Report: Cannabis Brands Stiiizy, Lowell And Dosist Dominate Marketing, While Mattio PR 'Moves The Needle'

With a focus on consumer-facing cannabis brands, Pioneer Intelligence helps industry stakeholders better understand how marketing and communications strategies resonate with audiences. The firm leverages a rich data set, taking in 28,000 data points each week, to benchmark performance through three focus areas: social media, earned media and web-related activities.

Pioneer Intelligence recently unveiled Brand Marketing Performance Scorecards. Published weekly, these are available for 500+ licensed brands selling (0.3%) THC products across the U.S.

Consumer-facing brands from all industries use marketing analytics to be better. Gartner L2 provides data-informed marketing intelligence to many of the world’s strongest and fastest growing brands. They’re not alone; Trackmaven and eMarketer do similar work. Pioneer Intelligence is now bringing this capability to the cannabis industry.

In its latest report, Pioneer Intelligence includes monthly ranking of the hottest 25 (U.S.) brands and a look at specific, consumer-facing marketing activities and brand developments for three particular brands together with a quantitative assessment of how said activities moved the needle in terms of audience growth and engagement.

Click here for more information about the upcoming Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference Oct. 22-23 in Chicago.

Recent takeaways have included:

• Mattio PR moves the needle for its clients, raising both market awareness and, through adept storytelling, audience engagement.
• Theory Wellness is the strongest mono-state brand outside of California. It would seem they are capitalizing on the early mover advantage; supported by Massachusetts' slower licensing approvals.
• Binske, another brand with Massachusetts ties, which claims to be the country’s biggest brand (accessible market size based on population of markets where it’s licensed to sell), is effectively raising its profile by offering an interesting ingredient sourcing story, an attractive visual identity and affordably priced product.
• Stiiizy returned to the top spot on Hottest Brands index, catapulting to the top based on the tails of its recent dispensary/gallery launch.

September Insights

According to Pioneer’s report, the hottest U.S. cannabis brands are Stiiizy, Lowell and Dosist.

Among notable movers were:

Henry’s Original

Henry’s Original generated more earned media in August than in any other month in 2019. Beyond closing their Series B investment round, they also garnered exposure through the sale of their 1 millionth pre-roll, as well as the announcement of their partnership with Omura, an innovative vaporizer company.

While the media buzz subsided in September, the previous month’s PR effort continued to positively impact the brand’s performance through its social channels and its website.

PLUS Products

PLUS Products, one of California’s leading edibles companies, consistently creates marketing buzz.

In September, the brand not only publicized a collaboration with Casper mattresses as part of its CBD-only product launch, it also announced a partnership with musician John Legend. Coverage of these activities elevated the brand’s earned media performance by more than 33%, which helped boost PLUS Products from No. 41 to No. 14 on Pioneer’s hottest brand index.

Newsworthy happenings continue into October, as last week PLUS Products announced the arrival of its THC line to Nevada.

Oregrown

Oregrown approaches brand building in a consistent, deliberate fashion that strives to represent the lifestyle and ethos of the Pacific Northwest.

The cannabis industry at large is making moves at a lightning-quick pace. While these efforts yield mixed results, Oregrown’s purposeful growth plan appears to have the brand expanding on solid footing.

The brand’s marketing activities continue to resonate with an ever-larger audience. Oregrown’s overall performance score in September is 6% higher than its August score and 11.6% higher than its average score over the past 26 weeks. These results are coming just as the brand prepares to expand its retail footprint — including the opening of a flagship store in Portland before the end of 2019.

Images from report.