Storytelling isn’t new in the world of advertising.
Steven Hoffman, a veteran of the organic and natural products industry, recalls the commercials and cereal box characters of his childhood in the 1960s and ’70s. “Advertising is very powerful,” says Hoffman, who serves today as founder and managing director of Compass Natural. He remembers the jingles, too. “We can strike a chord, literally, and that’s a part of the storytelling—creating the characters that went with cereals [and] creating stories around the product.”
When he started reporting for the organic and natural foods industry in 1985, the need to tell the story behind the product was all the more pressing. “Certainly, that was a field where you had to share the story of the commitment to improving the soil, saving the environment, how that translates into a better-for-you product … you have to share that story literally from the farmer to the consumer.”
The effort hasn’t been missed by consumers. The natural and organic products industry has grown immensely since 1985—expected to come in at more than $340 billion in sales in 2025, per NBJ.
Storytelling has “always been really key” to the segment’s success, Hoffman contends.
Like the natural and organic industry, the dietary supplement industry is realizing the need for deeper connections with consumers and is increasingly building those connections by telling the stories behind the brands.
Yadim Medore, founder and CEO of Pure Branding, started his firm with a sweeping focus across the natural products industry, including the food, beverage, personal care and supplement categories. But 10 years into the company’s 25-year history, Pure Branding shifted its focus to dietary supplements exclusively, Medore explains.
“At that time, it became really clear that the supplement brands were the most immature in the sense that they were all marketing on feature and benefit, and they had no emotional identity or emotional connection with the consumer,” he says. “That’s starting to change.”
Today, more supplement companies are realizing the need to identify the story beyond the product, driven by a number of factors, including demographic-led shifting consumer demands.
“Both millennials and Gen Z care about the products they purchase, and they’re invested not only in learning the why, but also in the how, of most products they buy,” says Kandice Randal, owner of Kandice Rae Communications. “Brands that can deliver and establish that story are the brands that are really going to stand out in the marketplace.”
Scientific backing is important for building trust with the consumer.
Science first
Similar to the broader natural and organic industry, the dietary supplement industry is chock-full of brands that were founded on values-driven missions. But, in contrast, the dietary supplement industry is charged with striking a balance between science—for both proof of efficacy and substantiation for marketing claims—and consumer relevancy.
Historically, the pendulum has swung in favor of science.
Take Host Defense Mushrooms, the finished product brand of Fungi Perfecti, a company founded by renowned mycologist Paul Stamets in 1980. Host Defense is driven by the simple, albeit ambitious, mission to build a bridge between people and fungi by sharing the immune-supportive benefits of mushroom mycelium with the world. And they do so with science.
“A strong commitment to research and innovation is a fundamental building block of the brand and sets Host Defense apart,” says Betsy Bullman, vice president of sales and marketing at Fungi Perfecti.
The company invests more than $1 million annually into research on mushroom mycelium. What’s more, its internal research and development team, led by Stamets, comprises eight full-time scientists with expertise spanning mycology, chemistry, environmental sciences and cellular and molecular biology, per Bullman. The research team has published more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles, she adds.
Similarly, Ritual, a supplement brand that exists “to give women the confidence to make the best decisions for their health,” has invested more than $5 million in double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical studies. In fact, the brand has set the ambitious goal of conducting clinical studies on all its finished products by 2030—a rare endeavor in an industry that leans heavily on ingredient-specific scientific validation.
At the time of Ritual’s launch in 2016, founder and CEO Katerina Schneider was a soon-to-be mom fed up with the lack of accountability in the dietary supplement market. “I was frustrated by supplement labels packed with unnecessary ingredients, marketing with unsubstantiated claims and no clear answers to basic questions: Is this safe? Does it work?” says Schneider. Recognizing the need for safer, effective products, she founded Ritual on the belief that women deserve to know what they’re putting in their bodies and why.
But not just science
While this focus on science is crucial for success, it often misses on making a meaningful connection with potential customers.
“Just knowing that there’s validation is a trust signal, so [science] really credentials the brand,” Medore explains. “But in a market where there are so many of the same products serving the same need state and they’re all making the same claims, then it’s just the cost of entry and noise.”
Often the challenge with the category is the lack of emotional connection, he adds. “Especially with the legacy brands that have been around for a long time that have huge portfolios. They’re missing that heart and center of who they are and why they’re relevant to their audience beyond just the health benefit that they bring.”
Storytelling offers that human connection by helping consumers understand why they’re taking a supplement product and how it will benefit them, Randal says. “Most consumers are going to the supplement aisle looking for a supplement to help them with [a specific] health condition. Then, once they flip over that bottle, the story you are telling is to really get them to the next step, which is purchasing.”
