Recently, Friendly’s, the 80 year old east coast, family-friendly restaurant known for its ice cream creations and flavors, along with signature sandwiches, burgers and other main courses, hired a new advertising agency. The new advertising agency will help Friendly’s transform itself into a modern, fast-casual restaurant that is more in touch with our “on-the-go’ dining behaviors. The agency’s task is to revitalize an aging brand.

Founded in 1935, Friendly’s became a place to take the kids where adults could enjoy a nice, substantial meal at a fair price. Since 1935 dining out with kids changed. Fast food brands offer family-friendly environments. Frozen treats chains offer ice creams and frozen yogurts. Entertainment dining options (i.e., Chuck E Cheese) make dining fun. Casual dining restaurants offer kids’ menus. People are having fewer children. Now, Friendly’s finds itself in a shrinking market with a shrinking need with a shrinking customer base. 

To make matters worse, Friendly’s fell into a vicious cycle of being bought and sold. Friendly’s has had numerous owners (Hershey’s, Sun Capital, Dean Foods), none of which were able to get Friendly’s back in sync with customers. And, as part of this vicious vortex, Friendly’s filed for bankruptcy twice. Also, Friendly’s closed numerous stores up-and-down the Eastern Seaboard. 

In early 2021, Amici Partners Group, an investor group with expertise in restaurants, purchased Friendly’s. Amici Partners Group is affiliated with BRIX Holdings, owner of RedBrick Pizza Kitchen Café, Souper Salad, Red Mango Yogurt Café Smoothie and Juice Bar, and other restaurant chain brands.

Friendly’s describes itself as “… an iconic brand offering everyday value, full-service … with great tasting food and ice cream creations.” Now, Friendly’s wants to be a player in “on demand dining” while keeping its essence as a joyful, fun place to eat with fair prices and great service. According to recent press releases, Friendly’s wants to deliver a revitalized brand experience in a fast casual, take out, grab-and-go digital dining world.

This will be a challenge. But, Friendly’s can be revitalized. 

Friendly’s has a foundation that is relevant in any age. The key will be to modernize its provenance without completely discarding the brand’s inherent, powerful values. Sure, Friendly’s has been in trouble over its eight decades. But, Friendly’s heritage provides an enduring fundamental core. 

Legacies can actually be liberating if managed properly.

However, brand revitalization is more complex than hiring an advertising agency. Successful brand revitalization requires a disciplined adherence to six basic rules. 

The six rules for brand revitalization are:

1. Refocus the Organization
2. Restore Brand Relevance
3. Reinvent the Brand Experience
4. Reinforce a Results Culture
5. Rebuild Brand Trust
6. Realize Global Alignment (if a global brand)

Refocus the organization around financial discipline, operational excellence, leadership marketing and the brand’s purpose.

Friendly’s is familiar with this first rule. Friendly’s has a deep-rooted ethic dedicated to growth and operational excellence. 

According to an online archive from its Hershey-owned days (1999), Friendly’s believed success would be based on its ability to: “Achieve profitable growth by leveraging Friendly’s brand strengths and heritage, while utilizing franchising as a key growth initiative designed to fully penetrate identified opportunity markets,” 

Financial discipline means getting back to profitability: stop the bleeding, eliminate waste, improve productivity. Friendly’s already endured massive store closings. Friendly’s emerged from two bankruptcies. Cost cutting alone should not be the only solution. There may not be anything left to cut. 

Operational excellence means delighting customers with a branded experience so an increasing percentage of them look forward to purchasing the brand more often. Key is achieving an efficient and effective balance between meeting customer expectations and minimizing waste. Friendly’s already understands this. One of its guiding principles was Operations Excellence: “Consistently achieve operations excellence – 100% guest satisfaction, 100% of the time… taking great care of our guests, no matter what it takes.”

Leadership marketing means attracting new customers to the brand, encouraging existing customers to purchase more often and increasing customer loyalty. Operational excellence moves customers to the door; leadership marketing moves them into the store. Friendly’s move to communicate its new direction will help.

