This month Pioneer Intelligence, a marketing analytics company that measures the brand awareness and engagement of consumer-facing cannabis brands, shared its data with CelebStoner to produce a list of the Hottest Celebrity Cannabis Brands. Some insights on Pioneer’s methodology can be found down below, but first, a few highlights from the list.
Houseplant - the flower, prerolls and home accessories company - grabbed the top spot on the ranking. In late June, the brand enjoyed a surge of attention thanks to a short video published by brand co-founder Seth Rogen. In the eye-catching clip, Rogen twists a joint with long fingernails painted to match a newly released ashtray design.
Following right behind Houseplant, Viola Brands (No. 2) is the brainchild of former NBA star Al Harrington. Viola’s joined by three other Black-owned brands: Khalifa Kush (No. 5) and Tical (No. 8) from rappers Wiz Khalifa and Method Man respectively; and Primitiv Group (No. 7) from former NFL players Calvin Johnson Jr. and Rob Sims. During the month, Khalifa’s California-based brand launched in Michigan, Tical celebrated its second anniversary and Michigan-based Primitiv garnered attention when Johnson Jr. tackled some taboo subjects during an appearance on Jalen Rose’s Renaissance Man podcast.
The rest of the chart features one of the original celebrity cannabis brands, Willie’s Reserve (No. 9), from music superstar and longtime cannabis advocate Willie Nelson (No. 9) as well as Garcia Hand Picked (No. 4) from the family of Jerry Garcia, the late Grateful Dead guitarist; Belushi’s Farm (No, 3) from Blues Brother Jim Belushi; Forbidden Flowers (No. 6) from actress Bela Thorne, the only woman-owned company on the chart; and Lemonnade, the mostly flower brand co-founded by rapper Berner of Cookies fame.
A note for curious readers as to why Lemonnade made the list but Cookies did not: While Cookies remains a very hot brand, its Overall Index score is dragged down because its primary Instagram account is currently down.
About Pioneer Intelligence
These scores and rankings are based on Pioneer Intelligence's research that tracks brand awareness and engagement across social media, earned media and web activities. At present, there are 705 licensed THC wholesalers in Pioneer’s active brand pool. It’s from this group that CelebStoner selected a list of celebrity brands from which the Hottest Celebrity Brand list was created.
This is not a sales chart. "Pioneer Intelligence explores marketing performance of licensed U.S. cannabis brands," the company explains in its Marketing Performance Scorecard. "Our database grows weekly by more than 100,000 data points. At the conclusion of our designated Monday to Sunday week, we compare brand performance on each of 200 plus weighted features. Through dimension reduction, we produce pillar and sub pillar scores that are normalized onto a 1000-point scale. These scores are presented as ranks and equivalent percentiles."
The Methodology section notes: "In terms of its composition, Pioneer’s Overall Index Score values social media and web activity performance closely. Earned media’s value is less."
Brands with celebrity ownership, investments or involvement qualify for this chart. Pioneer follows more than 30 celebrity cannabis brands.
"We're excited to be working with Pioneer Intelligence, who've been doing this since 2019," says CelebStoner publisher Steve Bloom.
Here are the Hottest Celebrity Cannabis Brands scores based on performance in June:
1. Houseplant - 637.5
2. Viola Brands - 634.3
3. Belushi's Farm - 621.8
4, Garcia Hand Picked - 621.3
5. Khalifa Kush - 620.8
6. Forbidden Flowers - 607.3
7. Primitiv Group - 597.0
8. Tical - 581
9. Willie's Reserve - 579.9
10. Lemonnade – 526.8
