Biohacking Needs a Rebrand To Unlock CPG Industry Potential
Who doesn’t enjoy a trick, shortcut, or innovative method for accomplishing familiar tasks more easily and efficiently, right? While these type of “life hacks” are heralded throughout society, it’s fraternal twin (i.e. biohacking) feels like a strange cultlike mix of amateur DIY medicine and things you’d read in futuristic sci-fi novels. With the central biohacking pursuit of “self-improvement” arguably being relatable to all mainstream individuals, there’s likely a “perception is reality” problem holding back the movement. A problem that might require a biohacking rebrand to “best self” for it to be a commercially valuable movement to the CPG industry.
Evolution of Biohacking
The term “biohacking” has skyrocketed in popularity and recognition over the past handful of years. Even if you aren’t familiar with the dizzying range of its definitions, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered some version of biohacking in your daily life…
office colleagues putting butter in their coffee
influencers doing morning cold plunges
friend that recently started intermittent fasting
The list can go on and on, but biohacking is any practice that changes the structure or function of the body. While that broad definition is sufficient, it leaves too much to the imagination…and that’s maybe the problem.
I’m not sure anyone can really pinpoint the origin of biohacking, though the term has been around since the late-80s. The modern DIY Biology movement, that started in the mid-2000s, seems to have been birthed from the 90s computer hacker era principles of radical access to technology and autonomy of information. In the same vein, why should scientific knowledge be gatekept, right? That ethos led to a rise in popularity of doing science outside academia that started to happen in the late-2000s. But maybe that’s also where the “perception is reality” problem of biohacking started to get distorted for the common person. In a traditional academic environment, science experimentation on humans requires review and approval from many layers of bureaucracy. Since biohacking is done on oneself, it doesn’t need to go through the same red tape. That means experiments can happen at a very fast pace.
Whether its genetic, surgical, medical, whatever…biohacking was pushing boundaries, and in an attention economy…who loves brazenness that can cut through the noise? Media companies. They started to place the spotlight on the most extreme biohacking stories. If someone was injecting themselves with CRISPR over Facebook Live, the media would be happy to share the oddity of that story. If someone was inserting RFID chips under their skin, the media knew it would garner clicks. If someone was injecting chemical compounds into their eyes to achieve night vision…that was a story that didn’t even need a clickbait title to gain extra attention.
Biohacking Needs a Rebrand
Those stories, which are the minority, made biohacking look more bizarre than useful. It doesn’t help that the biohacking movement has tons of subcultures like grinders, immoralists, transhumanists, or even those advocating a return to a primal state. Depending on which of those subcultures you ask, you’ll get a different definition of what biohacking is, but how about we try on the one I prefer? I explain biohacking as making small, incremental diet or lifestyle changes to achieve modest improvements in your health and well-being. By that broad definition, biohacking seems like a recognizable pursuit, right?
While the media likes to sensationalize the extreme actions of select biohackers, I’ve scrolled through many biohacking forums and subreddits, and followed prominent biohackers across social media platforms…and noticed almost all are trying to solve familiar problems. Biohackers want to get more and higher quality sleep. They want to perform better at work. They’d like to lose weight, gain strength, or reduce their risk of things like cardiovascular disease. Biohackers are trying to prevent or manage mental health issues like depression. So, if biohacking comes down to something we can all relate to…why hasn’t the movement exploded in popularity?
Just like in the earliest phases of DIY Biology 15 or so years ago, the word biohacking itself is a turn-off. But instead of turning off the science community…this time it’s rubbing the everyday wellness-minded consumer the wrong way. That’s why I think biohacking needs a rebrand for it to be a commercially valuable CPG industry movement.
“Best Self” Movement
For many years, I’ve referred to the desire to feel better, perform better, and to see just how far one can push the human body as an individual that’s pursuing a high-performance lifestyle. It wasn’t until a recent conversation with Matt Titlow, CEO of Compound Solutions, that I learned he has been calling the mainstreaming effect of the biohacking movement…the “Best Self” consumer cohort. I liked the simplicity of that term, so I’m going to rebrand my own rebrand and use it going forward.
The “Best Self” movement is a broader yet direct approach to the wellness culture that doesn’t just assume one-size-fits-all. It’s the consumer that simply wants to be better tomorrow each day. The “Best Self” caters to the whole self, and these individuals want real solutions when it comes to things like healthy sleep cycles, getting adequate hydration, eating nutrient-dense foods, and consuming wellness supplements.
“Best Self” CPG Strategy
In the same sense when “alternative medicine” that works just becomes “medicine,” when biohacking practices work…they just become “best self” stuff we do. There’s plenty of age-old “best self” techniques like meditation that I could list, but I’m a CPG strategist…
There’s a handful of “Best Self” pursuits that align well with CPG product categories. Interestingly though, the opportunity is open to a greater degree of the food, beverage, and nutritional supplement market than you might think. So, it’s important to understand that this is not just a functional CPG thing. This is because a major “Best Self” technique revolves around following a diet protocol. Whether someone for example is looking to lose weight, improve digestive health, have more strength, or boost longevity, they have countless nutrition ideologies to utilize, such as following intermittent fasting, a low FODMAP diet, or even the popular ketogenic diet. That means there are tons of commercialization opportunities within almost every category of packaged food, beverage, and nutritional supplements, if you can appeal to and align with the different diet tribes. Moreover, and I know it’s still super early in the personalized nutrition world but pay attention to how a biohacking focus known as nutrigenomics, which looks at how different nutrients affect how you feel, think, and behave, makes inroads into mainstream society over the last decade.
To get a layer deeper on specific products, and I’m only going to cover one, because honestly, I could go through tons of condition-specific “Best Self” pursuits, get in the weeds, and make this content way too long, but I want to at least talk about the most widely used “Best Self” CPG consumption behavior, which is drinking caffeine. When we are talking CPG, caffeine consumption comes mostly in the form of coffee at home, RTD coffee, energy drinks, and energy powders. These all compete at the end of the day with a consumer’s interest for consuming caffeine to get a boost of energy and improve productivity. But it’s not even that simple, as Dave Asprey would tell you to drink bulletproof coffee and maybe Joe Rogan or Tim Ferris would tell you to add mushroom powder to your coffee. And since I talked about Matt Titlow earlier (and stole his terminology of “Best Self”), I would be remiss to not also quickly mention how a recent study suggests two patented ingredients Compound Solutions represents and distributes, TeaCrine and Dynamine, amplifies the efficacy of caffeine, while minimizing adverse or undesirable effects.
Final Thoughts
While the future of biohacking might one day have us resembling cyborgs, that would be closer to Z on the A-to-Z spectrum. Right now, Shelly from Ohio (aka my Mom) isn’t thinking about all those sci-fi distractions in her pursuit of “Best Self.” Today’s opportunity is targeting the “Best Self” consumers that are looking at real problems or highlighting real goals…and interested in finding real solutions.