The brand’s goal – its purpose – clarifies the brand’s strategic direction. Purpose articulates the brand’s intent: its North Star. In the online archive, Friendly’s North Star was: “To be the leading casual full service restaurant/ice cream shoppe and premium retail ice cream brand in the Eastern United States…known for operations excellence, great signature foods, famous ice cream shoppe desserts, sparkling clean facilities, prompt, friendly service and dedicated, talented people… resulting in outstanding customer loyalty and consistent profitable growth.” There is a lot to work with here.

Friendly’s must focus on articulating and implementing a relevant, differentiated North Star as Friendly’s is aiming for the already crowded, competitive fast casual category.

Restore brand relevance through a thorough knowledge of the market, needs-based occasion driven market segmentation and a clear statement of the brand’s brand promise. 

There is nothing more important in brand revitalization than understanding what is relevant to today’s customers. Know your customers as if they were your BFFs. Focus on customer needs, problems and occasions. 

Articulate a compelling brand promise describing the trustworthy branded experience that will be delivered in a quality manner, each time, every time, to each and every customer. 

Friendly’s has a history of quality and integrity as expressed in its value statements: (Integrity) “Practice the highest standards of business ethics and integrity in all lines of our work.” And, (Quality) “Consistently exceed our customer’s expectations in terms of great tasting recipes, spectacular presentation, quality and value.”

The dining landscape changed around Friendly’s. Customers changed attitudes and behaviors. Friendly’s advertising will only work if there is a truly insightful understanding of how to solve for customers’ altered perceptions of family-friendly dining.

Reinvent the brand experience through innovation, renovation, focusing on the brand’s Trustworthy Brand Value, the brand’s fair value and the total brand experience. 

Innovation and renovation create news. News moves customers into the store, onto the website, onto the app. Product and service innovation and renovation are essential for enduring profitable growth. News generates frequency. News helps to change behavior.

Build trustworthiness. Customers’ new value equation is Trustworthy Brand Value: what the customer receives (functional emotional and social benefits) relative to the perceived costs (money, time and effort) multiplied by trust. Without trust, a brand has no value. To generate Trustworthy Brand Value, the brand’s inherent value must be perceived as fair value. More than price, fairness means that the benefits-per-costs are equitable and just. Friendly’s has always promised fair value. Keeping this promise will build trustworthiness.

Total brand experience defines what the brand will do for its customers. How will the brand’s people deliver the brand’s experience? How will the brand’s product and/or service deliver the brand’s experience? How will the brand’s place (store, website, app, etc.) deliver the brand’s experience? How will the brand’s price deliver the brand’s experience? How will efforts to promote the brand deliver the brand’s experience?

Friendly’s must assess its perceived trustworthiness while updating its total brand experience. Years of financial instability and store closings affect customer perceptions of trustworthiness.

Reinforce a results culture by establishing measurable milestones, through recognition and rewards and by implementing a balanced brand-business scorecard.

This should not be difficult for Friendly’s. It has a results culture provenance: “Build a results driven organization by attracting, motivating and retaining a diverse, talented and friendly workforce who takes responsibility and has a passion for great service and a keen sense of urgency for fulfilling customer needs,” as stated in the online archive.

Measurable milestones help measure progress. People need to know where the organization is headed and whether the organization is making meaningful progress in getting there.

People manage what management measures, recognizes and rewards. Leadership defines how progress will be measured. The right results must be produced in the right way for the right reasons. Recognition is visible, public and vocal praise, acclaim and tribute in front of your team, your function or the entire brand or company.

A balance brand-business scorecard is a single integrated report card with metrics that represent business strengths and weaknesses as well as brand strengths and weaknesses. Prove progress.

With its checkered history, an immediate must-do for Friendly’s is to galvanize the organization and all stakeholders into believing the brand is stable and capable. Everyone must become an adherent of the new brand direction.

Rebuild brand trust both internally and externally. 

Friendly’s has always been dedicated to building trust with investors and with the community. 

Friendly’s values and guiding principles state, “Continually increase shareholder value through annual increases in customer counts and through performance focused on return on investment, asset productivity, cash flow returns and a strengthened balance sheet.” And, “Solidify Friendly’s image by developing strong, sincere and long term community relationships.

