Lisa Weser and the weight of a good story

An 850-pound brownie is a peculiar item to put on a professional résumé. It does, however, have certain advantages over “excellent communication skills.” You remember it. Lisa Weser, the founder of Trailblaze, helped turn that enormous confection into a publicity campaign for MariMed. Before the brownie, there were Clydesdales, beer launches and Martha Stewart. Across those seemingly unrelated assignments runs a consistent question: what would make somebody care enough to tell somebody else?

Weser has spent her career working on that question from several positions: agency executive, corporate communications leader, founder and now agency CEO within Acceleration Community of Companies. Her subject matter has changed more dramatically than her method. A familiar cultural reference, a clear story and an understanding of the audience tend to travel well. Moving from Budweiser to cannabis gave her an opportunity to see how far.

The horse came before the brownie

In 2013, Weser was senior director of brand communication at Anheuser-Busch. Budweiser’s Super Bowl commercial, “Brotherhood,” followed a trainer and the Clydesdale he had raised, separated and eventually reunited. Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” supplied the emotional assistance. The assignment carried a familiar problem for an old brand: how to draw on its history without looking trapped inside it.

Weser helped generate publicity around the commercial, from reviewing early concepts to attending the shoot. The spot topped that year’s USA TODAY Ad Meter. Her team also asked Twitter users to name the foal. More than 60,000 suggestions arrived; the horse became Hope. A commercial had acquired a second life as a conversation people could join.

There was an agreeably domestic perk to this very public job. Employees received two cases of beer a month, and Weser sent one to her father because he had paid her college tuition. Some debts are repaid in installments. Hers included a beverage delivery.

A job with several backstage passes

The beer portfolio meant keeping track of dozens of brands, alongside sponsorships in sport, film and music. In her account of the job, Weser described a small internal team supported by roughly five large PR agencies. Launches, executive interviews and incoming questions from journalists competed with events on the calendar. A backstage pass still came attached to a considerable amount of administration.

She enjoyed the access. Asked in 2013 who had left her star-struck, the self-described small-town Iowa kid singled out Jay-Z and Beyoncé. Yet her explanation of the work was practical: give journalists and other influential people access to information, people and experiences. Relationships remained useful even as distribution moved onto social platforms.

Her first career plan had been academia. During her master’s studies, a professor who also consulted for businesses showed her another possible route. At Accenture she encountered different organizations and advised executives much older than herself. Later, managing agencies from the client’s chair gave her a better appreciation of just how many decisions the chair required.

“Old school PR tactics still apply in a digital age.”

Lisa Weser, 2013

A new category for an existing skill

At FleishmanHillard, where she became a senior vice president, Weser worked on digital communications for AT&T, including the first-generation iPhone launch and the company’s early social channels. Those assignments placed her near a new consumer habit as it formed. Her later move into cannabis would again put her alongside businesses trying to explain unfamiliar products.

The category also had recognizable constraints. Alcohol marketing had already taught her to work around platform limitations and audience restrictions. That experience offered a reason to enter cannabis beyond an appetite for novelty. She had worked inside a complicated consumer market before. A different set of rules still required the patient work of understanding the audience and finding a usable route to it.

Her education covered both language and communication: a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa, followed by a master’s at Miami University. She also completed an advanced management and leadership certificate at Washington University’s Olin Business School. The eventual founder had accumulated a mix of writing, corporate and management experience before she had a company to run.

The uncomfortable business of starting

Weser’s own account places her departure from Budweiser and preparations for the new venture in late 2017; Trailblaze gives its founding year as 2018. She moved her family out of New York, reduced the cost of the change and began without clients. Beverage expertise supplied a starting point: she contacted founders of CBD drinks businesses. The first account came from that outreach.

She had watched Constellation Brands invest in Canopy Growth and saw an indication that established consumer businesses were taking the category seriously. She spent six months preparing her exit. The wager was considered, even if its outcome remained uncertain. Running payroll, negotiating agreements and finding accountants and lawyers became part of the work. A good campaign could no longer be her only responsibility.

