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- [00:00]
Mary Beach
Foreign. Welcome to Ad Exchanger Talks, the podcast devoted to examining the issues and trends in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you.
- [00:24]
Ad Exchanger Host (possibly Sarah Sluice)
This episode is brought to you by Zadac Zad. Zeta's AI platform unifies paid, owned and earned media into one powerful growth engine, optimizing performance in real time and driving measurable outcomes with confidence. Don't Hope for higher ROI. Expect it with Zeta. Learn more at zetaglobal.com ADExchanger.
- [00:55]
Allison Schiff
Foreign I'm Allison Schiff, Managing Editor of Ad Exchanger, your hopefully favorite ad tech trade pub. And my guest this week is Mary Beach, Chief Growth Officer of supplement health and wellness brand Thorne. We'll talk about why Thorne made marketing the core growth engine of its business, how AI and answer engine optimization are reshaping content discovery in the wellness category and beyond. And what it really takes to earn the trust of skeptical, financially cautious, wellness obsessed Gen Z consumers. And lots of other good stuff too. But first, I've got to do a quick plug for our next event, Programmatic AI, taking place May 18th through the 20th in Las Vegas. As the name denotes, we'll be talking about all things AI related, from AI in media planning and agentic optimization to responsible AI and the human advantage. Thankfully, we still need humans. Podcast listeners get 10% off the price of their ticket when they use the code POD10. See you there, folks. Hey, Mary, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:01]
Mary Beach
Thank you so much for having me.
- [02:02]
Allison Schiff
Allison, what is one thing about you that not a lot of other people already know?
- [02:08]
Mary Beach
There's one thing about me not a lot of other people usually know. Well, I'm a big runner. Some people know that. But I came to running later in my life. I've run 13 marathons. I started at the age of 40. And uh, and I've recently. I won't say transitioned. Cause I'm not done with marathons. Um, but I did my first relay last summer. Uh, I did Hood to Coast, which you run 196 miles from the Mount Hood to the coast of Oregon with a team of 12. And I didn't want to do it. And then midway through, I was making a list of how we would do it better next year. So it was incredibly fun. And so I think I might be a relay runner as well now.
- [02:45]
Allison Schiff
Maybe there's hope for me. I read in high school, okay, okay. But it was, it was pretty basic. We didn't have a track, we had a parking lot. That one, one time around was I guess a tenth of a mile. So we would go ten times around that was a mile we would do, like sprints in front of the school, but like right on the, on the pavement.
- [03:10]
Mary Beach
I was not even that. I had. I had to run a mile to graduate from high school. And I fell off the curb while running that mile and got a concussion.
- [03:20]
Allison Schiff
Oh, my God.
- [03:21]
Mary Beach
And a floater in my eye that I still have. So I then didn't run again for however many years, 32 years, and only recently became. So there is hope. It is hope. If you find joy in it, then do it. If you don't find joy in it, find something else.
- [03:34]
Allison Schiff
You quite literally picked yourself up and embraced something, you know, that injured you. Well, I want to go back in time, not so far back, but back to some of the marketing roles that you've had over your career. Senior director of marketing at Ralph Lauren in the late 90s, SVP of Global Licensing and marketing for Disney and Pixar from 2000 to 2013. EVP and CMO at Kate Spade New York. Chief marketing and transformation officer at Scholastic. I love Scholastic. And now chief growth Officer at Thorne since the summer of 2024. And I mean, it's quite our resume of marketing roles. But before I ask the question, I want to ask for our listeners who might not be familiar. Thorne is a dietary supplement brand, but I know you also do a lot more. So just talk a little bit about what Thorne is, what your marketing challenges, and maybe what makes you guys stand out from other brands, like in the wellness space.
- [04:34]
Mary Beach
Absolutely. I mean, Thorne is a wellness company. It was founded 40 years ago to sell supplements to healthcare providers. There was a lot in the space then and now that was maybe a little iffy. And the founders wanted to do things the right way. And for many years, for decades, you could only buy thorn through your health care provider. That could have been a functional medical doctor, acupuncturist, nurse practitioner, you name it. We still sell through health care practitioners today. They're a very important constituency for us. But we went direct to consumer on Amazon around 2015 and then launched our own website in 2018. So we believe in getting people, you know, the right lifestyle and supplement recommendations that they need for their health journey, whatever that might be.
- [05:22]
Allison Schiff
It's a very different challenge when you're going D2C. I mean, hugely different.
- [05:26]
Mary Beach
Absolutely. And I think, you know, I think for us, my challenge walking in, obviously I walked into an incredibly strong brand with an amazing legacy. And the challenge was really and is one of awareness. It is a loud space out there. We are not at fiscal retail yet the majority of customers discover wellness brands or specifically supplement brands at physical retail. We haven't chosen to do that yet. So it's a game of, of getting your brand more known out there. And that has been a really fun marketing challenge to have. But also, you know, it's a challenge, it's a loud space when you're competing with so much going on in the world out there. So that, that's been our, our it continues to be the most fun part of the job.