Trust must be earned. It does happen automatically. Friendly’s has endured some troubling times. Trust is needed on the inside and the outside.

Internally, rebuild commitment through education, implementation, inspiration and evaluation. Externally, rebuild trust by following the five principles of trust building: You are what you do; Lead the debate; do not hide from it; Openness is an opportunity; Be a trustworthy source of trustworthy messages; Be a good citizen.

Trust rebuilding requires amassing Trust Capital, along with the other sources of organizational wealth: Financial Capital, Intellectual Capital, Human Capital, Climate Capital and Social Capital. Trust Capital is the customer confidence in the authority, credibility, integrity, leadership and responsibility of the organization to deliver promises of value to all stakeholders.

Realize global alignment (if global) through creating a brand framework and a Plan to Win, and through managing using a collaborative three-box model.

Friendly’s has a heritage of strategic planning for the future. As stated in a guiding principle: “Apply a strategic and planned approach to developing the Friendly’s brand both short and long term, through full-service family-oriented restaurants, retail expansion and other brand tested channels of distribution.”

A Brand Framework provides the non-negotiable guidelines and policies that define the brand’s common customer experience.  The Framework creates the brand’s boundary lines within which the brand is to be communicated and delivered. 

A Plan to Win is a one-page aligning document that articulates 8 must-do’s: the brand purpose, promise, 5 actions (people, product/service, place, price, promotion) and performance metrics. Friendly’s 9 values and guiding principles ( focus, growth, brand, operations, people, integrity, quality, shareholder, community) form a solid starting point.

A collaborative three-box model for global brands is all about shared responsibility. It requires brand personnel to coordinate, cooperate and collaborate. 

Although Friendly’s is not global, the brand must create its brand framework to guide its creativity. And, having a Plan to Win will ensure that everyone knows what to do, when to do and what it will achieve and when. Friendly’s values and guiding principles are an excellent start.

Brand rejuvenation is more than an advertising campaign. Friendly’s has a provenance that connected with customers for decades. Figuring out how to bring that core back to life in a compelling, surprising, delightful, exciting, quality manner for a new, demanding dining marketplace will require following the six rules of brand revitalization.

For several years, the business press and business books have promoted the idea of resilience. The notion of a resilient enterprise or a resilient brand has been bandied about one of the goals of business management and leadership. Resilience is now beyond a buzzword: it is a critical and desired characteristic. 

Resilience is important. The ability to recover fast has been especially important in the Covid-19 environment. Flexibility, learning on the go, elasticity are essentials for corporate and brand endurance. Toughness and grit are considered exceptional qualities for C-suite executives. 

However, the political, social, institutional and environmental challenges of the past few years show that accountability is now more important than ever. Increasingly, people are expecting businesses, their leaders and their brands to be accountable. Not only do people expect businesses, leaders and brands to justify their actions, people will hold businesses, leaders and brands accountable for those actions. Customers do not go around asking about resilience; they do focus on accountability. To be customer-centric, accountability must be prioritized.

In the recent Deloitte Global 2021 Millennial and Gen Z Survey, the researchers point out that these two cohorts expect “institutions” to “drive change on the issues that matter to them the most.” The report concludes that it is going to be imperative that businesses “take actions and be accountable for activities that will help build a more equitable, sustainable world.” According to the Survey among 14,655 Millennials (b. 1983 – 1994) and 8,272 Gen Zs (b. 1995 – 2003), “… young adults are pushing for accountability … on issues including racism, the environment and wealth inequality.”

Brands are at their best and are most compelling when they align with the values, concerns and hopes of their customers and prospective customers. In our changing world, there is a growing and vocal audience expecting brands to stand up for what they stand for. And, young adults are savvy enough to know when a brand is talking appropriately but not acting appropriately.

For example, there is a difference between Tesla’s vision and that of General Motors. Tesla states:

We are designing and manufacturing a complete energy and transportation ecosystem that is fully vertically integrated. By doing so, we are creating affordable products that work together to amplify their impact, leading to the greatest environmental benefit possible. We seek to achieve this through our research and software development efforts as well as through our continued drive to develop advanced manufacturing capabilities.

