The Secret Playbook of Cannabis Brands That Win

The first wave of cannabis legalisation in Canada, brands played defence. They adjusted to regulations, sidestepped stigma, and waited to see what everyone else was doing. Those that endured built something stronger. They turned compliance into leverage, created demand ahead of the market, and cemented themselves in culture.

Sister Merci has been in this fight from the beginning - both in Canada and the US cannabis scene. We’ve worked with over 150 brands in this period, alongside brands that refused to disappear, testing what works, discarding what doesn’t, and proving that momentum - not trends - decides which brands last. We’ve also seen, from the inside, what a failure to grasp the game early enough can lead to: wasted time, money, and effort.

Despite generating over $8.3 billion for Canada’s GDP in 2024, the legal cannabis industry is cash-strapped due to market oversaturation, high taxes, strict regulations, and fierce competition from the illicit market. Profit margins are razor-thin as companies slash prices to stay competitive, while excessive red tape and operational missteps - like overexpansion and leadership shakeups - drain resources. The money is flowing in, but much of it is eaten up by taxes, compliance costs, and unsustainable business strategies, leaving many cannabis companies in financial distress to the point that marketing starts to feel optional!

Unfortunately, the winners and losers in this industry are often separated by how much effort was made to connect with distributors, retailers, budtenders AND, most importantly - consumers.

After six years in the fight, the truth is obvious: Presence cements brands in modern cannabis culture. Pressure beats budgets. Demand is created by budtenders (yes, of course), but also by maximising every compliant touchpoint available to them in order to fully enrol customers. And mostly, we have learned enough about how cannabis marketing truly works that some of our hard-earned experiments have created extraordinary value for our clients.

Some might call this the secret playbook of winning cannabis brands; whatever you call this, every insight here was hard won through years of research, measurement and experimentation.

1. Visibility Moves the Market

In cannabis, success isn’t about just making products available - it’s about making them impossible to ignore. The most successful brands maximise both mental availability (how easily they come to mind when a customer is purchasing) and physical availability (how easy they are to buy). But too many brands stop at getting on dispensary shelves, assuming visibility ends there.

It doesn’t.

Inside many dispensaries, brands disappear. The rise of digital menus means customers are often picking products from an impossibly slow scrolling list, making decisions based on THC and price alone. First-time buyers default to best-sellers. Seasoned consumers stick to what they know. If a brand doesn’t demand attention, it’s forgotten before the customer even leaves.

This paradox is especially frustrating when considering how fiercely the industry has fought for better packaging regulations. Brands invest heavily in design, materials, and messaging to make their products stand out, only for the final moment of decision-making to be reduced to a sterile, text-based menu. How does that make sense? The last and most crucial consumer touchpoint is often where brands exert the least control.

However, brands that understand the power of visibility have demonstrated that it can be a game-changer. Take SHRED, for example, a brand that quickly managed to dominate the, at the time, less desirable pre-milled cannabis market. It succeeded by being unmissable - its bold name, loud packaging, and straightforward messaging cut through the noise. Instead of blending into the corporate sameness of many cannabis brands, SHRED embraced a distinct, attention-grabbing identity. The results spoke for themselves: SHRED captured a 14.4% market share, surpassing competitors with deeper trade ties and larger portfolios. Visibility fuelled trials, and those trials turned into habitual purchases.

SHRED’s success is not an isolated case. It is backed by data that underscores the importance of brand recognition at retail. According to Headset, the number of cannabis brands in Canada has exploded by 369% since 2020. However, the flood of new entrants has led to increased competition, and as a result, median sales per brand have plummeted by 70% in the same period. Furthermore, the market is consolidating: In 2020, the top 21% of brands captured 80% of total sales, but by 2023, just 12% of brands controlled that same market share.

The key takeaway from this data is clear: visibility isn’t optional in such a crowded category. It’s the deciding factor between growth and irrelevance. A product that goes unmentioned by a budtender is unlikely to sell. A brand listed on a menu without an image is easily overlooked. In a market defined by price compression, shrinking margins, and fierce competition, visibility is a survival strategy.

For cannabis brands looking to build staying power, mental and physical availability must work hand in hand. Those who fail to prioritise visibility will continue fighting over an increasingly saturated market, while those who master it will shape the future of the industry.

