How Tilray Brands turned real-time insight into faster, bolder brand decisions

The Challenge‍

Tilray Brands is a global lifestyle company with a portfolio of beverage and CPG brands, including Manitoba Harvest, SweetWater Brewing Company, Montauk Brewing Company, Breckenridge Distillery. Operating across many consumer groups and geographies, the team has to achieve both national and local relevance, and evolve fast-moving brands without alienating the loyal consumers who built them. Traditional research was too slow and too costly to support the real-time, cross-functional decisions the business now runs on.

The Approach‍

With Ideally, Tilray’s marketing team can run category-grounded tests, get consumer feedback overnight and review the data first hand rather than waiting on a third party. The Tilray Wellness team put it to work in two ways:

Innovation. Evolving Manitoba Harvest from a hemp-food brand toward superfoods, they used a series of tests to find the exact balance between creative distinction and brand harmony, then zoomed into the geographies where the brand over-indexes to confirm the new range would signal something fresh without confusing existing buyers.

Cultural moments. Ahead of its Dry January seasonal campaign, the team used Ideally to gauge how consumers view Hemp Derived Delta-9 THC beverages as an alcohol supplement and which audiences were most open, then took that insight to media outlets, earning a place in the conversation and strategic product placement at the right time.

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Why Ideally

Speed and a low barrier to entry are more efficient for marketers than expensive, weeks-long A&U studies. Every test sits on an always-on category foundation built, maintained, and run by senior researchers, so marketers get agency-grade rigor with real-time answers and can self-serve the insight overnight instead of waiting weeks for a report.

Results‍

→ Evolved Manitoba Harvest toward a superfood positioning while protecting its loyal core consumer.

→ A&U approach was modernized through ongoing, rapid studies.

→ The business shifted to an always on insight system, keeping them ahead of emerging trends to stay ahead of the game.