- [06:11]
Allison Schiff
I want to talk about the growth part of your title. Yeah. Um, so your chief growth officer at Thorne has a CGO instead of a traditional cmo and that's by design. And the idea is that marketing isn't this support function, it's a growth engine for the business and it really should be treated that way. A lot of people talk that way, but they don't actually do it. And that's why your role goes beyond just brand and comms. You have D2C under you cross functional strategy, I'm sure a lot of other things. But talk to me a little bit about the thinking behind designing the org in this way and then what advantages this model gives you compared to, I don't know how you've functioned in your other CMO jobs in the past.
- [06:56]
Mary Beach
You know Thorne, because of the importance of the direct to consumer business, it is the place that the bulk of consumers transact and a lot of what we do to drive demand in that space, 100% influences demand across the the whole brand. I mean doctors are people too. They're seeing what you're doing out in the world and that influences them. So it's not these like finite customer groups or channels. And so they really wanted someone that could be thinking about brand demand, you know, brand strength, brand awareness, but also responsible for the way the brand showed up in the go to market and out in the world. And so that was the decision there for me personally after a very long career at amazing companies, as you said, I' I don't think I'll go back to being a traditional cmo. Being accountable not just to, you know, the top line metrics of marketing around awareness and customer acquisition and roas and all of the typical things. You look at also being accountable every morning to the business that I think makes me a better marketer. It forces better decisions. That tension that can exist between the short and long term is a tension that I have within myself and within my team. My team is also not in any way bifurcated by you're the e Commerce. Commerce people. And you're the marketing people. We work across, across both areas intentionally to ensure that that tension isn't there. We are always looking out for brand health while also looking out for business health. And I think that's the way modern companies need to run. Marketing is not, to your point, a side hustle, but by embedding us and making us responsible for the business, not just caring or accountable, but literally responsible to that P and L line, it makes a big difference in how you wake the morning and make decisions.
- [08:45]
Allison Schiff
So you spend a lot of time talking to the cfo, I guess, yes.
- [08:50]
Mary Beach
CFO and finance are, you know, some of my closest relationships at the company. And really, at the end of the day, you know, I've. I've been very lucky to have positive CFO relationships throughout my career. I think most marketers do. It's not an easy relationship. There's a lot of demand. You want to have a. You want to have a CFO who has some experience with marketing, who is open to taking risks. And the agreement that I really have with our current CFO is, you know, gives me complete permission for experimentation. And I agreed with him. I'll fail fast if I'm going to fail. So we try new things a lot. Again, when you're looking to hold, you know, we have a metric for ourselves of, you know, we want most of our marketing channels to have 50% new customer ratio. That's a high, high bar. And we get higher in many places. You know, we're having to experiment and try new things a lot. And so we just, you know, I always say to the team, if something doesn't work so well, you could spend, you know, your hours and your time and your resources making a bad thing marginal, or you could take something that's working well and make it amazing. And that's where we tend to lean our time. We kind of give up. Not entirely, but we'll say, like, okay, that didn't work for us. Now let's talk about why now isn't the right time, and let's move on to something else. And so that's been really effective and given us a lot of permission with the CFO to take bets and try new things.
- [10:14]
Allison Schiff
Yeah, you just got to be nimble.
- [10:15]
Mary Beach
Yeah. And have the metrics. That's the other thing. I mean, I. I started my career at a time when, like, you were running two page spreads in Vogue, and that was like your, you know, your mark. You had no data. You're just like, yay. I think it worked there's so much more data now at fingertips. So to be able to turn around and show your return on ad spend or show your new customer ratio, show the click through rate, if that is the traffic, the conversion, all of those things provide great comfort. And so the setting up the data structure and having that and we do has really enabled us to fly in that area.
- [10:49]
Allison Schiff
How else might you be defining growth? Like, are there any interesting metrics that you're looking at? Things like, well, customer lifetime value is pretty basic but like mindshare in the wellness space, that kind of thing?
- [11:03]
Mary Beach
Yeah, I think for us one, one thing that is really important is just consideration of visit visiting the site to learn more. People don't. You know, some people start a wellness journey, they get a, like in a day, they get a piece of news from their doctor, they turn to okay, I'm on a path. Some people have, you know, a proactive reason of like my mom just got, you know, a bad health experience and I want to not have that same thing happen to me. Most people, it's a reactive or proactive sort of emotional journey. And so we want to be there for those consumers for education, not just transaction. There's so much confusion in the space of wellness, which we can talk about more. But we did a wellness confidence gap report earlier this year, late last year, but it came out early this year. And one of the things that just shocked me is 65% of people find it easier to do their taxes than to pick a supplement.
