What makes a great cannabis brand?

Its often not what you think

Many pundits speak to the importance of cannabis brand building but proffer little insight into how to tell if you have a strong brand. To paraphrase the maxim: you can’t build what you can’t measure.

Great brands deliver compelling market differentiation that can translate into long-term corporate profitability.

Measuring brand value is not easy and marketers should be mindful of using simplistic metrics.  For example, neither having a large market share (easily achieved by price cuts) nor offering many SKUs (you can flood the market with product) is indicative of brand strength.

I like to measure ‘brand power’ or the incremental advantage (or deficit) of a brand relative to its category peers. Brand power is shown across two dimensions: 1) an ability to achieve a higher than category average price premium and; 2) a brand’s ability to maintain awareness, shelf listings and loyalty relative to average category spending & media levels.  

Understanding these two dimensions is part data collection, part competitive intel. and part analysis. It takes time but the effort is well worth the strategic and financial rewards.

#brands #marketing #brandimage #brandvalue