The Arizona cannabis industry came out swinging in 2021. According to the most recent tally from BDSA, the state generated $~1 billion in sales this year (numbers are from January through October 2021). If we look at the top-selling brands in Arizona we see some predictable powerhouses like Select and Stiiizy. That said, many of the top-selling Arizona brands are actually based in Arizona: Timeless Vapes, Item 9 Labs, Copperstate Farms, Nature’s, Venom Extracts, and Sunday Goods.
But sales aren’t everything. When it comes to building a brand, the long game requires building a loyal fanbase and engaging with consumers. To that end, we turned to our friends at the Pioneer Heat Index to find out which homegrown Arizona brands are generating buzz and successfully engaging with consumers.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s some crossover between the top-selling brands and the “buzziest” brands. Venom Extracts (which is owned by Hollister Biosciences) is the #4 top-selling brand in Arizona (according to BDSA’s data from August-October 2021), and rank #7 on the Pioneer Intelligence heat index. Copperstate Farms is #5 on BDSA’s list of top-selling brands but ranks #2 on the heat index. But many of the Arizona-only brands on the heat index don’t rank among the top-selling brands in Arizona…yet. We’ll be watching these medium-sized brands to see if savvy consumer engagement strategies translate into growing sales.
Note: If you’re curious to know what we mean by “hottest brands” or how Pioneer Intelligence measures consumer engagement, check out their methodology (as a bonus, you’ll see the top ten hottest cannabis brands in the country).
But now, without further ado, here’s the Arizona-only brands that are successfully generating web traffic, social media popularity, and stories in the press.
Pioneer Intelligence leverages data to benchmark marketing performance of consumer-facing cannabis brands. Built by a group of experienced and passionate marketers and data scientists, Pioneer helps industry stakeholders better understand how communications strategies resonate with audiences. In early 2021, Pioneer launched its first products, a suite of marketing performance scorecards. These reports present actionable data across three focus areas: social media, earned media and web-related activities. More information can be found on the company’s website, https://pioneer.buzz.
Disclaimer: Pioneer currently has more than 621 brands in their active pool with hundreds more in their pipeline. (Pipeline brands require six months of data before being added to the active pool.) Lists of both active and pipeline brands can be found at pioneer.buzz/brands. If you would like to request your brand be tracked by Pioneer, please email [email protected].