- [12:01]
Allison Schiff
Stop.
- [12:02]
Mary Beach
And like yes. And I'm just like, I like if you, if you have one, W2, fine taxes aren't so bad. But like I have a husband who's a freelancer and we have reams of them. It's complicated. They change the rules every year. And I consider myself pretty smart. So I'm like, okay, this has got to be easier to pick the right supplement for you because there's so much information out there and we want to make that easier for people. So we are looking at that consideration as really important and as a win and not just looking at conversion as the outcome. Because you might be on a couple steps of your journey and supplementation might not be the best, best first choice for you, but that education is helpful along the way. So I think the turning to education and making sure you have metrics for the non conversion activities is really important or they become sort of again an extra or a side piece that you don't want to put money behind. So that's been something we very much
- [13:01]
Allison Schiff
focused on and health is also a very emotional topic. And I think people get very emotional when they make those decisions. And I mean, a big part of how you think about growth has to be the fact that in a world of, you know, lies and misinformation, you know, the, that travels, what is the phrase, like halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. And that is just, it's true in general, but it's very true in the wellness space. And you know, people, you want people to think of you when they're looking for credible answers. And that ties into this campaign that you guys just launched in January called Now I Know spotlights the confusion you were talking about that consumers face with wellness related decision making. It's very overwhelming. It's hard to know what's true. And I think it also reflects the changing digital landscape because AI is becoming a primary discovery tool. You have to think about AI enabled optimization and answer optimization beyond just SEO. So talk to me a little bit about the campaign and then let's, yeah, let's talk about the AEO stuff because that's really a fascinating and kind of wild west bestie topic.
- [14:16]
Mary Beach
I agree. You know, I think that when I think about the Now I Know a campaign, I'll go back to the wellness confidence gap. But also over half of our customers, close to 60% are millennial and Gen Z. And one of the thing that can, it's not the generation I am a member of, I'm proud small Gen Xer. It's a small Gen X population. But the Gen Z and Millennials, they have extreme interest in the wellness space at a much earlier age than I think other generations did, which I deeply admire. And I, when I say wellness, I mean emotional wellness, I mean physical wellness. I mean every aspect of, of how you're going to mental wellness, how you feel good. And they understand that performance is not just running a marathon, it's being able to show up every day for yourself, for your friends, for your family. And so when we saw the level of confidence, like you have a population of people who are motivated in your space, but they find it like just overwhelming and confusion confusing. That to us was just like, wow, that is such an opportunity as a brand that's been around for 40 years with the highest quality, four rounds of testing, every certification you can imagine, you know, vertical manufacturing, you know, in house labs and testing. So we're just like, we have all of the goods and we have a motivated yet confused population and we need to merge these two things together. So now I know was really about delivering a campaign that had two layers. The first layer, we called it Know me show me internally. But first layer was Know me. So we launched a brand anthem that we produced with the agency P3 that really reflected the consumer back to them. This is a consumer for whom excellence is a high bar. And they're always trying to lift that bar. And we wanted to reflect them back to them. While also the show me side, which was giving them the facts. And they don't want platitudes, they Want to know. 4 rounds of testing NSF certified for sport what are your COAS? They have so many details, what we call our proof points that they were interested in. When we tested specific proof points, I thought, okay, one or two things will rise to the top. Like they'll want to know that it's highly absorbable or they'll want to see clinical evidence on every ingredient. Like they all tested well because people just have interest in the details and the transparency around the details. And so we, the campaign is multilayered in that we have pieces that are around our rigor in terms of testing and clinical evidence, our expertise in the space, the guidance, like, hey, we don't even need you to buy, we just want you to learn more. And we have, you know, tons of articles and medical collaborations and all of that patient education that we do through Mayo Clinic. And then we have community, which is the athletes and the doctors and the scientists that work with us. And then we had a, you know, a kind of bottom of proof points of just delivering by product. What is, what do we do and what are the benefits to you? And so I think that really allowed us to address hopefully this upper funnel awareness. But then offering the goods in terms of, hey, this is a brand you could trust. This has the efficacy, the quality, the purity that you're looking for before you put it in your body.
- [17:39]
Allison Schiff
And in terms of the show me, I want to talk about that from an AI perspective because your teams have to adapt your content pipeline and your data architecture so that Thorn is showing up accurately in generative answers and in voice assistants. Because you can do all this work and then it gets, gets twisted. And this isn't just about traditional search results anymore. People are having a conversation with the information you put out there, but it might not be the information you put out there. And it's not really just about gaming algorithms either. Like you're trying to, as you were just saying, teach them like what Thorn is. So how do you do that?