General Motors recently announced that is wants to be “a growth-focused technology company.” General Motors wants to be the Apple of automotive. Where is the promise of a sustainable future? Where is the accountability?

Corporate America has tended to focus on making money for shareholders. This has spawned all sorts of financial finagling that at best lines executives’ and shareholders’ pockets at the expense of all other stakeholders and brands. At, its worst, a focus on making money for shareholders has an unpleasant relationship with the amorality of greed.

As former Unilever CEO, Paul Polman said in an interview with Financial Times, “The social responsibility of business ultimately is to ensure that we have a healthier planet. If businesses cannot show they’re making a positive impact on the world, why should we let these businesses stay around? You should put the interests of your children and your grandchildren ahead of your personal greed.”

We are now witnessing the beginning of an era of goodness. The Wall Street Journal pointed out in September 2021, that for a handful of branded organizations seeking IPOs, the underlying mission is not greed, but “do-gooding”. These branded enterprises are focusing on profitable operational and organizational global good as their goal. These branded enterprises recognize that their customers are their customers because of an inherent provenance of accountability on critical social and environmental issues. Patagonia has been a leader for decades. Patagonia has consistently managed with a belief that everything they do should have a positive impact – resulting in using less energy, not wasting water and creating less trash. Patagonia has added to its history of being an environmental leader to being a leader in social issues. Its website informs you that Patagonia is learning to become an anti-racist company. Readers can review Patagonia’s commitment.

Branded enterprises such as Allbirds have been built on the premise that sustainability and clothing are not oxymorons. Allbirds’ website not only points out that the fashion industry is one of biggest contributors to negative climate changes, but that it is time for people to hold these businesses accountable. Further, Allbirds promises to hold itself accountable for its impact. In the name of transparency, Allbirds lists its “Better Business” vision and offers its sustainability report to download.

The Wall Street Journal also highlights branded enterprises such as Chobani, Warby Parker and Rent The Runway as “do-gooders” focused on profitable operational, organizational global good. For all of these companies the underlying idea is that doing good is the pathway to enduring profitable growth. From the perspectives of these companies, there is value in values. 

In his Financial Times interview, Mr. Polman tells us that new food businesses based on sustainability are value creators. For example, food companies such as Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods and Oatly are highly valued – all of the value creation is there. On the other hand, Mr. Polman notes, “The value creation for the big companies, even Unilever, has been fairly dismal.” Mr. Polman’s opinion is that businesses should “… aim to do more good rather than just aim to do less harm.” He thinks this should require businesses “… to focus on their stakeholders’ long-term interests and taking responsibility for their impact on the wider world.” 

Of course, resilience is a nice-to-have factor, but resilience while wrecking the planet is woefully perilous. Resilience that is empty of moral accountability is bad for business and bad for brands.

Corporate mission statements that articulate generic thoughts will go nowhere. Mission statements such as “being the best fast food company” or “being the easiest to do business with“ or “generating happiness” or “being the Apple of automotive” pale in comparison to ideas such as Chobani’s, “‘transforming our food system for the betterment of our planet, our people and our communities, from cow comfort on dairy farms to responsible manufacturing practices.”

Many enterprises have used and may still use a RACI system to clarify management strategies and actions. With the RACI chart, managers list who is responsible for a plan or program; who is accountable; who is to be consulted; and who should be kept informed.

The future is not about separating responsibility, accountability, consultation and information. The future is a business that has in its soul the idea that the entire business must be responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. As the Deloitte Study showed, Millennials and Gen Zs are buying brands that connect with their personal values. ADWEEK supports this claim as well, stating that people are “increasingly citing purpose as a factor in buying behavior.”

To its credit, McDonald’s has committed to making its Happy Meal toys more sustainable by 2025. Reporting indicates that the fast food giant is shifting production of Happy Meal toys to plant-based materials. Each year, McDonald’s buys something like a billion toys for its Happy Meal children’s’ meals. This makes McDonald’s the largest toy company in the world. According to McDonald’s, this will “… be equivalent to more than 650,000 people eliminating plastics from their lives each year.”

