution workflow.

Once Holistic’s product catalog is built out, retailers will have a direct connection to the product information the brand maintains in Lingo. Through Channels, they’ll be able to see which products are in sync with Holistic’s catalog, which have changed, which are new, and which have been archived.

Consider the product catalog snapshot shown above. When Holistic updates its approved description or replaces its product imagery, that change becomes visible to connected retailers through the Channel. They can identify the affected SKU, review what changed, and determine what needs to be updated in their own menu.

The same visibility extends to newly added and archived products. Retailers can see when Holistic introduces a SKU or retires one, giving them a clearer picture of which listings need attention without relying on someone to send another spreadsheet or chase down the right contact. 

For a brand managing products across multiple markets and retail partners, this creates a more direct connection between the information the brand approves and the information shoppers see on a dispensary menu. Retailers still manage their own menus, but they have a clearer way to identify changes and keep their listings aligned with the brand’s catalog. 

The Cost of Keeping Menus Current

A brand’s work continues after product information reaches a retailer. The menu still needs to reflect the right details, and Holistic has people checking that it does.

“At Holistic, multiple people on staff are involved in checking dispensary and eCommerce listings,” Marcone says. 

Retail and wholesale teams review listings for discrepancies. When they find one, someone has to locate the approved information, contact the retailer, request a correction, and check whether the update was made. 

The retailer may make the change. The request may also go unanswered.

Across retailers and markets, those individual corrections add up. An updated image or description can prompt separate follow-ups with every partner carrying the affected SKU.

The Channel shown above gives retailers a clearer starting point for that work. Instead of finding out about an update only after someone spots an inaccurate listing, a connected retailer can review the affected SKU and identify what its own menu needs. 

Retailers remain responsible for their menus. Holistic gains a more direct way to communicate changes and focus follow-up on listings that still need attention. 

When Marcone learned about the workflow, her reaction captured the scale of the problem it addresses. 

“That would solve literally every single person’s problem,” says Marcone.

For another look at the operational burden behind menu accuracy, see how Glass Meadows approaches retailer-facing product information and menu remediation.

Education Belongs in the System Too

Product information has another important destination: the people selling the product.

Marcone believes cannabis needs to place greater emphasis on education across markets. Holistic is working on educational resources, including product cards and courses, to help the people selling its products understand what they are offering.

A description helps a retailer build a listing; a product card and training give the person selling it the context to answer a customer’s questions. Keeping these resources tied to approved product information helps teams teach from the same facts they distribute.

Marcone has seen what a deeper investment in education can do. In her previous experience, employees who attended programs such as Ganjier training returned with additional knowledge and enthusiasm for sharing what they had learned.

She also thinks about the experience from the customer’s side when they’re standing in a dispensary. 

“I honestly think that is the biggest part of it, like making a space so comfortable that anyone feels like they could genuinely ask any question,” she says.

That environment depends on knowledgeable people who have the tools to answer those questions.

For teams developing their own education programs, the practical starting point is the product record. Use approved details to build product cards and training materials, then make those resources easy for the people selling the product to find.

Building for the Next Stage

Marcone has seen the demands that come with operating brands across multiple cannabis markets. At Holistic, she is applying that experience while the company’s processes and systems continue to evolve.

Her work starts before an asset is uploaded and continues after it reaches a retailer. Clear briefs and well-defined handoffs help teams create approved materials. State-specific organization helps the right people find them. The developing product catalog and Channels workflow extend that structure to product data and updates.

Each part of the system addresses a point where information could otherwise be hard to find, misunderstood, or left behind when something changes.

For Marcone, the goal is straightforward.

“One source of truth,” she says. “Just knowing where everything is.”

She looks forward to having creative assets and disclaimers in predictable places, with a clearer understanding of what needs to be updated when something changes.

It also means fewer requests bouncing between departments.

“Hey, where's this thing? Hey, where's that?” Marcone says, describing people asking “nine million different people” where something lives.

As Holistic adds products, campaigns, and market-specific materials to Lingo, the system Marcone is building gives teams a way to find the right information and carry it forward without needing her to personally guide every handoff.