We Got So Lonely, Brands Started Selling Us Friendship.

Ami Ibanga
1 hour ago
4 min read

I don't own a single piece of clothing from the athleisure brand TALA, but I've watched almost every bit of content from their latest creator brand trip.

I'm entranced by the world they've built on Instagram, and that entrancement grew tenfold when they took it offline to create an immersive, luxury-branded holiday: "Hotel TALA." Sun-drenched villas, morning pilates, beach volleyball with the ocean as an audience. The content was beautiful, but that isn't what hooked me. It was the display of community and friendship between the creators invited.

Brand trips have dominated our feeds for years now, and what's always fascinated me isn't the promise of endless product, but the exclusivity, community and belonging sold alongside it. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that these events were never really about mascara, activewear or hotel rooms. They were about community.

Community, community, community. What's left to say about a word so endlessly recycled across TikTok think-pieces, brand decks and LinkedIn posts? To me, it's become something like an opium for young people, a social currency, maybe even a luxury. There's a growing appetite amongst Gen Z for belonging with others who share their values, a space outside work, school and our curated algorithms, a need that feels urgent given the loneliness epidemic. COVID-19 was a catalyst: after months of isolation and increasing screen time, we were left with a generation who'd lost the muscle for building community.

At the same time, brands have been ramping up their online presence. Marketing 101 says be where your audience is, and with screen time climbing, brands want their slice of the attention economy. So of course they've clocked the loneliness conversation. A good brand solves its audience's problems, and here, they've understood people crave third spaces, so they're positioning themselves as the answer. For better or worse, brands are becoming facilitators of community: through brand trips, creator dinners, wellness clubs, they’re administering their own dose of that community-laced opium. On the surface, this looks innocent. But does this actually create connection?

When you compare the anatomy of a successful brand from fifty years ago to one today, you’ll see a shift in how value gets communicated. Where brands once sold features and benefits, today's brands cement themselves through identity and lifestyle: things felt more than seen. They invite us into a way of dressing, eating, exercising, asking who we want to be rather than what we want to buy. The more our lives are mediated through screens, the greater our appetite for experiences that feel tangible and shared. In a culture of hyper-personalisation, shared belonging has become scarce. So brands have moved from selling products to creating spaces where people can experience an identity together..

But how does this work? How do brands actually create spaces audiences want to spend time in? In 2024, makeup brand REFY took world-building further, flying eight giveaway winners to Mallorca for a fully branded trip. Through vlogs and Instagram, we watched the guests build real friendships, all under REFY branding. But what made it compelling wasn't the products, but watching the girls bond over candlelit dinners and beach afternoons. The product was secondary to the feeling, which is exactly what makes these campaigns land. REFY understood that watching people cultivate friendship over a shared experience feels aspirational yet attainable, and barely feels like marketing at all.

But when a community is hand-selected, its location curated to match the branding, the content planned and the activities prepared, it begs the question: is this real community, or marketing designed to look like one? Manufacturing community around a brand can feel paradoxical when that brand lacks the cultural legacy to sustain it. Community usually emerges organically, a byproduct of shared values and repeated interaction, not something launched as a marketing strategy. For instance, Nike Run Club works because it isn't asking people to believe in a community that doesn't exist yet; fifty years of cultural identity make belonging feel like a natural extension of the brand, not something invented from scratch.

But does that negate the connections forged in these spaces? If two people meet through a brand-sponsored running club and become lifelong friends, is that friendship manufactured, and therefore not real? If someone finds confidence or connection at a company-hosted event, should it be dismissed because there's a logo attached? Connection doesn't become less valuable because someone else funded the space. So maybe the issue isn't whether brands can create meaningful communities; maybe it's what these communities thrive on to stay afloat.

Many branded communities rely on exclusivity. Invite-only dinners, limited spots, carefully selected attendees and private memberships dominate the "community economy". The appeal often lies in knowing not everyone can take part. When TALA invites only creators on its trips, or REFY runs a giveaway for only eight winners, community becomes something aspirational, watched from the outside. It's almost ironic: creating a sense of belonging by first creating exclusion. For years, community was a byproduct of people coming together over shared interests; now brands are stepping into the role of community-builder. I don't think brands can make community. What they can do is create the conditions for it by bringing people together and supporting existing communities. But genuine belonging can't be written into a campaign brief, or measured in engagement rates and retention.

The strongest communities have always grown from the inside out, built on shared values, interests and experience; the brand is simply the facilitator. If anything, it's fascinating that these brand trips, private memberships and invite-only dinners work as a mirror held up to what our society is yearning for. Marketing often reflects culture: a window into our desires and fears. As traditional spaces for connection disappear, perhaps the real question isn't whether brands should be building community. It's what it says about our society that they increasingly are.