Roughly a year ago, not a single Thorne customer answered with “AI engine” when asked in a post‑purchase survey where they had first heard about the vitamin, supplement and wellness brand.
Today, roughly 5% of customers say an AI engine pointed them to Thorne, according to Chief Growth Officer Mary Beech on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
Beech’s job is to grow a 40‑year‑old brand in a category where, although most discovery still happens at the shelf level, an increasing share of consumers arrive through answer engines – which is a double challenge, because chatbots can be loose with the facts.
So Beech has been building a marketing org that behaves less like what she calls a “support function” and more like a growth laboratory. Beech runs brand and performance marketing, owns Thorne’s direct-to-consumer business and is directly responsible for revenue – as it should be, she says.
“After a very long career at amazing companies, I don’t think I’ll go back to being a traditional CMO,” says Beech, who spent time in top marketer roles at Scholastic, Kate Spade New York, Pixar Animation Studios and Ralph Lauren.
“Being accountable not just for awareness and acquisition metrics but for the business every morning – that makes me a better marketer,” she says.
This mindset really matters in wellness, a category Beech describes as both emotionally charged and deeply confusing. In a recent Thorne survey, 65% of people said they find it easier to do their taxes than pick a supplement.
Rather than chasing every viral ingredient trend or parroting whatever’s popular on social media, Thorne leans into education and proof by investing heavily in medically reviewed content, including detailed product pages that spell out testing protocols and a long‑running blog written and reviewed by Thorne’s in-house medical team.
That same body of structured, sourced content is becoming even more important, as AI dominates search and answer engines decide which brands and explanations to surface.
Throne’s strategy is to give both consumers and AI systems as much reliable, medically grounded information as possible to work with.
“We want to be there for consumers for education,” Beech says, “not just the transaction.”
Also in this episode: how Thorne built its AI wellness advisor, what it takes to earn the trust of skeptical Gen Z consumers and why marketers need the freedom to experiment and fail fast (although it really helps to have the CFO’s support).
