It is official! We have a winner of the ARCannabis Cup

If you follow retailer ARCannabis on Instagram, you most likely know about the huge hype they created with their ARCannabis Cup.

But how did they create all this fuss? Who have consumers crowned the ARCannabis Cup champion? And how successful was the tournament actually?

To answer these questions, we spoke to Matt Chernoff, the regional manager and operator of ARCannabis’ social media.

But first let’s take a look at how the ARCannabis Cup worked.

The virtual cannabis cup

In case you haven’t read our first article about the ARCannabis Cup, here is a short summary of the concept and implementation of the idea by ARCannabis.

The ARCannabis Cup started on March 1, 2021 and was Vancouver’s first virtual cannabis cup. It was “virtual” because it was created entirely through AR’s Instagram story. So everyone could participate by simply looking at their stories and voting for their favorite producer.

The competition began with a total of 96 licensed producers (LPs) and was set up as a tournament bracket system. This means that every day two of the producers competed against each other until only one of the 96 was left.

As you can see in the picture below, Dunn Cannabis and blkmkt were the two LPs that made it to the final of the ARCannabis Cup.

Image provided by ARCannabis

“It blew us away”

The ARCannabis Cup gained more appeal than its creators Matt Chernoff and Aaron Sinnnathamby ever expected.

Whenever you visited ARCannabis’ Instagram during the Cup, you could find that their stories were imbued with stocks about stocks from consumers, brands and their employees asking people to vote for them in the daily match. Some people even received direct messages from the licensed producers asking them to vote for them.

This shows us that the team at ARCannabis has simply mastered the creation of a virtual event that fully engages both consumers and licensed producers of the recreational cannabis market.

“We were blown away looking at the data at the end of the mug,” laughed Matt Chernoff when I asked his thoughts on their success.

And the data actually speak for themselves:

• Your Instagram account won 1,716 new followers

• they received A total of 28,941 votes About what 3.504 were only for that final.

• And through the length of the cup, they have won overall 768,386 impressions.

Part of the reason for the huge engagement was that Matt and Aaron put up a cup review show every Monday to exaggerate the voters. In their show, the two checked the previous round, revealed the match-ups for the next round and exchanged small hype videos from the licensed producers.

Overall, they produced 8 retrospective shows and shared over 17 different hype videos from brands like Qwest, Natural History, Royal City Cannabis, Dunn Cannabis, and others.

The last of her episodes for 2021 was released on April 26th. In this final recap, Matt and Aaron summed up the entire trophy and thanked everyone for their support.

Click the image below to see the final summary.

Image provided by ARCannabis

A collective success

In the last recap, Matt and Aaron shared that besides all of the impressions they’ve received on their social media, there is something else they are really proud of.

What excited them the most was the support and positive feedback they had received from the cannabis community.

“For us, the big advantage of the entire tournament was that we brought the community back together. I know it sounds silly, but one of our old slogans we joke about is, “It’s not about your cannabis. It’s not about my cannabis. It’s ARCannabis, ”Chernoff grinned during our interview.

In his opinion, many companies in the regulated market have been largely self-focused to keep up with any new rules that came with legalization and the outbreak of the pandemic. However, thanks to the ARCannabis Cup, Matt saw the entire community, whether it was other retailers, producers, or consumers, who let go of their cautious egos and instead worked together and had fun as a community again.

“I even had people on the east coast who informed me about the ARCannabis Cup. It was amazing. I literally have several pharmacies and they all tell us, “It was great! Thank you for having fun in the industry. It’s all we needed ‘And that’s what I mean by the community. We brought everyone together and we all remembered how to get back to having fun in the industry, ”said Matt.

The winner of the ARCannabis Cup

But for all the fun, it was still a competition and there could only be one winner.

So here you are, the winner and very first champion of the ARCannabis Cup …

Image provided by ARCannabis

blkmkt

As the winner of the ARCannabis Cup, blkmkt won special features such as:

• Posters permanently displayed in any ARCannabis store for credit.
• The 2021 Cannabis Cup logo on the price tags.
• Have your name engraved on the ARCannabis Cup.
• And boast rights as the first ever ARCannabis Cup champion.

As someone who works in the industry, I think blkmkt deserved this win very much. The brand is known for making high quality buds that are usually thickly covered in trichomes and well packaged in a black jar. What budtenders and consumers love about them too is that they list their terpene percentages on their products to let their consumers know about the compounds that brought their experience to life.

Here’s a little fun fact too: in his very first roundup, Aaron mentioned that he would see blkmkt as one of the brands that would make it well into the tournament. Well, guess what, Aaron!

I’m looking forward to

Now that the ARCannabis team knows about the huge impact of their ARCannabis Cup, they are already excited to start their next competition in 2022.

Matt and Aaron have already told me what to expect from the next trophy and it seems like they are ready to take their tournament to the next level.

If you’re curious about ARCannabis and how they built their business, you can also check out our last article on ARCannabis.

I’m looking forward to reporting on the ARCannabis Cup 2022.
But until then, we want to all do our best to keep up the hype and keep supporting the cannabis community.

Two ideas how you can support the community right away would be to show ARCannabis some love on its social networks or let us know how you liked the article. You can share your thoughts either in the comments section below or by sending a message to Instagram or Facebook.