On a Tuesday evening in Brooklyn, a run club hosted by a creator with 180,000 Instagram followers gathers at 6:30 in front of a Bedford Avenue coffee shop. By 6:45, there are 220 people at the start line. The pace groups break up by speed, and the run threads through Williamsburg, across the Williamsburg Bridge, and back. By 8:00, most are still at the coffee shop, swapping numbers, planning next week. Most did not know each other before they started showing up. By summer, the same run club has six brand sponsors and a satellite chapter in Los Angeles. Similar patterns play out across the East Village book clubs, the Echo Park Pilates collectives, the Austin coffee-roaster-run crews, and the Miami morning runs along Ocean Drive. The brand sponsoring the run club is buying an audience that arrives every week, ready to be engaged.

The data behind the shift

According to The Cigna Group's 2025 loneliness research, a majority of Americans report experiencing loneliness, with Gen Z and Millennials reporting higher rates than older generations, even though both groups are more digitally connected than any prior generation. The World Health Organization has formally categorized loneliness as a public health concern. Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has highlighted the meaningful health risks of chronic loneliness in his advisory work. The most digitally connected generation in human history is also among the most isolated.

Loneliness has measurable effects on cardiovascular health, cognitive function, and immune response. Productivity researchers have identified social disconnection as a meaningful drag on workplace engagement. Educators have raised concerns about the effects of isolated childhood and adolescence on social skill formation. Public health, educational, and consumer brand establishments have shifted to treating loneliness as a category-defining societal condition that warrants structural interventions.

The category that grew because of this

In response, the in-person event economy aimed at this generation has expanded faster than nearly any adjacent consumer category. Eventbrite has labeled the broader trend 'soft socializing': small-format gatherings around shared activities like flower arranging, run clubs, bingo bar nights, book clubs, and pottery classes. The defining feature is that the connection happens organically through a shared activity rather than through forced networking.

In March 2025, Hinge announced a $1 million fund to support local social groups in New York, Los Angeles, and London. Bumble, Tinder, and a growing list of consumer brands have launched parallel in-person initiatives. The dating apps in particular have a clear commercial incentive. Their core product depends on the same generational social skills that loneliness has eroded.

The brands building the infrastructure

The brands responding thoughtfully to this shift are not running campaigns about loneliness. They are building physical containers for connection. Run clubs underwritten by Nike, Adidas, On Running, and Hoka. Coffee shops underwritten by media companies. Member-only social clubs underwritten by hospitality groups. The category is community infrastructure, not loneliness marketing.

Soho House, originally founded in 1995, now operates 48 Houses across 19 countries. Casa Cipriani, ZZ's Club, Aman Club, Core Club, Zero Bond, ZIL Miami, and Maison Estelle in London have all expanded internationally over the past three years. The products these brands sell are no longer just available at the venue. It is access to a community of peers. At the smaller end, run clubs, supper clubs, and creator-led experiences have proliferated. Verifiable in-person audience attention is the scarcest commodity in modern marketing. A run club with 200 weekly attendees in a major city is a more durable brand presence than the equivalent reach achieved through digital advertising spend.

How the most successful communities operate

A pattern is visible across the most successful in-person communities of the past three years. They have a single, clear, repeatable activity at their core: the run, the workout, the dinner, the book discussion. The activity is the reason people show up. The community is the reason people return. The most successful operators understand that they are running an event but building a community. The Bandit Running Club in Brooklyn, the Tracksmith Track Club programming, the Strava local run clubs, and the Solidcore community classes have all been built around the same model. Show up at a consistent time and place. Run a consistent route. Make the post-run gathering as much of the event as the run itself.

The wellness layer

Adjacent to the social-connection category is the wellness category that scaled in parallel. The Well, Equinox, Solidcore, Y7 Studio, and Barry's have all built community programming alongside their core fitness offerings. The fitness class has become, for many participants, the primary social fixture of the week. The 6 a.m. SoulCycle class, the 7 a.m. CorePower yoga session, the lunchtime Equinox class. These are not just workouts. They are the spaces in which a generation of urban professionals organizes its weekly social life. The wellness retreat operates on the same principle at a longer time horizon. The Aman, Six Senses, Canyon Ranch, and SHA Wellness Clinic experiences are edited communities of peers who arrive on the same day, eat in the same dining room, and form connections that often persist long after the retreat ends.

The opportunity is significant and structural. A generation has grown up online, discovered its limits, and is now actively looking for somewhere to show up in person. The brands that build that somewhere are the ones that the next decade will reward.

What the audience is asking for is not complicated. A time. A place. A reason to come back next week. The brands that provide all three earn loyalty that no digital channel can replicate. The brands that treat loneliness as a marketing opportunity rather than a condition their audience is actually living with lose that audience the first time they notice. The Tuesday-night run club at Bedford Avenue is a small thing. The audience showing up to it is the most valuable customer cohort in modern marketing. The brands that figure out how to belong there are the ones that win.