The brand, which sells $68 adaptogen powder, announced Tuesday that it has always been fundamentally about connection, not product.
"We've always been a community first," said the brand's founder, who launched the company in 2019 with a Shopify store and a mood board. "The product was just how we started the conversation."
The announcement came after the brand's Q3 revenue declined 23% following a shift in the algorithm that had previously surfaced its content to people searching for "stress relief" and "cortisol." The brand's new strategy, described in a 1,200-word Medium post titled "What We've Always Believed," involves pivoting to community-building through a Discord server, a monthly virtual gathering called "The Circle," and a newsletter that will "go deeper than product."
The brand's existing customers, who purchased the adaptogen powder because it was marketed as a solution to stress, were not consulted about the pivot. Several noted in the comments that they had not been aware they were part of a community.
"I just bought the powder," wrote one commenter. "I didn't know there was a Discord."
The cultural satire writes itself here, but it's worth noting — wait, we're not allowed to say that. Let's try again. The pattern is familiar: brand builds audience through product, algorithm changes, brand discovers it was always about community. The discovery is always retroactive. The community was always there. The brand just hadn't mentioned it until the product stopped selling.
The content and brand culture around "community" has reached a point where the word has been evacuated of meaning. Every brand has a community. The community is the email list. The community is the Instagram followers. The community is the people who bought the thing and might buy the next thing. This is not a community. This is a customer base with a warmer name.
The brand's Discord server currently has 847 members. Twelve of them have posted in the last month. The most recent post is a question about whether the adaptogen powder can be mixed with oat milk. The brand has not responded.
The creative brand building that actually works doesn't announce that it's about community. It just is. The community forms because people care about the same thing, not because the brand told them they were a community.
The brand's Medium post ends with an invitation to join The Circle. The first gathering is scheduled for a Tuesday evening. The topic is "What does wellness mean to you?" The brand will be there. The adaptogen powder will not be mentioned.
The cultural commentary on this is simple: the brands that survive algorithm changes are the ones that were actually building something before the algorithm changed. The ones that weren't are now writing Medium posts about community.