How much would it cost to shift the mindset of our entire society towards accepting and understanding psychedelics in one year? What does the marketing department of the psychedelic revolution look like? What are the issues we face in promoting psychedelics? Who will fight us?
In this episode I speak with Marcus McNeill and Gareth Hermann, co-founders of Magic, a marketing agency committed to helping push forward psychedelics and answer the above questions.
Thanks to their “psychedelic marketing services”, Gareth and Marcus have helped realize various important psychedelic initiatives including the Decriminalize Denver campaign (decriminalizing psilocybin in Denver), Synthesis psilocybin retreats in Amsterdam, and Field Trip Health’s north-america-wide ketamine clinic initiative.
I suspect that nobody on the planet knows more about marketing the psychedelic renaissance than Marcus and Gareth. And as such they are accumulating priceless wisdom. They are working day in and day out to shift our cultural mindset towards psychedelics from suspicion to embrace.
Bios:
Marcus McNeill – As the Co-Founder & CEO of Magic, the performance marketing agency for conscious missions, Marcus supports the ecosystem of entrepreneurs, researchers, clinicians, activists, and investors ushering in the psychedelic renaissance in a responsible way. Marcus has led marketing strategy for 50+ companies, including Marianne Williamson, Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Kim Eng, and Deepak Chopra’s Chopra Center. With a passion for psychedelics, spirituality, sustainability, and wellness, he aims to impact billions of lives by spreading conscious messages through the digital mycelium.
Gareth Hermann – Gareth is a systems enthusiast and team galvanizer who has managed brand strategy and leadership development projects for international corporations. His passion lies in influencing personal, organizational, and societal transformation. He’s the type of guy who is so organized he pens “unstructured time” into his schedule. Gareth is also the Co-Founder of Exponential, a coaching company for top performers, and a Partner in Connected Ventures. He loves supporting change makers and teams tackling global issues.
This episode of the ‘cast is brought to you by Fundraising Mastery, the fundraising accelerator for mission driven entrepreneurs. If you or anybody you know is creating something impactful, and are seeking seed capital, please visit www.foundersgetfunded.com to learn more and apply. Our next cohort launches on Oct 15th.
Show Notes
6:22 Marcus & Gareth explain why they chose to do marketing for the psychedelic renaissance
9:21 On reacting to social media “We’re not even utilizing our whole prefrontal cortex. We’re just upset with someone’s political opinion. We’re not really human beings at that stage. We’re more like primordial reptiles fearing death, trying to be right in the conversations. And that’s not gonna get us anywhere”.
10:05 The mission behind Magic Agency
10:31 “Psychedelics are one of my favorite tools for elevating consciousness”
11:31 Spreading these medicines really is going to shift humanity’s relationship with our natural world, and hopefully, that’s going to shift the way that we treat it
12:53 We love propelling movements, changing laws and scaling businesses that matter
14:20 Marcus explains how the Decriminalize Denver campaign, which was started by Kevin Matthews, happened
21:31 Why Conservatives oppose legalization – there’s a lack of education. Education is the key
24:07 How can we use Facebook ads in the right way to positively impact culture
24:45 Gareth talks about the Coronavirus
25:30 How can we connect with to right leaders that have a positive vision for the future that’s gonna improve our culture, and how do we take those ideas and spread them out through the digital landscape
26:45 Marketing becomes “evil” when a company uses manipulative inauthentic tactics to shift someone’s behavior to purchase something that’s not good for them and/or not good for the world
30:17 From this side of consciousness I would much rather be supporting renewable energy than oil & gas. They both produce energy but one is going to create a better outcome when you think of the whole ecosystem
35:34 Antidepressants are something that you need to continue to take regularly basically until you die. Powerful mushroom experiences for instance – you do it one time, you do not have another mushroom experience the next day. You need a little bit of a break. And also the effects are long-lasting
38:01 One of the beautiful parts of capitalism is that it’s very scalable, and we need to be able to disseminate these medicines to millions of people, billions of people possibly
41:27 How much would it cost to run a campaign on the benefits of psychedelics to reach the whole US population (Answer: approx $350M/year)
44:40 Little bit about Marianne Williamson’s presidential campaign that they had run how they accomplished to have a national influence on collective consciousness in politics on a couple of different major issues
47:28 Everything you do on Facebook is being tracked and is being funneled to advertisers to use to serve you really targeted messages. In a perfect world, you’d get paid for that. If I was paying ads to serve them to an audience, I would love for them to take their percentage of the money that I’m using to target them.
51:29 Why is the Magic Agency using Facebook for advertising even though it’s a corporation only caring about shareholder returns and not trying to make a change?
53:53 Marcus talks about his first microdosing experience after he saw Paul Stamets speech at Envision Festival in Costa Rica
55:58 Gareth talks about his microdosing experience
56:47 I find it interesting how mushrooms kind of “talked” to me. “This was supportive for you to deal with your underlying anxiety or to get some support with that” and after some time I literally physically was like “I’m done”. And I find that to be the opposite of what you feel if you’re taking pharmaceuticals
57:37 Gareth shares his personal macro-dosing experience
61:27 I would say that the average adult has a deep baggage and well of emotional trauma that they’re slogging through life trying to fix things in their current life but constantly re-creating from their trauma, and I see psychedelics, this powerful intervention tool, that can support them with deep healing experiences
62:19 Imagine how much violence is created in a world, like killing other people or destroying things just because one human doesn’t feel safe and they feel like if they exterminate these other people, then they’ll feel safe – versus doing the internal work
64:36 In the central nervous system the trauma gets passed down from one generation to the next, and I can not ask myself how many generations of trauma have impacted the black members of our society
67:55 Marcus talks a little bit about racism and the BLM movement
71:33 If you want to really change things for our black brothers and sisters the first place to look is yourself. Obviously, you need to go out and take actions as well, but you also need to look inside
71:50 What is Magic doing to fight racism and help the BLM
75:38 “Not every conversation changes someone’s life, but every conversation has the potential to.”