I don’t know if we’ll ever see a world where Kim Kardashian doesn’t make people look. The question won’t ever be, “Can a Kardashian or Jenner drive awareness?” Kim can drive awareness half-asleep. She can drop a paperclip. The post will go up, people will create content about it, mock it, defend it, explain why they don’t care, then boom, cut the checks.

The Kardashian machine doesn’t actually need everyone to love it to work; the machine feeds on reactions themselves. Awareness is literally the family business.

And it works! It worked for Kim Kardashian Hollywood the game, her Rizzoli Selfish book from 2015, remember when the Kimoji app “shut down the app store?” They did a million a minute remember?

The latest UPDATE energy drink campaign is fruit from the same tree. Kim turns the whole lawyer story arc into a punchline when she drops the line “I didn’t pass the bar. I raised it.” towards the end, giving the internet the fodder they need to run with. It’s self-aware. It’s effective. It annoys people because it works. The ad also plays with other parts of her public mythology, including the workaholic persona she leans into and rumors people have associated with her for a decade. It’s an entire campaign built to turn her scrutiny into an engine for awareness and distribution.

Tip your hat.

That kind of launch brings its own supply. It supplies attention, familiarity, PR, curiosity, even outrage from people who keep insisting they’re above the very thing they can’t help but engage with. The “Why are we still talking about them?” group who literally become the reason everyone is still talking about them.

But after the millions of views and billions of impressions, the can still has to survive real life. And that’s where celebrity reaches the end of its road. A celebrity or streamer can fill the room in 24hrs, but they can’t make someone want the thing again three months later on a random Thursday afternoon when they slept like shit and still need to give their A-game in the upcoming presentation and still have five hours of work left.

That’s where demand starts running its race.

Here’s The Truth

Supply and demand are usually explained as if the world behaves respectfully and people are rational. There is a product on one side, a buyer on the other side, and there’s price in the middle. It's packaged in a clean chart that pretends human behavior isn’t mostly a mix of insecurities, hunger, habits, aspirations, lust, boredom, pressures, and trying to pass for belonging to a group before getting checked for your credentials.

Real life doesn’t move like charts.

In real life, supply isn’t just inventory. Supply can be fame, press, controversy, strong visuals, a good joke, or a face that people already recognize. It’s anything that makes a product available for consumption or use.

Demand is harder. Demand is the habit that forms after that initial dopamine hit leaves and all you're left with is your next choice.

A restaurant can have a line outside and still not have demand for the food itself. People are desperate for proof they knew the cool thing before or while everyone else did. So sure, the food is involved, but did they come because they loved the omakase or because the plates have the restaurant’s name on them and the other day their favorite content creator was seen dining in the same space?

The same thing happens in the service industry. A photographer can go viral, have all the attention in the world, and still not have demand. People watch the work, like the work, mention the work, share the work, and will also forget that money is involved when it comes time to book the work.

Supply is being visible.

Demand is being chosen when there are other options.

That’s why this UPDATE ad is so interesting to me. It’s making a lot of promises and pitching itself in a category that isn’t starving for talent. The energy drink category is crowded enough that it can keep things honest. Every brand is making a promise, and the ones that win and have been winning know exactly what room they belong to.

Rooms can be physical, but they can also be a category, a habit, a scene, social context, a kind of person, etc.

Red Bull

Red Bull made energy feel like motion with consequences. They went and built an entire world where energy meant cliffs, airplanes, and gorgeous, uninsurable stupidity in the name of seeing how far we can take things; need wings to reach the sun? Grab a Red Bull.

Celsius

Celsius is less dirtbike energy, more Solidcore Reformer energy and in nicer clothes. It made the energy drink feel less like fuel for never leaving your bedroom and more like self-optimization with a ponytail or fresh out of Casa Amore.

Monster

Monster doesn’t want nicer clothes; some people want a can that looks like it could put a hole in the wall and taste like battery acid. They want loud engines; they want to be covered in blood and dirt. If they could roar when they yelled, they would.

