Why is a supplement company producing a documentary?

Look at the consumer brands around you today, even the biggest and most successful, and ask one question: do I feel anything about them?

For me, the answer is almost always no.

Some have great products, nice branding and a website with a scratch-off discount popup. Some sponsor my favourite podcasts. But feeling? Emotion? Not really.

I grew up on Apple's "Think different", Nike's "Find Your Greatness" and Duracell's "Trust Your Power" film with Derrick Coleman. Those were more than a brand selling a product. They were companies telling you what they stand for.

Somewhere between social media and venture funding, where growth is measured by capital in versus capital out as fast as humanly possible, consumer brands lost that. The relationship most of us have with the companies we buy from is shallow. We know little about the people and principles behind them, and we buy to feel cool, like school kids chasing the next big thing. But trends move quickly.

Rented attention gets more expensive

The consumer space is dominated by whoever can spend the most to acquire a customer. That brings customers in quickly and builds little loyalty. Many supplement companies today are media arbitrage businesses: they rent attention, and once the money machine is switched off, purchases drop off a cliff.

The pattern is familiar. Platforms like Meta are very good at capturing the low-hanging fruit first. Then the algorithm widens its search to customer profiles that are harder to convert, and the cost per acquisition (CPA) climbs.

IM8 is arguably the sharpest performance marketer in supplements right now. Its parent company, Prenetics, reported a customer acquisition cost of $104 for the first half of 2025. By the first quarter of 2026 the figure was about $305, almost three times higher.

Prenetics attributes part of that rise to a deliberate move towards quarterly subscriptions with a higher order value. The direction is still the one every paid-led brand ends up facing.

There is another route. BPN is the example I keep coming back to: a supplement brand built on founder Nick Bare's own content, with comparatively little reliance on performance marketing.

Taking a position at day zero

So from the beginning, Myoform is spending a higher share of its time on brand marketing than most companies our age. The thesis is simple: build enough goodwill, trust and recognition with customers early, and we avoid as much of that pitfall as we can.

This isn't a boo-hoo to performance marketing. It's a position we're taking now to reach the scale we believe Myoform can reach, and to last longer than a single market cycle.

It's also personal. I love to create, and I think brand is art. Apple is the obvious example: principled enough about its positioning to give up market share in the short term for the world it believed was coming.

We are incredibly early. But day zero is the moment to take a position and drive from there. We want Myoform to be more than a brand or a product. We want to give people a lump in their throats, to make them laugh and cry through what we create, whether that's content or the things we sell.

Our dream is to help people achieve theirs, through better health, nutrition and performance. Along the way we want to tell the stories of people who achieved great things against the odds. We can tell them through a lens most storytellers don't have: the athlete's own biology.

Why Mat Fraser and HWPO

Mat is one of the greatest athletes of our generation. He won the CrossFit Games five years in a row, after two second-place finishes.

He is the son of two Olympic figure skaters and was a gifted weightlifter as a junior, so the raw tools were always there. We can see that in his genetic data. But his lifestyle, his upbringing and his mindset are what made him a champion. Not many people know that story, and we get to tell it from an angle nobody else has.

There is a commercial logic too. A major part of our near-term strategy is working out which services and features, beyond supplements, actively improve a user's wellbeing and performance.

HWPO is a market leader in training programming and coaching, and our data is complementary. Myoform can read a user's physical capabilities and injury risks. HWPO can wrap its existing programming around those individual traits.

The aim is a training programme as bespoke as working one-to-one with a coach, and arguably more so.

Why now

The series is a central pillar for us, and we plan to continue it across a wide range of athletes and disciplines. The timing of the first film comes from the market.

Hybrid training and competition are booming: see HYROX and XENOM. People increasingly want to see what their bodies can do, not only look healthier and leaner, and these sports are accessible to a huge audience.

That audience is our priority. There is a lot of performance to be gained by understanding your biology and working with it, rather than fighting against it.

Genetics of a Champion is live on the HWPO Training YouTube channel. Read more about Myoform’s integration with HWPO here.