This is a good step. But, at its heart, McDonald’s needs to have a vision of doing good that is closer to what Ray Kroc imagined when he said that doing good business was good for business. 

A focus on accountability as part of a brand’s reason for being is increasingly necessary. Focusing on profitable operational, organizational global good means only making money if the business is doing good across all functions, strategies and tactics.

Accountability must be the first step. Resilience makes you flexible. Accountability makes you forceful. Resilience defines behavior now. Accountability defines the basis of the future.

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing brands to raise prices. General Mills, Chipotle, P&G and others are planning for or already implemented price increases. With fraught supply chains, climatic distresses and overall uncertainty, brands face hits to profitability as important parts and ingredients are less available. 

Raising prices can be problematic. If a brand raises its price too high, customers will reassess that brand’s value. Is this brand really worth what I will have to pay? Is this brand a good value? Or, is this brand not worth the money? Is my second choice brand a better value now?

In order to make create and implement the correct pricing strategies, businesses must calculate their brands’ Trustworthy Brand Value. This is an imperative.

When it comes to value, customers have a mental value equation. This mental value equation kicks in when making a purchase.  This customer value equation is not math: it is a mindset. It is a mental process where customers evaluate a brand’s benefits relative to its costs. As a mental construct, this value equation has a denominator (bottom) of costs and a numerator (top) of benefits. 

Over decades, the basic understanding of customer value has been and continues to be the same: value is what you expect to receive and what you do receive (benefits) for what you expect to pay and do pay (cost). However, how business specifically defines benefits and costs has undergone an extraordinary evolution. Brands must be cognizant of these changes in order to satisfy customer needs profitably.

In the 1950’s, business understood the value equation simply as features for the money. But, in the 1960’s, the numerator’s definition changed to reflect the fact that customers do not actually buy features. Customers buy the benefits (needs) of these features. Marketing’s purpose became the way in which brands profitably satisfied customer needs.

The social upheaval of the 1960s also gave brands permission to not only focus on functional needs but to make choices based on emotional needs. The customer perceived value equation’s numerator was now more than just features and functions.  Emotional benefits were also relevant. 

In the 1980’s, with the proliferation of two income families and the beginning of busy, over-scheduled lives, the value equation’s denominator changed. Price was no longer the only cost that people considered when evaluating value. People looked at time as a cost. The denominator of the value equation evolved to include both money and time. 

By the turn of the 21^st Century, there was again another evolution in customer perceived value.  In addition to money and time, consumers added a third cost: effort. Customers started assessing a brand’s costs in terms of money, time and effort, where effort means the physical and mental energy cost. Even if I have the money and the time, this purchase requires too much effort on my behalf.

Technological and social changes including the seismic changes from coronavirus have forced the value equation to evolve again. Consumers now look at the numerator of the value equation as a total brand experience defined in terms of functional, emotional and social benefits, such as sharing, belonging, self-image, status and respect. 

This means that customers now assess a brand’s worth based on its total brand experience (functional, emotional and social benefits) relative to the costs of money, time and effort. 

However, there is now a very important new component to the value equation. It is a value multiplier. That value multiplier is trust. 

Trust is the customer’s belief that the brand will deliver the experience relative to the costs in a quality manner. Trust is the customer’s evaluation of the future experience with the brand: How confident am I that this brand will deliver this experience for these costs? 

The new customer perception of value is total brand experience relative to total experience costs all multiplied by trust. This is the new Trustworthy Brand Value equation.

If trust in the brand is high, then as a multiplier, the perceived brand value is increased. If trust in the brand is low, then the perceived brand value is decreased. If there is no trust in the brand – if trust in the brand is zero – then it does not matter what the promised brand experience is relative to the costs. Anything multiplied by zero is zero.