Her parents, advocates of stable corporate careers, offered seed money for early hires. Her existing network supplied introductions. For someone leaving a recognizable employer, these were useful forms of confidence: people willing to attach their own money or reputation to what she was attempting.

Martha, then a very large dessert

In 2020, Trailblaze worked on the launch of Martha Stewart’s CBD line with Canopy Growth. Stewart brought an established public identity to a category still negotiating its place in everyday consumer culture. Weser remembers months of preparation culminating in coverage on the cover of The New York Times Styles section. The setting mattered: this was a lifestyle conversation reaching beyond an industry audience.

Then came MariMed’s brownie. Weser has described the pleasure of seeing the campaign reach Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update and other late-night monologues. Here, the point of entry was comic scale. An enormous dessert gave people an immediately understandable reason to discuss a product launch. Nobody needed a briefing document to grasp the joke.

The work was collaborative. The 2022 Clio Cannabis entry credits MariMed’s creative and marketing leadership alongside Weser and fellow Trailblaze publicists Leland Radovanovic, Alice Moon, Hilary Morse and Alison Voetsch. It won bronze in Partnerships & Collaborations. The official credits are a useful reminder of what disappears inside the phrase “a big idea”: several people doing the work that lets the idea leave the room.

Stewart and the brownie offered very different kinds of familiarity. One borrowed the audience’s knowledge of a public figure. The other made use of an absurdly oversized everyday object. Both made an unfamiliar category easier to talk about. There is a certain professional elegance in knowing when the assignment calls for Martha Stewart and when it calls for more chocolate.

Keeping the company, widening the company

ACC announced its acquisition of Trailblaze on January 23, 2023, following three years of strategic partnership. Weser remained CEO and added the role of executive vice president of Advisory. The arrangement placed her business alongside specialist agencies including MKG, Pink Sparrow, Stripe Theory and Pixly. The company she had started would now operate within a larger group.

At the announcement, Trailblaze had represented more than 30 clients. Joining ACC provided a path to additional capabilities, including work with specialists in events, production, analytics and influencer campaigns. For Weser, the next stage involved bringing other disciplines into an agency built around communications. Founder independence had given way to a different management question: how to make collaboration useful to clients.

Recognition had arrived too. PRNEWS included her among its 2022 Top Women honorees, and she served on the Clio Cannabis jury that year. These were milestones in a career she had once worried might suffer from announcing a move into cannabis. She has also urged women in the industry to help one another through mentoring, hiring, investment and useful introductions. Her own account of starting Trailblaze gives that advice a practical foundation: a network had helped turn her new business into a working one.

The next audience may ask a machine

Trailblaze’s later work includes ILGM’s Home Grow Tour, developed with HangarFour and Leafly. The campaign centered growers’ stories and community events across the United States. It won Cannabis Campaign of the Year at the 2025 PRNEWS Platinum Awards. The emphasis on people participating, rather than simply receiving a message, recalls the earlier invitation to name a horse.

By late 2025, Weser was also discussing how companies organize their stories across the corporate brand, individual products and their founders. Her advice included getting the commercial basics ready before investing heavily in publicity. Attention needs somewhere to go. An interesting interview cannot supply an absent retail relationship or finish an unfinished online store.

Her scheduled December 2026 MJBizCon roundtable turns to earned media and artificial intelligence: how coverage, interviews and public commentary may influence the way AI tools describe an industry. It is another change in the place where audiences encounter information, a recurring problem for someone whose earlier work included launching corporate social channels.

There is an additional outlet for that experience closer to home. The Contemporary Dayton lists Weser in its Creative Enterprise Working Group, concerned with revenue, partnerships and new business models for an arts organization. Brand building, it turns out, can be useful outside a product launch. Whether the audience arrives for contemporary art, a consumer brand or an improbable brownie, somebody still has to give them a reason to pay attention.