2. Budtenders Quit. Customers Stay.

Retail training programs come and go. Staff turns over. Messaging gets diluted. Brands that depend on in-store advocacy take on unnecessary risk. If you were operating a McDonalds franchise, would you cut all your advertising because the person taking your order is expected to know your entire inventory (past, present and future) by heart? No, that would be ridiculous.

BZAM took a different route with a dynamic in-store activation - the THC Express, a full-scale installation that recreated a Toronto subway experience inside the busiest dispensary in Canada. Salvaged subway seats, industrial poster frames, rolling stations, and graffiti-styled ad placements transformed a retail interaction into an immersive event. Customers stopped out of curiosity and stayed because the experience was designed to feel real.

Another great example of mental availability and the power that comes from a brand activation that makes it impossible to ignore if you are in the space. And the ROI is there - the activation drove a 27% increase in sales for featured products and a 32% QR scan rate across all engagement points. Inventory depletion at activation sites confirmed that the demand wasn’t artificial - it carried through to purchasing behaviour. Budtenders took note, but they weren’t the reason it worked. Customers drove the momentum.

Takeaway: A campaign that only functions when staff pushes it is not a campaign. It’s a stopgap. Hype fades. True engagement sticks, and can reach far beyond the physical engagement and drive social conversation and engagement

3. Creativity is a Cannabis Multiplier

Yes, we know cannabis marketing budgets in 2025 are lean, and will stay lean for a while. Which is no excuse for the power of creativity in the marketplace. A lot of brands funnel their marketing money into poorly constructed 'data deals,' organic social posting, and spray-and-pray budtender sampling. Another common strategy we see is to ignore marketing all together and just launch a new product every six weeks, ride the initial spike, and repeat. It’s a cycle that teaches the wrong lesson - brands assume they need endless product drops to maintain momentum, while also teaching consumers that you are a 'sometimes, it depends' brand.

The truth? The biggest multiplier effect in cannabis marketing isn’t a larger ad budget or more drops clogging up the product development cycle. It’s creative that earns attention. When people talk for you, the Cannabis Act is no longer a barrier. Our philosophy of 'creative for earned potential' is built on this concept - do things that get attention and makes the brand famous. When a campaign sparks conversation, it moves straight into culture.

We proved this with our campaign for UP Cannabis. The brand was in trouble. Early product quality issues had eroded trust, and legal restrictions meant we couldn’t just flood the market with traditional advertising to repair the damage. Instead, we designed a campaign that got people talking before we ever asked them to buy.

UP had something no other brand could claim: an authentic connection to The Tragically Hip. But that story had been told before. We needed a fresh way to reintroduce the brand, one that didn’t rely on nostalgia alone. Instead of a standard ad campaign, we turned The Hip’s legacy into an interactive experience.

At dispensaries, we installed listening stations where customers could hear unreleased live tracks. Packaging was redesigned with deep-cut references that only true fans would recognise. In-store activations let consumers engage with Hip memorabilia - an approach that felt less like cannabis marketing and more like a music fan experience. The key was intrigue. We didn’t push the product first. We made people want to explore the brand on their own.

The result? UP saw a resurgence in demand. OCS orders jumped, and dispensary partners reported increased sell-through rates. Social chatter around the campaign was entirely organic - people weren’t just buying UP, they were talking about it. And in cannabis, that’s the real win.

Takeaway: Big budgets don’t create impact. Bold ideas do. The best cannabis marketing doesn’t just follow compliance - it finds the cracks where conversation can spread.

4. Core cannabis audiences are saturated

For years, cannabis brands funnelled millions into mass-market campaigns, hoping mainstream exposure would turn non-users into loyal customers. It didn’t work. Growth stalled. The industry pivoted, doubling down on its most reliable audience: heavy consumers. Now, marketing dollars chase the same buyers in endless cycles of discounts and new product drops.

This isn’t saturation. It’s stagnation. The biggest cannabis brands today are, more or less, the same ones leading five years ago. The rare new success stories are generally offshoots of established players. The next wave of growth won’t come from fighting for the same consumers: it will come from growing the audience itself. We have officially come full circle and growth must come from finding new audiences.

Baby Boomers fought for legalization, but they never fully embraced cannabis as part of their daily lives. Many still see it as a lifestyle choice, not a therapeutic tool. That perception isn’t changing fast enough to turn interest into action. Until it does, the industry will keep cannibalizing itself instead of growing.

