Summary

• Cannaray are a CBD supplements business. At the time, CBD was an emerging category with a highly restrictive digital environment that prohibited the advertising of CBD brands
• TV was an attractive marketing channel for Cannaray as it gave the business more space to convey its brand message to customers whilst remaining within the regulatory guidelines
• Channel 4 Ventures invested £2.5m into Cannaray to promote its CBD product range, which resulted in 4x growth in sales and new listings at key retailers Holland & Barrett, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s

Objectives

CBD food supplements were an emerging wellness trend, but consumers were unclear if they were safe or legal to use, which limited growth. Consumption typically happened in private at home, and many consumers had never seen CBD oil drops being used. Although many CBD products were available in the UK, there were no brands with significant spontaneous awareness.

As a product category, CBD is regulated in the UK as a food supplement and no medical claims can be made, despite many people using it for sleep, stress and anxiety based on word-of-mouth recommendation and online information sites. CBD advertising was not permitted through Google, Meta or Amazon advertising platforms, limiting the ability of start-up and scale-up brands to access those awareness and trial-driving channels.

Cannaray conducted research to understand the triggers and barriers to consumption, and how to introduce CBD to people in a high-impact way while navigating the regulatory and media landscape barriers. TV, due to its longer form format, gave Cannaray greater space to convey its brand message to the audience whilst remaining within the regulatory guidelines.

Cannaray’s objectives were to:

• Increase brand awareness of Cannaray to drive new customers and revenue growth

• Raise awareness of CBD as a category and normalise its consumption 

• Leverage growth in awareness to expand retail listings to key retailers in the supplements category

TV Strategy

Given the regulatory restrictions around CBD claims, Cannaray knew that it had to “show, not tell” when it came to normalising CBD consumption. It chose TV as a proven way of normalising categories through social proofing, with the scale to step-change brand penetration.

It partnered with Cannaray superfan and Brand Ambassador Claudia Winkleman to show her leading a tongue-in-cheek CBD revolution and using Cannaray CBD oil drops at home.

Results

• Revenue quadrupled in the first 6 months of TV
• Cannaray leveraged the media exposure to expand retailer listings, launching in Holland & Barrett, Morrisons & Sainsbury's
• Cannaray awarded Best Product Launch 2022 at the Holland & Barrett conference