Recently, I stopped by a WeWork in West Los Angeles.

Weeks earlier, news had broken that the company had incurred losses of almost $2-billion in the past year, its IPO had been postponed, and co-Founder and CEO Adam Neumann had been forced to step down. But inside the airy WeWork space off Jefferson Boulevard, it was business as usual. There were no kumbaya circles or other indicators of the brands much-hyped spirit of we. Mostly, there were just a lot of people working.

As we now know, work was never really the point for WeWork. Neumann aspired to elevate the worlds consciousness, reinvent the notion of workand by extensionlife itself. He turned out to be a false prophet. But WeWorks positioning as the ultimate lifestyle brand offers a window into understanding its role in consumers lives today.

Once, only a handful of iconic superstars such as Apple, Ralph Lauren and Nike aspired to become lifestyle brands. Today, however, becoming one is essential for those that want to remain relevant, even survive.

We tend to think of a lifestyle brand having a specific audience (urban millennials) and a specific look: Instagrammy aesthetic, pastel color palettes, clean san serif fonts. Think Glossier (skin care and cosmetics), Sweetgreen (salads), Outdoor Voices (athleisure). But, like WeWork, they also sell the conviction that by purchasing their product, customers will get to express a unique aspect of their identity, perhaps even become better versions of themselves.

Thats an important distinction, because when you constantly express your identity via social media, the brands you align yourself with increasingly become extensions of who you are. Which is why Id argue the devoted followings and stratospheric growth of such brands derive more from the stories they tell about themselvesand by extension, their consumersthan the actual goods theyre selling.

Three seismic cultural shifts are driving this trend.

A recentstudy from YouGovfound that 30 percent of millennials say they always or often feel lonely (vs. just 20 percent of Generation X and 15 percent of Baby Boomers). A wave of other recentresearchreveals the loneliness epidemic is real across a spectrum of ages and geographiesand can belife-threatening. Its easy to blame technology, but our fraying community ties (wedont know our neighborsanymore,we volunteer less than we used to, welive alonetoday more than ever before) also play a major role. Lifestyle brands, with their ready-made value systems and unique languages (visual, sensory, auditory) make us feel deeply seenand connect us to others who share similar values. And when a brand espouses a value system that gets us, the evidence shows well buyand buy in.

Our relationship to the institutional structures that once formed societys backbonefamily, religion, governmenthas changed dramatically in recent decades. Marriage rates areway down. Attendance at religious services is at anall-time low. Voter turnout isabysmal. We put our faith in institutions in part because they represent a larger system of shared values. But today, whats missing are shared systems of any kind that help us make sense of the world. Lifestyle brands jump in to fill the void, imparting meaning amidst chaos. One brand that skillfully leverages this idea is The National Rifle Association, which has become a formidable political lobbyer, largely because it drums up ideological fervor in its adherents by equating gun ownership with the most quintessentially American form of self-expression: personal freedom.

Whereas we once looked to community and societal institutions to help shape our belief systems, that task now falls on us. And were embracing the identity quest with gusto. Our jobs, marriages, children, friendships and side hustles are all vehicles for self-actualizing in ways that would have been considered unthinkable just two decades ago. Lifestyle brands thrive in this environment in part because they encourage us to believe that working on ourselves isnt narcissistic or selfish, but actually vitally important work.

Admittedly, acting as a stand-in for your priest, rabbi, BFF, therapist or life coach is a heavy burden for a lifestyle brand to bear. But when youre selling a belief system, responsibility comes with the territory. Its a task WeWork failed to master. But the companys downfall serves as a cautionary tale for other brands: if you tell consumers you stand for something largersomething that could potentially change their livesyoud better deliver on that promise, from your products to your hiring practices to your marketing plan to the behavior of your CEO. If you cant, then maybe youre not cut out to be a lifestyle brand in todays marketplace.

Maybe youre just meant to be a regular brand selling a regular productlike, say, office space.

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WeWork may have overreached but lifestyle brands aren't going anywhere. Here's why - AdAge.com