- [18:17]
Mary Beach
It's you know, over the course of your career you look at the opportunities. You know I was around when E Commerce launched and got to be part of launching E Commerce at, at Kate Spade and I look here and say, wow, I'm getting to be part of an entirely new way of discovery. About 5% of our consumers today when we we do a survey at the end of your transaction that says how did you hear about Thorne? They hear about us through an AI engine and that's pretty amazing when that number was 0% right like a year ago and you're already at 5%. So like that just every day it shocks me when I'm looking at it. And we are really, really lucky in that. For over a decade Thorne has published a blog called Take five Daily and this blog is written by our in house medical team. It's written by our patient education partnership with the Mayo Clinic. We have a number of articles from them on there. We have pieces from third party collaborators, whether those be athletes, trainers, scientists, doctors. And so we have reams of data that has been out there and being served for SEO purposes and available to consumers on our site. So we very quickly discovered that and it's quite structured, it was quite structured from the beginning in terms of ease of consumers reading it. We had to take what was very complex medical information and not dumb it down but make it understandable for a non healthcare practitioner and that just was brilliant in terms of being able to have the answer engines read and understand thorn and understand our credibility very early on. So one of the metrics that a lot of brands are looking at in the AO space is visibility and we have an incredibly strong visibility score versus our competitors. And I do credit this blog written for consumer understanding, written for guidance over the years, not all of a sudden let's put a bunch of content together because we have to get something up for AEO that has really enabled us to show up well in those answer engines. So I do want to touch on if you're open to it, just the confusion that occurs through AI. One of the things we decided to there's a lot of positives that come from AI and one of the things that as it came around that our chief science officer brought the opportunity to us on was to use AI to help consumers get to the right supplement for them. I mean at the end of the day we will always be pushing the quality bar higher but we are at the tip top of quality. But what we can do a better job of reams better is getting you the right supplement. That's going to work for you. And that has a lot to do with your needs. It has to do with your biology and has to do with your genetics. Has to do with information that we can't necessarily find out from you on search. So if you put in search sleep, you're going to see a whole bunch of sleep products. We have like 11 or 12 and you might click on melatonin, but you actually have trouble staying asleep, not falling asleep. So you're going to buy melatonin, you're going to take it, you're still going to wake up at 2am because what you actually need is pharma Gaba or L Theanine or Deep Sleep complex. You need another product that's specific to your issues. And is your sleep issues related to perimenopause? Are your sleep issues related to, you know, the temperature of your room? Some other things. So we launched last year Taya, our AI Wellness advisor. And she is. We, we do use the she pronouns with her. She is on the site and she is trained on the 40 years of medical history. She is not trained. She does not pull from the Internet. She is trained on like reams of information and data. And you can ask her and engage with her on questions. You know, I'm having trouble falling asleep. I'm having trouble like sleeping through the night. I'm having trouble with whatever it is. And you can share data and get very personalized. Not just product, but also lifestyle recommendations. Sometimes product isn't the first thing she serves up because actually what you're saying is like, okay, it sounds like maybe you need to, to make your temperature in your room cooler. You need to put up some darkening shades. Maybe you're going through something. Maybe it's related to your gut. Maybe it's related to like mental health at the end, you know, at the end of the day, like how you shut down your brain to be able to sleep. And so she makes both lifestyle, because we've always believed in lifestyle and product. I had an influencer who had been working with us for a long time, like just using Thorn. She said, I love Thorne because you put skills before pills. And I never heard it said that way, but I was like, I like that expression. But we do, we do put skills before pills. And so all of that lifestyle data was already available. And so we really pleased with, you know, how Taya, how people are using her and, you know, want to encourage people to come there to get their data about, about Thorn and just more generally about the ingredients that can help them because she isn't. Again, always pushing products. She's often just talking about, you know, the different ingredients that could help you on your journey. So we're pursuing AI from both paths. What it can unlock us in terms of, you know, taking so much information and personalizing it for you, but also in terms of how we can be discovered out in the world.
- [23:43]
Allison Schiff
Well, unlocking the power of AI, that'll be pretty much what we talk about for the whole second half of this episode and also beyond. So stick with us. And yeah, you'll hear more about that.
- [24:15]
Ad Exchanger Host (possibly Sarah Sluice)
I'm Sarah Sluice, Editorial director of Ad Exchanger and I have with me here the chief Growth Officer of Zeta, Ed C. Who leads the charge in helping businesses and CMOs achieve measurable, high impact marketing outcomes. Thanks for joining us, Ed.
- [24:32]
Ed C.
Sarah, great to see you. Thanks for taking the time with me today.
