This week’s Top Ten Hottest list, powered by Pioneer Intelligence’s consumer engagement Heat Index, rankings, looks at Colorado-only brands for the month of February across all three marketing pillars (social media, earned media, and website activity) and all categories.
Pioneer measures consumer engagement of over 575 cannabis brands in the market by analyzing over 275 data points across three pillars of marketing activity. More information on Pioneer Intelligence, including the brands they track and their methodology can be found here.
On November 1, 2019, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed legislation allowing investment into licensed cannabis businesses from entities outside Colorado. This led to a flurry of acquisition activity by multi-state operators moving to secure a footprint in the state that was first to pass adult-use cannabis legislation. The acquisitions and access to out-of-state capital facilitated the export of legacy brands such as Incredibles, acquired by Green Thumb Industries, to multiple markets.
This week we’re looking at Pioneer data to see which homegrown Colorado brands are winning consumers and potentially ready to escape the gravity of a single-state market. Ironically, Escape Artists (#6) landed on this list.
Some of these brands strongly identify as Colorado brands. Colorado Harvest Company’s name says it all, and CannaPunch has incorporated the iconic Colorado flag symbol into its logo. Seed & Smith, a vertically-integrated retailer focused on premium small-batch cannabis products took the top spot. But these are all brands to watch. There’s a strong argument that as we start seeing national brands, many consumers will still choose to shop local, prefer small batch premium products over mass-produced flower, want to have greater transparency into the company, and feel a kinship with the people behind their buzz.
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 550 brands in their active pool with another 250 brands 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].
