Mental Health Meets Marketing

Whole Foods Market makes its way into the mental health space in a new partnership with meditation app Headspace.

On the surface, the move reflects a growing trend toward seemingly unlikely collaborations between brands that actually share a similar target audience, as observed in Gartner’s report on the topic. Looking deeper, it shines a light on a side effect of the pandemic often overlooked: mental health. In an effort to refresh consumer minds ahead of spring, Whole Foods Market and Headspace have teamed up to curate a series of digital tools aimed at mental health. For example, viewers can tune into an IGTV recipe series fittingly called “Food for Mood”, three new meditations about mindful shopping, cooking, and eating, and a one-month free trial of Headspace Plus. The IGTV series features recipes created by chef, food and welfare advocate Sophia Roe and Harvard nutritional psychiatrist, chef, and author of “This Is Your Brain on Food,” Uma Naidoo. Episodes highlight specific ingredients and tips to inspire one of four positive moods: joyful, energized, focused and relaxed.

Honing in on the relationship between mental health and nutrition could prove an effective and brand-authentic way for Whole Foods to entice a new audience and connect with its existing one. The company may want to consider turning the series into a permanent feature so as not to feed into the “mental health as a trend” mistake that some brands fall prey to.