- [24:36]
Ad Exchanger Host (possibly Sarah Sluice)
Yeah. So what's different in the year 2026 about how brands and agencies are approaching ad tech?
- [24:46]
Ed C.
So, Sarah, I think it's a really, really interesting time. For years we've all been talking about ad tech, MMAR tech and, and all these different things. But at the end of the day, as a marketer, what am I responsible for doing? Helping make people make marketing decisions, helping them make buying decisions through a series of touch points. AdTech and MarTech are actually artifacts of our history of how we bought media and how we managed our own touch points. What's finally happened with today's technology is we can get release some of those artifacts and bring ad Tech and MarTech together. I think that's going to be a huge thing. We're seeing more and more people doing that and it's releasing marketers to have the freedom to really say, how do I reach Sarah? How do I recognize Sarah? How do I reach Sarah? How do I offer something relevant? And how can I see the results of the communications I'm having with Sarah?
- [25:43]
Ad Exchanger Host (possibly Sarah Sluice)
So yeah, let's talk more about that freedom that comes from blurring the lines between ad tech and Martech. What else happens when you kind of unify things and blur them, bring them together?
- [25:55]
Ed C.
Well, a couple of things happen, Sarah. Instead of saying, how much did this channel produce? We actually started saying, how profitable is Sarah? To us, it changes from measuring a channel to doing what marketers are really responsible for, creating a profitable customer and saying, what did each touch point, what did each offer? What did each thing actually contribute to the profitability of that particular customer and allows the marketer to actually say, I'm managing a supply chain and I'm managing the most important supply chain to a company, the customer supply chain.
- [26:35]
Ad Exchanger Host (possibly Sarah Sluice)
So how does that unified customer view then empower marketing teams and agencies once they know about this profitable customer?
- [26:45]
Ed C.
Well, one of the big things here is it lets them do the really unsexy side of marketing waste management. And that is incredibly important. Making sure that you're able to stop the wasted impression, the extra touch point. We have all probably in the last two weeks, bought something and then got another impression trying to sell you the thing that you just bought. It helps take those things out, things that you would never buy. It allows us as marketers to say, I am being able to recognize a pocket of opportunity with precision, I can reach that pocket of opportunity again with precision. I can be more informed of what relevant items I can bring to that person, and I can leave enough data to actually say what's working, what's not, and see the results. It's incredibly empowering, it's incredibly freeing. And as a marketer, it helps you have a better conversation with your cfo, which some of those conversations haven't always been so positive.
- [27:45]
Ad Exchanger Host (possibly Sarah Sluice)
Okay, so less waste, more profit, better meetings with your cfo. Thank you, Ed, for weighing it all down for us.
- [27:55]
Ed C.
And it slices bread along the way, too.
- [27:58]
Ad Exchanger Host (possibly Sarah Sluice)
Wonderful. Thank you to Ed and thanks to Zeynep for supporting our podcast. Thank you, us.
- [28:03]
Ed C.
Thank you, Sarah.
- [28:20]
Allison Schiff
All right, welcome back. And something I wanted to ask you before the break. Did you guys develop Taya in house? What was the process?
- [28:28]
Mary Beach
This entirely. So we, our chief science officer, we're very lucky to have Dr. Price for quite some time, and we hired computational biologists and built it in house because we needed to ensure that it not only had, you know, the best possible data for consumers, but that it was also following DSHEA regulations, which are the regulations that regulate the. The supplement industry in terms of the Dietary Health and Safety Act. I don't, I'm not very good with acronyms, but it's very important to ensure that, you know, supplements can't cure disease. So if you ask it about curing a disease, we need to ensure it's not. And that's some of the challenge with AI out there. Like, it's, you know, if you're going on another AI engine, you might end up with things. So we needed to ensure that everything was built in house to give the best information to consumers about what can support them on their health journey and, you know, help them from that regard. But be cautious in terms of making. Making untrue claims, which is, you know, you never want to do that with a consumer and put them in a, in a bad place or a place of hope that doesn't exist. So we, we did it entirely, entirely in house and it was quite, quite an undertaking. But I'm incredibly proud to work with that team every single day. And now to have the kind of joy of introducing Taya to, you know, new, new consumers as they come through. She's a choice. You can actually choose to engage with her on the site, but she's also frequently just powering things behind the scenes. So we're doing a test right now on Smart Search with Taya so that not dissimilar from Google Gemini. People today when they type in sleep are actually not just looking for sleep products. They're actually looking for a fuller answer around things. So we're piloting that, we're piloting ways for her to help you immediately compare and contrast products because some people do want to understand what the difference between Pharma Gaba and Alanine. And so we're looking ways to kind of put Taya and what underpins her, which is our Thorns GPT. How do we put that in your path to make your discovery and research? You know, wellness consumers do a lot of research. Gen Z and millennials do a lot of research. How can we make that easier for you without you choosing to talk to a chatbot, which not everybody wants to do?
