Curation for Longevity 🧬🛍 8 - Black Friday but for Health, The Language of Communicating Longevity
Hello 👋 and welcome to Curation for Longevity by Laura Minquini. I am the founder of MYKIGAI - a new type of community to experience longevity.
In this newsletter, I look into what could help make longevity the next big DTC (Direct To Consumer) category. 🚀
Black Friday but for Health 💙
You are not a DTC company if you do not participate in the “biggest sales day” of the year…said the commandments of capitalism. I am not a big shopper myself, but one of the great things about working in getting people interested in their health is that when you are proposing something, is not to consume, but to help with health creation. So off to play the game we go! 🎲
This Friday, November 26th we are having our first Black Friday but for Health. We are dropping an “ABC of Gut Health” report to get you ready for the holidays, and a special curation of longevity brands including a product not yet available in the market that our members get first access to!
We are doing our first pre-launch for a Longevity Brand! 🥳🧬🚀
To get early access to all offers get a MYKIGAI yearly subscription for 65% off 👉🏼
($105 USD instead of $300 USD for a year membership)
The subscription will give you first access to the curation and members-only offers, our private channel, 1-1 with our geroscientist, and hundreds of dollars in savings.
Quantities are limited.
More (quality of) Life 💙
You are not a startup if you do not have merch said the commandments of startup life. So here’s a preview of our first t-shirt. Members will be getting theirs in the mail for Christmas! Please wear it and tag us #longevitylifestyle @mykigai ✌🏼 For everyone else, please be on the lookout in the new year for this and other items 👀.
And let’s be clear that when we say “More Life”, we mean more quality of life.
The Language of Communicating Longevity 📣
Speaking of what we mean with words, if you have been reading this newsletter for a while you know that I have been writing about how longevity has a branding problem. This is one of the main reasons I wanted to get involved in the industry, with so much potential and what preventive and regenerative health could offer it was painful to see it so badly communicated and portrayed.
I actually point it out on a section of our pitch deck as a current problem:
I have written at length in previous posts on how damaging this is in terms of gaining support or interest of the general public.
My perspective is not about how true or untrue it is that billionaire fund research, or which scientists is publicly or secretly wanting immortality, or if it is not ambitious enough to aim for it. My take comes from the fact that I still view longevity as the biggest change to disrupt aging by dealing with root causes instead of treating symptoms. And this context is completely missed or never written about by our friends in the media. They do to longevity, what they do time after time with female CEOs in tech, take it down.
I know that when you speak to people about the potential they become interested because of these types of points:
longer health-span
more quality of life (QoL)
empowered healthier aging
less frailty or time with diseases
As a woman, I also see the massive importance of communicating the potential to other women, as both fertility and menopause, could be greatly helped with longevity science. Never mind that women make 90% of household healthcare decisions. (Source: Yankelovich Monitor, M2W Conference)
Conveying realistic advancements that could benefit people in the immediate, are a great entry point of persuasion, that’s why I love to highlight the longevity companies paving the way in the consumer arena. No one realizes that they are the front line in the battle of perception.
And though some like to look down on the art of commerce; if you are a scientist you do have to sell, what else is a grant proposal? If you are founder, you have to pitch for investment. No matter what, we have to sell the story of longevity.
A lot of things in the world are not sold by their function or attributes, but by the stories we tell about them, or how they were presented. I say this because people seem to think the only way to prove or explain things is with data, and this can be farthest from reality outside research or Silicon Valley. The second richest man in the world, Bernard Arnault the CEO of LVMH, is not in the business of tech, or oil, or pharmaceuticals, he is in the business of selling stories. Stories that people are willing to buy into, not for their utility, but for how it makes them feel or look. Signaling: I have money, I have access.
Who would want to run a company that makes and sells products no one needs? - The second richest man in the world! And yet we can’t sell something people actually need???
Last week a discussion broke on Twitter on the latest article talking about the research being about “Immortality + Billionaires” 🙄. It went from the problem of language being used, the overhyping, to whether those who want immortality need to hide it, and so on.
I am thrilled to be organizing with our Future of Longevity.org team and VitaDAO a first-panel conversation on the subject. Hope that a lot of you who are not in the field chime in - we need your input!
Join the conversation on Wednesday, December 1st at 9 am PST / 12 pm ET 👉🏼
Longevity Survey ✍️
My friend @adamgries who's been investing + writing in Longevity created a cool 4 minute survey about perspectives on Aging and Longevity. He'll share takeaways and learnings with all participants. I enjoyed doing it and thought you might as well!