Brand trust significantly affects consumer commitment. This influences price tolerance. Brand trust is a critical piece of the decision process. If you want a strong, enduring, loyal relationship with a customer, you must have brand trust. Trust is essential to the calculative process of brand acceptance. It is not enough any longer to be just a good price; your brand must be a trustworthy value.

If your customers perceive your brand to be a trustworthy value, they will increasingly opt-in to share personal information. But they will do this in exchange for the brand’s ability to deliver on its promise. This exchange of information will enhance the relationship. And, research shows that the stronger the relationship, the stronger the preference and this drives revenue.

Recent research from Deloitte indicates that 62% of people who report highly trusting a brand buy almost exclusively from that brand over competitors in the same category.

Understanding value is much more than asking people whether they believe your offer is good value. Asking customers if your brand is a good value is a hopeless quest for a useless answer. Trustworthiness is incredibly multi-dimensional. Adopt an analytic metric that assesses each of the components of the Trustworthy Brand Value equation.

As an analytic construct, the Trustworthy Brand Value equation integrates all the elements that customers expect to receive – functional, emotional and social benefits and the costs they expect to pay for this experience: money, time and effort. Research from as far back as 2004 indicates that total brand experience and cost characteristics and qualities of the brand have meaning and add value for the customer. Brand value is more than satisfaction with the functional performance of the brand. Brand value is a function of the customer’s relationship with the brand. Trust is one of the most critical components of this relationship.

Value is not absolute; it is relative. Calculate Trustworthy Brand Value for each brand in the customer-defined competitive set. A specific brand’s Trustworthy Brand Value is indexed to the average of the competitive set. This is the Relative Trustworthy Brand Value. 

Recent research indicates that as Relative Trustworthy Brand Value increases, the willingness to pay more also increases, as long as the price is perceived to be fair value. This is common sense. Building Trustworthy Brand Value builds preference, loyalty, sales and profit margins. And, Trustworthy Brand Value is the basis for enduring profitable growth.

The essential imperative for marketers today is to incorporate the Trustworthy Brand Value equation into brand management. Trustworthy Brand Value is a critical tool in the 21^st Century-marketers’ toolbox. Trustworthy Brand Value is not a mere marketing theory, it is major management metric. 

Today’s biggest marketing challenge is to build Trustworthy Brand Value, in every market in which your brand chooses to compete.

Marketers: if you have not already reread your copy of Aldous Huxley’s, The Doors of Perception, now is the time. The trend of using planted-based psychedelics– that is, mushrooms – is once again a desired experience. That 1960’s “turned on, tuned in” experience of opening one’s inner doors to greater personal perceptiveness and universal understanding is now increasingly desired.  Jim Morrison must be looking down and smiling with an “I told you so” grin. 

The need for self-knowing, perceptual experiences that help us be better people is real. And, this deep desire to understand ourselves and the world is changing the concept of personalization. Some CMOs describe this as the more emotional component. Actually, it goes beyond emotional to spiritual.

For several years, personalization has been a desired brand benefit. Personalization still is desired. We appreciate products and services designed to satisfy our individual needs in ways that might not work for someone else. Brands can address you personally with recommendations, specific promotions and worthwhile information. Hotels can remember how you like your mini-fridge stocked. Airlines know how frequently you fly and how you want to be rewarded. Personalization is a status symbol. Personalization is part of our external image of success and our internal image of achievement. This is because personalization delivers an individualized recognition of who we are. Personalization is powerful because of the use of real time digital responsiveness and data collection.

Brands delivering data-driven personalized experiences are valuable brands. Brands offering personalized experiences reinforce respect and uniqueness. All of this is good. The ability to factor down messaging to an audience of one across millions of users and viewers has been profitable. This type of personalization, all pervasive in today’s world, can also, unfortunately, be seen as self-centered and somewhat superficial. It generates an “all about me” sensibility.

So, in our slightly dystopian, worrisome world, weary people are looking for a different type of personalization, something with more meaningfulness. People want more connection, not so much with like-minded others although that is still a huge desire, but with one’s inner self, with the truth about who they are while gaining some sort of existential understanding about the world.

More than mindfulness (an awareness of something), research shows meaningfulness is associated with life satisfaction, happiness and positive wellbeing. Meaningfulness is intensely personal.