- [30:49]
Allison Schiff
Battaya is something that you can control. And then there's just the Wider universe of GPTs and chatbots and all of that. And so you're clearly learning what AI algorithms like to eat. It's structured product data, scientific research, wellness education packaged into AI readable formats, all of that. But how are you, or can you make sure that your content is sort of like resistant to remixing or misinterpretation by generative tools like do you have a system for fact checking or reputation monitoring and AI outputs? There are whole startups that do this, and I don't think it's science yet,
- [31:27]
Mary Beach
but it is not science yet, I would say. I mean, first and foremost, we focus on having the information that we put out there be the best possible information. So that is just. Our accountability is to ensure that, you know, anything that is on our site is, is accurate and true and easy for consumers to understand. We do use tools that help us monitor what's going on out in the space and, you know, correcting, correcting misinformation to ensure if we're the source of that misinformation and then not leaning into that misinformation, I think that's really important. You know, there sometimes are trends out there that are trends based on misinformation. You will never see Thorne jumping on that trend and saying like, hey, take, you know, people are saying vitamin D, you know, does whatever. We're not going to be the people that are doing that. We're always looking back at the clinical studies to ensure what's there and we do hope people will also. And I think they do come to Thorne to fact check for themselves. Because the data that's available on our site is so rich on a typical pdp, on a typical product landing page, on, on the blog pages. So you're able to find a lot of great rich information that's sourced. That's another thing we do. We do source our information within articles and which also helps the answer engines be smarter as well.
- [32:45]
Allison Schiff
What about traditional SEO though? Like how much will things like keyword rankings and click throughs and bounce rates, all of that stuff, how much does it still matter? I think it still matters now, but I don't know, things are changing so quickly.
- [32:58]
Mary Beach
I've heard people say there won't be, you know, there won't be Google search in, you know, five years, three years. SEO is still really important to us. Google is still a really important channel for us and terms of brand discovery. And so we still focus on SEO as well as AEO and we're ready for wherever the world takes us. But today I do think it still matters. Thankfully, a lot of the tenants and rules that you used for good SEO apply to AEO in terms of the structuring information, the accuracy of the information, the way it shows up on your site. So we're able to apply those and a lot of the partners that are out there are offering you the tools behind both. So we work with an agency called always worked with an agency called Crowd for SEO and they support us in aeo.
- [33:46]
Allison Schiff
What about how these dynamics, just the total transformation of search and information discovery, how is that changing how you invest? Where are the biggest budget reallocations happening? Because AI really is reshaping search and media. Even though SEO tactics are still important, people still do use Google search. Like are you pulling money away from traditional SEO or social, putting it into things like structured data and schema optimization, More owned content experiences or is that just new budget?
- [34:16]
Mary Beach
Yeah, we, we haven't had to pull anything out for content creation because we already did have very rich budgets there. So again, I'm not in a situation where I have peers who are, who sort of had to stand up a content engine because they, they had a content engine of like advertising content, but they didn't have educational content. We had that, we had the budget. We had the more even the budget, the resources, the in house teams to do that writing. So we were very lucky there. I think for us it's been about experimenting more with some partnerships that have shifted budget. So we did a Healthline activation earlier this year because answer engines really do love credible sources like Healthline. And so ensuring that our content is showing up in places like that, that we see answer engines pulling from that is shifting some dollars into sponsorship spaces that we, we might not have been in before. And so, and maybe pulling out of other, you know, places where we were trying advertising. So, you know, podcast is a space ironically where we struggled a little bit from an advertising perspective. And so pulling some dollars out in something like a Healthline has been, you know, very productive for us in that space. But again, the content side, I feel very lucky. I walked into a brand, to be honest, in 2024, over the summer that had a very healthy editorial team and a medical affairs team dedicated to those blog articles and an existing relationship of a decade with the Mayo Clinic for patient education pieces. So we were, I was quite lucky in that front.
- [35:51]
Allison Schiff
And Healthline is interesting because it is a great resource, but there was also last year the fine that they got from the California Consumer Privacy Protection Agency because there was, you know, some untoward targeting going on, making assumptions about people's health conditions. And in the wellness space like we were talking about, these are emotional decisions, they're sensitive decisions. People want to protect information about themselves. So how do you think about that? Just being really careful and respectful, but still finding the people with the information they really do need, but doing it in a respectful way that's also not going to trip any regulatory wires.