To each their own. There’s a market for that.

The point isn’t that one room is better than the other room.

The point here is that each one gives demand somewhere to live.

UPDATE has to do the same.

The pitch is real. I believe the pitch, and I can understand the pitch. Caffeine-free energy, paraxanthine, no crash, zero sugar, all of that sounds golden in a climate where people fear death and aging. There are definitely people for that. Tons of them.

But what I don’t see is the address. Where does the demand go? Where does this product actually go in your day? Is it the focus can for the overbooked model who wants energy without looking like she drinks energy drinks? Is it the workday drink for people who want performance while looking like they’re the embodiment of Y2K fashion? Is it just a clean stimulant for people who have too much to do and would rather not vibrate through their work shift?

Any of those could work.

One of them has to win though.

Otherwise, the product remains trapped in the purgatory of being another celebrity brand that’s famous, legible, talked about, and still not needed.

Remember Sprinter Vodka Sodas?

For Example

Rhode is what it looks like when the brand is built with demand in mind.

When Rhode launched in 2022, Hailey Bieber walked in with similar supply. She had the face, the audience, proximity to the clean-girl aesthetic, and enough internet familiarity to make a small product line feel like it was enterprise-sized. But instead of trying to build a department store brand on day one, they built a routine for their customer. A small, legible, social-friendly, easy-to-understand, and even easier-to-duplicate routine. That routine led to over $248 million in EMV in 2024, and an e.l.f. Beauty acquisition for $1 billion last year.

Rhode knew where the product needed to live. It needed to live in the routine, in the shoulder bag, in the photo dump, and on the back of the phone case.

By the time Rhode moved into Sephora in 2025, it wasn’t just “Hailey Bieber’s skincare brand” anymore. It could stand on its own two feet. It became a beauty habit people self-identified with. Even e.l.f. framed the Sephora launch as Rhode’s first major retail expansion, which matters because you can’t hide behind your follow count on an endcap. People are either buying it, or they're not.

Vocabulary

• Supply /səˈplī/: Everything that makes something available to attention. Fame, PR, controversy, the right outfit, etc. Supply puts the thing in circulation.

• Demand /dē-mänd/: Attention that becomes action. It begins when a product fits into someone’s routine, identity, ambition, insecurity, or appetite. It’s the buy, the return booking, the referral; it’s the driving force behind someone choosing to go again when the performance stops.

• Borrowed Demand /bär-ōd dē-mänd/: When a product leverages urgency from something near it like a celebrity, a scandal, or a trend. It can create a rush, and it can also be bullshit; sometimes people want the story surrounding the product more than they want the product itself.

Hear Me Out

Source Material For Your Consumption

The Art of Flight

The Art of Flight is a Red Bull-backed snowboarding epic about Travis Rice and other elite snowboarders who chase remote terrain while taking the kind of risks where the only thing keeping you alive is delusions of grandeur and sharp senses. When you watch it, think about what you know about Red Bull and the brand’s behavior. Notice how there’s no begging for the can to be treated as special. They make the world around the can feel special. They make the world around the can so clear that the product feels native to it.

Things to also check out:

• Eugene Wei released a blog in 2019 about status being a service byproduct of social media platforms.

• Kevin Kelley’s 1000 True Fans

• Fyre Festival on Netflix is the perfect example of borrowed demand and the dangerous effect of human irrationality.

• Succession does an amazing job of showing you how a room decides value before any numbers are given or actions are taken.

Think About It

Are you confusing being seen for being wanted?

Pull Up

📍 From The Corner is reader-supported and written for people who have been noticing what’s been in front of us the whole time. If this sidebar spoke true, subscribe so the next one finds you.

📍 Post up with me on Threads, Instagram, and Cosmos.

📍My world’s at Kennyattas.co. My Photography, what I’m working on, and adjacent case studies and industry takes.

📍 Every room runs on an exchange. Tell me the one you experienced or caught first-hand in the comments. Each one, reach one.

Subscribe now