Kiva states they are the “#1 edibles brand in the country.” Wyld claims to be “The Nation’s Leader in Cannabis Edibles.” And Wana Brands, taking a humbler claim, states they are “Colorado’s #1 Infused Product Company.” So which one is the best? We can’t (won’t) say, but we can tell you which brands are “hottest.” To be clear: We’re not measuring sales–we’re measuring consumer engagement. The brands on these lists are “hot” because they’re getting attention–either via social media, earned media, or traffic on their own websites.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been diving into unique slices of the market, like Colorado MSOs or California pre-rolls, or social media activity for Nevada edibles brands. In this week’s edition of the TTH, we look at all brands across the edibles category in all states across all of the Pioneer Intel media pillars (social, earned, and web) for the month of April. The goal is to see which brands created the most consumer engagement during one of the top sales months for our industry. (For more on Pioneer’s methodology, visit their website.)
Select Cannabis and Curaleaf take the top two spots and I’m starting to think that the company is run by Tom Brady–works hard, executes flawlessly, and has a lot of talent, but sometimes it’s a little tiring to see him always win. There are a number of additional interesting things to note here:
California-based Kiva Confections and Colorado-based Wana Brands land in the third and fourth positions, respectively. Both privately held and early market movers launched in 2010, these are both seasoned veterans in the market.
As a sign of things to come, we see our first NY-based brand on our TTH list with Etain Health rounding out the top five and the highest ranked single-state brand on the list this week.
Two of the top five are women-led businesses (Wana & Etain).
In summation, these brands are doing marketing, PR, and consumer engagement right. In our next Pioneer article, we’ll be digging a little deeper into the how and what of that.
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].