- [36:31]
Mary Beach
No, I mean, we are, we have to be so incredibly careful of all of our targeting, targeting, all of our marketing messaging, I mean, more so than any place. Again, I'm new to the wellness space, medical and regulatory review everything that we do before it goes out the door. And that is. And we don't, it's part of the process and we have no problem doing it because we want to make sure we're not making false claims, false targeting, making sure that we're reaching people where we are and not getting overly specific in that. So you do have to. Again, we are not, we can't, can't cure, you know, disease. So our targeting is not Very specific in that, in that way. It's really more about looking for people who are clearly giving you signals that are there on a wellness journey. They're looking for supplementation. They're in the VMS space more largely or searching for terms that they might be looking for help around.
- [37:20]
Allison Schiff
What is VMS is full of acronyms,
- [37:24]
Mary Beach
but vitamins, I didn't know that one either. Vitamins, minerals, supplements. It's the overall category name for supplements. I, I have dyslexia and one of the adult challenges with dyslexia is I'm terrible with acronyms, which I've heard from some other dyslexics that that is the case for them too. So I, I basically have to memorize them if I'm going to remember them.
- [37:45]
Allison Schiff
So the world is altogether full of too many acronyms. Things are made into acronyms that don't need it at all. Like are you just trying to sound smart with are you doing here?
- [37:54]
Mary Beach
I'll get, I'll get texts from my 20 year old with like everything is an acronym. And I'm like, I don't have, I have to Google everything because I do not know what that means.
- [38:01]
Allison Schiff
So I have to Google some. I have some young colleagues who are in their early and mid 20s and I will sometimes google things they send me because I don't know what they're saying.
- [38:12]
Mary Beach
It's either I don't know it or again, my dyslexic brain cannot understand that combination of letters and turn it into a phrase. So it's definitely a challenge. But, but keep keeps me on my toes.
- [38:24]
Allison Schiff
Well, I want to talk a little bit more about Gen Z because that's a generation. They are fundamentally redefining wellness. Like you were saying, they're values driven. I think they're pretty skeptical. They're tech native, they're quite financially cautious. They care about ingredients and transparency. So, you know, it's clear what kind of marketing and messaging would resonate with, you know, Gen Z as a generation. But, but do you find that to be consistent across platforms and channels, like how do you have to atomize what you do to speak to Gen Z in different places to meet their expectations?
- [38:57]
Mary Beach
So when it comes to Generation Z or reaching any of the generations out there, I think absolutely channel is important. You need to find the right channels where they are spending their time. But what we found really interesting, we also have to develop content that's specific by generation. And what interests me is Generation Z's kind of desire for truth and transparency. And what I would call just straight up proof. We have discovered that the content that we put out under what we describe as rigor. So that's our clinical evidence on every ingredient. That's the four rounds of testing. That's anything to do with certifications. That type of content plays best with Gen Z. Whereas as you look at millennials and older, oftentimes what I would call our community content, which is influencers, scientists, athletes, performs better. It's not that influencers don't impact Gen Z for sure it does, but they kind of, they see that that's like a piece of the journey, but then they want to follow up with that proof. Okay, so why are they saying that it's so efficacious? Okay, here are the reasons why they're saying it's so efficacious. Why are they saying that, you know, thorn's the best? Okay, I want to be able to, like, look at that myself and see, oh, clinical evidence on every ingredient. Let me go to the site. So I do think you mentioned skepticism. I do think there's a level of skepticism with Gen Z that leads them to, like, do their homework. And we want to be able to provide that for them and provide that, you know, homework information at the right path. Path along their journey. Like right places along their journey.
- [40:35]
Allison Schiff
Would you call it healthy skepticism?
- [40:38]
Mary Beach
So I think you should always be a little skeptical.
- [40:41]
Allison Schiff
Speaking of wellness joke.
- [40:43]
Mary Beach
Yes, I love that. Okay, healthy skepticism. Yes.
- [40:47]
Allison Schiff
What about other types of influencers? So maybe not celebrity. You know, I, I hesitate now to say that, you know, certain influencers aren't celebrities because they are. It depends on the audience. If an audience thinks you're a celebrity, you're a celebrity. Just because you might not be in Us Weekly or whatever, but are you finding certain influencers and certain types of creators resonate more with Gen Z?
- [41:06]
Mary Beach
We just stood up our creator program last year and I know that is something that probably a lot of brands will be like, oh, wow, that was late. But it was. And I think we wanted to enter it really carefully. We wanted to have it, you know, well managed and run and be able to partner with the right people and have it be really an opportunity for others to tell our story. But it needed to have the right amount of education for those people. We find a broad range of individuals work like I think most people are finding. It's not always the biggest followings. It's often people just with a really engaged niche community that follows them because they are a trainer or because they're also on a perimenopause journey or because they also, you know, are, you know, getting stronger and wanting to, you know, use creatine. Whatever the, whatever the reason may be, we definitely find folks that work in what I would say more of like performance space perform really well. But we also have a lot of very successful lifestyle influencers who will talk about wellness as one aspect of what they do, not all of it. So it's been a really fun to launch the program, to see it grow and to learn a lot about our customer through what resonates best with them
- [42:18]
Allison Schiff
once a partnership is live. What's your success framework? Are you looking primarily at performance, data traffic conversions and stuff like that? Do you also look at it on a softer quote, unquote outcome?
