What's the state of supplement branding in 2023? Everything from apothecary vibes to a full-on pharma look. (See "Design agencies weigh in", page 19, for the perspective of creative directors). Supplement brands looking for a guide for their future branding and marketing efforts will find it here as NBJ's editors explore practitioner best-practices, regulation missteps, the right claims to make, and the important of truth in a sea of counterfeits. 

Brands can update their looks without abandoning their heritage (see “Anatomy of a rebrand,” page 18), and they can pair the aura of an ingredient like mushrooms with scientific credentials to create a new market (see “Opening America’s minds to mushrooms,” page 7).

The more troubling idea is that the marketing and branding that creates either the apothecary warmth or science’s cutting-edge gleam has become so technological and targeted that it might not always be easy to hold onto the connection between purpose and commerce.

AI marketing is making its way into the supplement industry (see “Vitamin AI,” page 1). Here we have machines creating messages and possibly soon creating those messages about products that the same machine or a cousin-program operating on a different machine developed