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Let’s be honest. We live in a competitive society and a competitive market. Everyone wants to know where they stand relative to the field and we love lists.  Sadly, most published lists are subjective, but not ours! MJ Brand Insights has created an exclusive content partnership
with Pioneer Intelligence to back the rankings with real data.

Pioneer Intelligence is a marketing performance analytics platform, focused on the marketing activities of licensed US cannabis brands that sell cannabis products with a minimum of 0.3% THC. Pioneer measures awareness and consumer engagement. They analyze over 275 data points across three main pillars: social media, earned media, and website activity. They then create values for each brand, using a 1000-point proprietary scoring system. 

Today’s list is based on their HEAT scoring, which prioritizes relative change over absolute value. In simpler terms, if a brand gained a large number of social media followers over the measured period of time that would improve their score more than a company who had a larger number of existing followers but little relative change. But that’s only one of the data points collected on each brand.

In this week’s hottest brands list, we look at Oregon over the entirety of 2020 and across all product categories. In 2020, sales of cannabis in Oregon reached over $1 billion, which was a 40% increase over the prior year. So these brands are hot in a hot market.

Pioneer Intelligence 2020 Hottest OR brands

At the top of the list is Select Brands with the only HEAT score over 700. No big surprise here as Select has been a dominant brand on the west coast for several years. And they clearly have an impassioned team–Select was named one of the Top 100 best places to work by Oregon Business Magazine for both 2018 and 2019.

A contributor to Select’s ranking was their earned media coverage due to the announcement of their acquisition by MSO powerhouse Curaleaf in early 2020. This also fueled the brand’s expansion to more states, making Select a leading horse in the race to build the first national cannabis brand.

Other well-known brands making the case for national recognition include  Wyld Canna, Wana Brands, Cookies, and Incredibles. Arguably one of the most down-to-earth celebrity cannabis companies, Belushi’s Farms made a strong showing at #6.

Old Pal Preroll

Collectively, the top ten brands reflect the wide array of available products, including flower, pre-rolls, gummies and premium chocolate.  And the list reflects an equally wide array of marketing strategies. For example, Old Pal messages the communal aspects of cannabis while being Covid-smart by offering their 2-pack prerolls.

Chalice Farms

And Chalice Farms has created a clever campaign to capture the romantics with their Valentine’s Day promotions.

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].

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