How Important is Cannabis Education?
Published March 10, 2020
Since cannabis legalization in 2018, cannabis advertisements have slowly crept into Canadian media across the country. Some of them are absolutely necessary: government ads clarifying the rules around legal cannabis, MADD-style “Don’t Drive High” public service announcements, etc. However, there has been a huge emphasis on cannabis education in branded ads from licensed producers. These ads have tried to teach users how to roll a joint, how to select a cannabis strain, which formats are available, and other topics. Is this information actually useful for cannabis users? Should licensed producers focus on making their ads more similar to other consumer packaged goods?
Why is there so much educational messaging out there?
The regulatory environment created by Bill C-45 does not currently allow brand messaging that strays too far from educational messages. Brands are prohibited from mentioning price or distribution. They also can't associate the brand with positive or negative emotions related to glamour, recreation, excitement, vitality, risk, or daring. Even the most liberal in-house lawyer would have a hard time condoning a cannabis ad that looked like a typical beer, pop, or cereal commercial within the current regulations.
How much do consumers know about cannabis?
The prevalence of educational messaging suggests that the average Canadian doesn’t have a lot of knowledge or awareness about cannabis. In order to see if educational messaging is worthwhile, we looked into what Canadians know about the cannabis they consume.
When asked what type of strain (indica, sativa, hybrid, or CBD-forward) they last consumed, almost half of Canadians had no idea. This could result from users not having access to that information, or not caring about it.
This graph shows the breakdown of how cannabis users identified the most recent strain they consumed, from October 2018 to February 2020. Cannatrack data, n=16,780
We also ask users about their knowledge of legal cannabis brands. About 40% of cannabis consumers were not aware of any legal cannabis brands from a list of over 100. Over 55% of cannabis users were not able to identify which cannabis brands they had ever tried. Also, 60% didn’t know which brands they had consumed in the past 4 weeks. These metrics suggest a huge lack of brand knowledge across the market, despite significant advertising spend by large brands.
This graph shows the percentage of cannabis users who report not knowing any legal cannabis brands and don't know the brand(s) of cannabis they've ever tried or consumed in the past 4 weeks, between October 2018 and February 2020. Cannatrack data, n=16,780
How much does consumers’ knowledge affect their purchase decisions?
In addition to asking cannabis consumers about their consumption and purchases, we also ask them how they felt about their purchase. Almost 70% of cannabis buyers are somewhat or very confident in their purchase. This is surprising given the number of consumers who report not knowing the type of strain they consumed or brands they’ve tried. Less than 10% of cannabis buyers report any kind of uncertainty about their purchase.
One might think that this confidence is driven by heavy cannabis users. It is generally true that they are more confident in their purchases. Almost half report that they are very confident and another third are somewhat confident in their cannabis purchase. Moderate and light consumers are more likely to be somewhat confident or neutral, but even they feel generally confident about their purchases. Light users feel neutral or more confident about their cannabis purchases almost 70% of the time.
Cannabis purchase confidence by cannabis consumption frequency. This data represents the period between October 2018 and February 2020. Cannatrack, n=16,780
Is educational messaging helping the cannabis market overall?
We’ve already seen that overall incidence rates are flat, so educational messaging is clearly not encouraging the “canna-curious” to try cannabis for the first time. Among cannabis users, product and brand knowledge is mixed at best. However, this has no effect on how people feel about their cannabis purchases. This suggests that education won’t make consumers more confident about their cannabis purchases, because they already feel very good about them. On the branding side, the lack of knowledge and awareness suggests that the race for the top cannabis brand is far from over. Brand-forward advertising instead of educational messaging could make a huge difference in both awareness and sales.
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