On Monday, just in time for 4/20, residents of San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley will witness the nation's first multichannel marketing campaign for an actual brand of pot—a campaign that should be instantly recognizable to any bearded, Blue Bottle-drinking hipster: "Craft farmers, small-batch, sustainable," say ads that will appear in newspapers and social media and on billboards and buses. "That's cannabis the California way."

The ads are paid for by Flow Kana, a collaborative of small, organic marijuana farmers from Northern California's rugged and remote Emerald Triangle region. The campaign features scenic shots of the region's mist-shrouded hills, home to many of the state's original hippie growers and their descendants. It's one of several marketing efforts recently launched to promote small farmers in the face of the increasing corporatization and vertical integration of California pot.

California will vote on a legalization initiative in November, but unlike other states that permit the sale of recreational marijuana, it already has a world-famous cannabis industry. The pot trade by far dwarfs all other sectors of the economy in the Emerald Triangle's Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties. In fact, voters there have historically opposed legalization for fear that it would expose them to competition from venture-backed corporate farms—fears that have resurfaced with this year's legalization initiative.

Except this time many Emerald Triangle farmers see an opening. Months of vigorous lobbying by their trade organization, the California Growers Association, has tailored this year's leading legalization initiative to their interests. The Adult Use of Marijuana Act will initially restrict the size of legal pot farms to one acre and prevent any single entity from simultaneously cultivating, manufacturing, and retailing marijuana. It's the opposite of the approach taken in other legal-pot states, which typically control the market by limiting licenses to large, vertically integrated growers. "It was critical to us that we be horizontally integrated and have the opportunity for lots and lots of small licenses," says California Growers director Hezekiah Allen. "And that's what we got."