- [42:30]
Mary Beach
Yeah, it's mainly softer around engagement with the content. We certainly look at the performance of the content in terms of, you know, does it convert, does it purchase? But sometimes just the impressions, but more the engagement with the posts. Again, health. You have to have an opportunity to ask questions. You have to have an opportunity to engage. And so the content being engaged in like, like it's not a thumb, you know, thumb flipping activity to really think about what's the right sleep supplement for you. So you want something where people are watching it for a longer period of time and really engaging. So we're still learning more, but that's what's been helping us judge success at the moment.
- [43:10]
Allison Schiff
So we're nearing the end and I wanted to talk about AI, but from a different perspective because we've talked a lot about how search is changing because of generative AI, but more tactically, like what are some concrete ways that you might be using AI across the marketing and growth stack, like for measurement or creative development or versioning, segmentation, customer support, you know, and what's actually working versus what feels still kind of experimental. Sure.
- [43:37]
Mary Beach
I think what still feels experimental is the use of AI in our creative funnel. We have not, I would say, successfully implemented. We're using it in terms of mock ups, in terms of, you know, faster storyboarding, but in terms of actually creating imagery, we're not there yet. I think our bottle is really hard to reproduce in AI. We didn't create it that way, but when Droga5 did it, it has ended up being very hard to recreate well there. And so I think there's also a, you know, transparency, authenticity to the brand and the truth that you want to make sure that you have that. That where we're having a lot of fun with it and I really enjoy is we have A Persona. We call it Persona iq. But we have a model in which we can put all of our customer data. So everything I know about our core customer, who we call our proactive optimizer and I have a panel of like 20 of them that, that are built in this AI and we can ask questions to them, we can feed up, up, you know, ideas, we can feed up emails. And it doesn't replace first party research or just human decision making. But it's really interesting to get insight that you might not have thought of from actual consumers. Now just like you do in focus groups, you have to ask smart questions. You can ask it a question and they'll with certainty as all AI does give you a very emphatic answer and then you follow up and say, well, but do you actually use supplements for that reason? Oh yes, we just told you we don't. But we absolutely, we just told you that's a terrible idea. But we all use that product and so you have to be smart in your questions. And we still do a lot of first party data research. I mean we are always talking to consumers about their need states about what, you know, what problems they have right now, but what they might think about a new product. But it is great in terms of along the marketing journey to like, like run something by the, the panel and get really interesting answers. So that's. And we rolled it out to our whole team and our whole team is using it for different reasons. Like hey, at an event, what type of food would you serve with this? Or hey, at this email does this headline seem attractive? And I think it's giving people just some confidence and some new ideas which has been fun.
- [45:56]
Allison Schiff
It's a gut check. And when you say gut check, Oliver the dog has an opinion.
- [46:03]
Mary Beach
Yes.
- [46:05]
Allison Schiff
You're speaking of people still having a gut to check. Right. The human element is very important here.
- [46:10]
Mary Beach
Yes, absolutely. And I think that's always going to have to be the case and I hope it is always the case.
- [46:18]
Allison Schiff
So last question, it's a desert island question. So like kind of a silly one. But I'm curious, if you were stuck on a desert island with just like one wellness project, a thorn or otherwise, what would it be and why?
- [46:32]
Mary Beach
Well, I mean the smart thing to say would be an electrolyte because I'd be a little concerned about my water intake on a desert island.
- [46:39]
Allison Schiff
Very practical.
- [46:40]
Mary Beach
But the product I can't live without is a probiotic. I just feel much better when my, you know, there is a lot of science around the gut brain connection and I definitely feel very strongly that in my own life I know when I'm not taking my probiotics. So I would take our complete biotic because it's in a stick pack and it tastes a little bit like Tang. So that would probably give me a happy lift in the morning. I wouldn't have to have water to take a cap capsule. I could just put some powder on my tongue. So that's my less practical.
- [47:08]
Allison Schiff
The only supplement that I take is for, for like hair growth and thickness and like nails. But that doesn't sound very practical on a desert island. Right? That wouldn't.
- [47:17]
Mary Beach
It seems less necessary. I mean, you do you. But you. You wouldn't really have a mirror to
- [47:22]
Allison Schiff
know, but yeah, exactly.
- [47:36]
Ad Exchanger Host (possibly Sarah Sluice)
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