Marketers should be expanding their definitions of personalization to include the meaningful pursuit of connections with the more “spiritual, soulful” side of their customers’ sense of self. Many people are seeking true self-perception. This dimension of personalization is about empowerment, healing self-transformation and personal resetting. Think of this as yoga on steroids.

This need for self-enlightenment goes beyond the commercial wellness industry as highlighted in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “This Vacation Is a Real Trip: Psychedelic experiences are beginning to play an integral role at luxury resorts.”  Bloomberg points out that spas designed around opening one’s doors of perception are big business. Additionally, the “shroom boom” as some call it, is also playing an important therapeutic role in treating a variety of medical issues including depression, PTSD and other trauma, substance abuse and pain.  

Increasingly, what used to be regarded as a recreational experience for hippies, dead heads, festival goers and the EST set (Erhard Seminars Training, the new age awareness groups held from 1971 to 1984) is seen as a respectable personal pathway for achieving heightened self-understanding, personal development and taking responsibility with physical and emotional relief. As Timothy Leary famously said, “You have to go out of your mind to use your head.” 

The state of California, Denver, CO, Oakland, CA, Santa Cruz, CA, Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, MI, Cambridge and Somerville MA have all passed legislation to decriminalize possession of the active ingredient in “magic” mushrooms – psilocybin, as well as LSD, mescaline and DMT, the active ingredient in ayahuasca. 

And, although psilocybin is still a powerful Schedule 1 drug in the US, there appears to be some universal recognition that people want help understanding themselves and their individual purpose on earth. Faced with the pressures and difficulties of life in today’s coronavirus world, people are seeking critical insight into how to be the best human being they possibly can. 

Some brands are actually delivering on the inspirational, personal perceptual experience.

For example, Silo Wellness describes itself as a “legal psychedelic and functional mushroom company focused on your mind, body and spirit. Silo Wellness cultivates psychedelic mushrooms and offers retreats in Jamaica and Oregon and products”. Most recently, as stated in The New York Post and other information outlets, Silo Wellness has launched a brand called Marley One. Marley One is a brand of psychedelic mushroom products.

Medicinal mushrooms are appearing in beverages and wellness products, similar to the proliferation of CBD edibles, tinctures and creams. 

Research from Mordor Intelligence highlighted in Financial Services Monitor Worldwide indicates that in 2020, the global functional mushroom business was US $12,415.12 million. Mordor Intelligence estimates that from 2021-2026 the business will register a CAGR of +8.4%. Mordor Intelligence reported expectations of functional mushrooms seeing growth beyond healthcare and pharmaceuticals but into the food and beverage sector.

Not all brands are or should be peddling the magical. However, the broadening of personalization is more than a mere fad. People want to open doors to new self-awareness. For brands and marketers, this additional intensely spiritual dimension to personalization means there is work to be accomplished now. Brands need to take this into account. Technological and digital connections alone may not help brands accomplish this. Marketers need to pay attention.

• Knowing the prime prospect should include more than opinions, attitudes, buying habits and demographics. What are your prime prospects’ intentions regarding actions to improve self-understanding and experiences? How can your brand support this? Who do prime prospects think they are and what do they wish to become?? How does that affect the brand? Does the brand’s personalization efforts sync with the users’ current self-assessments?

• Knowing problems that the prime prospect may have with the brand should be examined on functional, emotional, social and “spiritual” levels. Problem detection can run to the more functional. 

• When thinking about the brand’s ease of choice, ease of use and ease of mind, marketers should put more effort into understanding how the brand affects the customer’s ease of mind. People put a lot of emphasis on self-perception, open-mindedness and insight. 

In a recent column for The New York Times on neuroscience, holistic brain research and how we construct our realties, David Brooks quotes a neuroscientist from the University of Sussex. Professor Anil Seth stated, “Perceptions come from the inside out just as much, if not more, than from the outside in.”  

Along with how people perceive brands, marketers must now start understanding how people wish to perceive themselves. These insights will be crucial for engaging customers with truly personalized experiences.