What KSM-66 figured out that most supplement brands haven't
People don’t buy on emotion. People don’t buy on evidence either. People buy when they have both. And if your brand only offers one, they’ll go and buy from the competitor that offers both.
This is the bit most supplement and nutrition brands are getting wrong right now, and it’s costing them more than they realise. Not just on the first purchase, but on every repeat purchase that doesn’t happen.
The two halves of the buying decision
Every purchase decision in this category runs on two tracks at once.
The emotional track is what most brands focus on.
It’s the reviews. It’s seeing other people like you take the product.
It’s the lifestyle photography, the founder story, the “this is for someone in my situation” recognition.
It’s the brand showing up at the conferences, the sponsorships, the influencer in your feed who looks like they have their life together.
The clinical track is the other half.
What studies have been done? On the actual ingredient at the actual dose?
What was the effect size?
How big was the sample?
Is there a mechanism that makes biological sense?
Is this brand the one funding the science, or are they riding on someone else’s?
The mistake almost every brand makes is assuming buyers are doing one or the other. They’re doing both, even when they don’t know they’re doing it.
Feeling + Evidence = Buying Behaviour
Why picking a side is killing your conversion
Emotionally, only brands look fluffy.
The first time a half-informed buyer goes looking for evidence and can’t find any, the spell breaks.
They start to assume that if you had the studies, you’d be showing them. The absence becomes the answer.
Clinical-only brands have the opposite problem.
The science is there, but the brand feels cold, transactional, and hard to connect with. People don’t share it.
People don’t talk about it at the gym.
The brand never gets the social proof flywheel going because nobody feels anything when they see it.
Both halves are leaving money on the table. And in a category where your competitor is one search away, that money is going somewhere.
KSM-66: a masterclass in stacking both
The clearest example of a brand getting this right is KSM-66, the ashwagandha extract.
On the emotional side, they’ve done the work. Hundreds of positive reviews across the brands that use the ingredient. Constant presence at every major industry conference (I think they’ve sponsored every major one I’ve been to recently). Sponsorships. Visibility. They are everywhere a formulator or buyer might look.
On the clinical side, they have conducted many trials. Real ones. Across stress, sleep, strength, and cognition. Independent. Published.
What that combination has produced is something most brands would kill for: when somebody in this industry says “ashwagandha,” KSM-66 gets named in the same breath.
Not because anyone consciously decided to make it the default, but because the brand became basically unquestionable.
The studies make the reviews believable. The reviews make the studies feel relevant.
Each side reinforces the other.
That didn’t happen by accident. It happened because they invested in both halves of the brain for years and refused to pick a side.
If you’re emotionally heavy, this is the gap
Most brands I speak to are heavy on the emotional side.
They have the reviews, the brand, the community, and the social. What they don’t have is the clinical layer underneath it, and they can feel that something is missing without quite being able to name it.
If that’s you, the fix is to start building out the “right brain” of your company. Get a real trial done on your actual product. Generate the evidence that lets buyers, retailers, distributors, and increasingly sceptical end consumers take you seriously. The brands that do this over the next two years are going to look very different from those that don’t.
It also affects valuation. A brand with clinical evidence behind its claims is a fundamentally different asset from one that relies on lifestyle photography. Anyone who’s been through a diligence process knows this.
The Bottom Line
Your brand is half a brand.
We live in a time where clinical evidence is becoming increasingly more important and prevalent. The brands winning the next decade in this category will have both the branding and softer touch parts, and the harder evidence halves working together. The ones that don’t are going to keep wondering why their competitors are eating their lunch.
— Nathan
P.S.
I’m at Vitafoods Barcelona this week!
If any of this hits close to home and you’re going to be there, come find me. Genuinely happy to have a conversation about what running a trial on your actual product looks like for a brand at your stage, what it costs, how long it takes, and whether it’s the right move for you right now.
At StudySetGo, we run clinical studies on your product or ingredient. Remote, placebo-controlled, double-blind, gold-standard.
If you’re at Vitafoods, reply to this email, and we’ll find time on the floor. If you’re not, book a call with me here.
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