Social Rocket
Gotham has turned a platform restriction into a creator format. Because cannabis brands can only advertise and show products to a limited extent on major social platforms, the New York retailer 2023 put its own content manager, Rachel Bell, in front of the camera. The resulting series "Hi, I'm High" has now reached millions of views and shows how brands in regulated categories can develop content without simply forcing their social team into classic product advertising.
According to Digiday, the series has achieved more than 11 million views across platforms. Gotham reportedly has almost 60.000 Instagram followers, more than 20.000 YouTube subscribers and almost 20.000 TikTok followers.
The employee became the brand figure herself
Bell joined Gotham in early 2023 as Director of Content and Engagement. Instead of booking external talent for a classic campaign, she developed a recurring format and took on production, direction and the lead role herself.
The basic idea was deliberately simple: if the cannabis product itself is problematic in content, the focus shifts away from the product and onto the experience and the person. On her own portfolio page, Bell describes that more than 50 episodes have now reached 10 million views – without a paid media budget.
Gotham thus follows a development that is visible beyond regulated industries too: brands are building not just individual influencer activations but recognisable series with fixed faces. A similar shift can be seen in Chipotle's creator production with 100 creators, or in long-term UGC strategies with clear usage rights.
Platform rules shape the format
The interesting part is less the cannabis niche than the production logic. The format emerged precisely because direct product communication is difficult on the platforms.
On TikTok the limits in advertising are particularly clear: the official TikTok Advertising Policies prohibit advertising for illegal or controlled drugs as well as recreational drugs and their use. Organic content is subject to its own moderation rules, which can also differ by market and context.
On Meta, Bell herself describes the restrictions as the starting point of the series. Digiday also reports that Gotham had to align its social strategy with the restrictions on cannabis marketing from the outset. For brands this is an important distinction: creative workarounds do not replace compliance. A format can be designed around the rules; it should not try to get around them.
From social content to a proper media format
Gotham now treats "Hi, I'm High" more like a scheduled series than a sequence of individual social posts. According to Digiday, new episodes appear regularly, longer versions also run on YouTube, and further series are in production.
The strategy also earned external recognition. "Hi, I'm High" won 2026 a Webby Award in the Branded Series category. The campaign had already been honoured at the Clio Cannabis Awards 2023.
For social media teams this matters more than the award itself: recurring formats create production routines, audience expectations and a recognisable brand figure. Exactly this series logic can also be transferred to less regulated categories – from FMCG marketing to local service providers. Our FMCG social media playbook shows how platform choice, creator and content format work together.
What German marketers can take away
Gotham is a US case, and the specific legal situation cannot be transferred to Germany. The transferable lesson therefore lies not in cannabis marketing but in how to handle restrictions: when a platform, category or compliance rule makes certain ad formats unusable, a recurring editorial format can be stronger than the next attempt to simply repackage product advertising.
The strongest elements of the model are simple: a fixed face, a clearly reproducible concept, platform-appropriate variants and enough editorial independence that the content works even without a direct product push.
Sources: Digiday, Rachel Bell, The Webby Awards, TikTok Advertising Policies