The Cannabis Media Council (CMC)’s 'I’m High Right Now' campaign cracked open this barrier. CMC exists to normalise cannabis through responsible, mainstream advertising. Its mission is to shift public perception, open new media channels for cannabis brands, and advocate for smarter, stigma-free marketing practices. By placing the first advertisement in Vanity Fair - inside culture rather than on the fringes - it reached millions of consumers who had never been directly marketed to before. It forced reconsideration. Brands that aligned with that shift benefited long after the campaign ended.

Takeaway: The cannabis market isn’t full. It’s just full of the same people. The brands that figure out how to reach new consumers - without losing their core - will own the next five years. The rest will keep selling to the same crowded room, watching their margins shrink.

5. The Fastest Way to Kill a Bad Product is With Great Marketing

A campaign can get attention. It can fill carts, move units, make a brand feel bigger than it is. But no marketing in the world can fix a bad product.

The fastest way to kill a bad brand? Get people to try it. The wrong kind of attention spreads faster than the right kind. And in cannabis, nothing moves quicker than consumer disappointment.

THC inflation, misleading claims, inconsistent quality - consumers have seen it all. They compare notes, call out brands, and when they feel deceived, they don’t just leave the product. They leave the legal market entirely. A recent Health Canada report confirmed what insiders already knew: THC shopping is rampant. Some brands treat labels like ad space, inflating numbers to compete. It’s short-term thinking that costs long-term trust.

The solution isn’t complicated: transparency, consistency, differentiation. The brands that own their product reality - not just their marketing - win.

Sister Merci doesn’t just build brands. We push the industry forward. We’ve been early advocates for higher standards, lending our creative and strategic weight to NCIA, CMC, CSAC, and Radicle Femmes to help shape the future of cannabis marketing.
Takeaway: The brands that last back it up with quality, transparency, and trust.

6. Brands That Listen, Win

The cannabis industry isn’t shaped by top-down marketing strategies or boardroom decisions. It’s built in real-time, through conversations happening in dispensaries, online forums, and social networks. While we agree that marketing cannabis is like ANY CPG brand, requires a consistent application of a defined brand strategy aimed at appealing to a specific audience, the cannabis industry is still community driven.

The most active cannabis audience is heavily invested in cannabis brands - they dissect them, compare them, and call out inconsistencies. Budtenders don’t just recommend brands, they shape demand. Every day, across platforms like Reddit, thousands of cannabis users weigh in on what’s worth their money and what isn’t. Brands that listen to these conversations thrive. Those that ignore them, don’t.

Our research into Canada’s top cannabis subreddits revealed an undeniable truth: trust has overtaken price as the key factor in purchasing decisions. Consumers once chased discounts, but today, 40% say trust is the biggest reason they avoid certain brands. THC inflation, misleading claims, and inconsistent quality have eroded confidence. And once a brand loses credibility, it’s nearly impossible to regain.

This trust gap extends beyond consumers, and trust gaps are very likely to impact budtender recommendations, the industry’s frontline educators, who are just as active in community spaces as cannabis enthusiasts. One-third of surveyed Redditors work in cannabis retail, turning to these forums for unfiltered industry news and product discussions. Their influence stretches beyond personal opinions, directly shaping what sells in dispensaries. If a brand misleads, they know. If a product underdelivers, they remember. And when budtenders lose faith, their recommendations shift elsewhere.

Some brands try to fight this reality, planting fake reviews or manipulating online sentiment. But 58% of Redditors believe brands are posing as consumers, and they spot astroturfing instantly. Manufactured hype doesn’t work. Authenticity does.

The next five years in cannabis won’t be won by the loudest brands or the biggest ad budgets. They’ll be won by brands that listen, adapt, and evolve alongside their audience. The market will never be smaller than it is today. Growth belongs to those willing to engage in the conversation.

Takeaway: The question isn’t whether consumers are talking about you. It’s whether you’re listening.

The Next Five Years Will Define Cannabis Branding - Come Experiment With Us

Sister Merci has spent six years testing what creates pressure and what creates noise. The strategy is fluid; the principle is fixed. Brand momentum will decide which companies survive. The brands that wait for consumer adoption will not see it. The brands that rely on dispensary staff will fade. The brands that build their own market gravity will control their future.

The next five years will separate the brands that lead from the ones that disappear. We’re building brands that last. If you're ready to push, come experiment with us.