Both supplement brands—Ritual and Host Defense—understand this, and both top their respective categories. Per SPINS data, Host Defense is the number one bestselling mushroom supplement brand in the United States. Meanwhile, Ritual offers the number one bestselling prenatal supplement, according to data from Nielsen IQ and Stackline.
Bullman says storytelling is “foundational” to building trust with consumers and communicating Host Defense’s mission.
“We prioritize educational content to help consumers understand the full spectrum of the benefits that mushroom mycelium can offer,” she says. “Storytelling plays a key role in this process, allowing us to make complex scientific concepts relatable, engaging and memorable.”
Tapping into a range of platforms, including the company’s website, educational blogs, social media platforms and email and SMS communications, Host Defense publicly shares a plethora of information, from narratives that break down the findings of its scientific research to stories that detail the company’s origin, including Stamets’ journey, the founding of Fungi Perfecti and the innovations of its organic farm in the Pacific Northwest—which Bullman describes as “inseparable” from the brand itself.
Schneider, too, underlines the critical role of consumer education in leveraging the value of its clinical research. “Clinical research only creates value if people can understand it,” she says.
She points to products in Ritual’s lineup, including its Sleep BioSeries timed-release melatonin product and its flagship beauty product, HyaCera, which are both backed by peer-reviewed, published clinical research. The quality of science and Ritual’s emphasis on education work in tandem to help Ritual’s consumers understand not just that the products work, but also why they work.
“This is where science and storytelling meet: science is the evidence, and storytelling is the framework that helps someone decide whether a product belongs in their routine,” Schneider explains. “As we move deeper into 2026, consumers are clearly leaving the blind ‘trust-me’ era of wellness and entering the ‘prove-it’ era—an environment where Ritual is structurally advantaged.”
One of the greatest tools for meeting consumers where they are at is social media, but every consumer will respond differently.
The social advantage
Social media is a valuable tool tapped by both brands to more effectively reach its consumers. Per Bullman, social media has made it easier to share the science and stories behind Host Defense products by giving the brand a “direct line” to consumers and allowing real-time engagement and interaction.
At Ritual, Schneider says social media is a “strong tool” that gives the company the ability to “cut through the noise and meet people where they are, creating opportunities to communicate more often.”
However, Bullman acknowledges that the needs of consumers are diverse. In addition to social media, blogs and long-form articles allow Host Defense to tap into tools like infographics, charts, photography and video to “visually communicate scientific findings” and “share data more comprehensively.”
Perhaps most important to the storytelling strategy—for both brands—is authenticity.
With Host Defense, that means leaning on Stamets’ experience, which spans more than 40 years of studying fungi in the lab and in the field, to inform its campaigns that involve mycological messaging—an approach that combines the company’s “rigorous commitment to scientific integrity” with “authentic storytelling.”
Similarly, Schneider says Ritual depends on a team of internal experts to dive into complicated topics, particularly on social media, where wellness misinformation abounds. “Not being afraid to get into the weeds is part of what makes Ritual special and why our customers trust us,” she says.
Fortunately, authenticity is a strength of the organic and natural products industry. “There’s authentic storytelling here,” Hoffman says. “There’s mission-based storytelling. There’s conscious-business storytelling. These are better-for-you products, and we have to tell consumers why they’re better for you.”
Brands that can develop their story and deliver it authentically are well-poised for success.
Purpose: Building on the foundation
For some categories of supplements, like whole food and herbal supplements, the story is easy to capture. “Just by the nature of their commitments, whether that’s how they grow … to how they source, there’s a lot of elevated, emotional storytelling that happens just by that,” Medore says.
But for brands that procure synthesized ingredients, like vitamins and specialty nutrients, the story can be harder to unveil. These products make up a bulk of the broader dietary supplement category, making the feat a noteworthy endeavor.
Many such brands that have seen success in building and communicating the mission beyond the product rely on the stories of the founders—a trend that’s particularly pertinent in emerging direct-to-consumer brands, Medore points out.
“Especially for the DTC brands … that founder’s story comes out,” he explains. “What was that founder’s emotional journey that prompted them to solve the problem for themselves, and how is that reflected back into the brand? So, what does that founder believe? And then how is that infused into the brand story?”
The communication framework around nutritional products is inherently more complex compared to some other industries. As Hoffman explains, effectively educating consumers requires that product attributes and nutritional benefits be shared continually over time.
Promising to the supplement category is that the efforts to educate consumers are paying off.
“We’re seeing the industry growth, and I think that is an indication of the success of our storytelling over time,” Hoffman says. “To me, that may be a soft indicator that consumers out there are getting some part or all of the story.”
This article originally appeared in the Nutrition Business Journal Investment and Finance Issue. Subscribe today to the Nutrition Business Journal.
