g and CRM. Recently, her role expanded to lead a unified omnichannel consumer experience team, reflecting the growing importance of digital marketing in the consumer journey. Inside Retail: In your entry, you discussed how Swisse’s use of TikTok marketing was so effective that the social media platform actually invited you on stage to share your learnings. Can you talk about your experiences using the platform? Alex Rienecker: At Swisse, we’re very fortunate in that we’re encouraged to be innovative, to think big and be ambitious. That’s allowed me to place bets on the future – to look outward, think about where disruption might come from, and try to get ahead of it. Social search is one of those areas, as is AI and how consumers use it in their shopping journey. I spend a lot of time thinking about what our consumers are doing, where they are, and then working backwards from that. I’m also surrounded by very smart people in my team who help fill in the gaps and make those ideas a reality. IR: You’ve talked a lot about placing bets – predicting how things will evolve. Is that based on gut instinct, data, research, or a mix of all three? How do you turn those hunches into results? AR: I spend a lot of time networking, both online and in person, and engaging with different communities – in the US, Europe, Asia and locally in Australia. I rely heavily on mentors, industry peers, agencies and publishers. Through those conversations, I explore what others are doing and find partners who can help us get there. IR: TikTok is especially interesting because five or six years ago, people might have assumed it was only for Gen Z and fashion. Now, everyone is there – including brands you wouldn’t expect. Your category isn’t an obvious TikTok success story from the outside, yet it’s clearly working. How did you identify that opportunity? AR: We’re in a really strong position as a market leader, but growth comes from finding new consumers. TikTok is where Australians are increasingly spending their time and that’s what drove the decision for us. About 18 to 24 months ago, during strategy planning, we were looking at macro environmental changes – things like AI and social search. We noticed that while people weren’t using these tools for work or for buying supplements yet, they were using them heavily in their personal lives – planning holidays, researching clothing and learning DIY skills. Consumer behaviour was shifting in other categories first. The question then became: What do we need to do as a brand to be ready and first when our category follows? IR: AI-assisted content production is a delicate area, especially when trust is so important in your category. How do you decide where to draw the line? AR: Placing bets also means accepting some failures. We’ve tried a lot of technologies that never made it live because the results or efficiency weren’t right – and that’s OK. Most of the AI we use is internal. We’re very mindful of consumer trust and have clear brand guidelines around how we will and won’t use AI. From a regulatory perspective, we also need to be very clear about when AI is used. For example, we might use AI to help with internal mock-ups or product files, but we wouldn’t use something like an AI-generated influencer. The guardrails are very strict for consumer-facing content, whereas internally – for storyboarding or training materials – we can be far more experimental. IR: We’re in this in-between phase where AI search is growing, but Google still dominates. How do you balance investing in current channels while preparing for what’s next? AR: Traditional search still holds a lot of volume, but I don’t think this is a zero-sum game. Total queries across all platforms are increasing. Many AI-driven searches are incremental – things people wouldn’t previously have searched on Google at all. Because of that, we see the need for incremental investment, rather than shifting resources away from existing channels, until there’s a clear decline. IR: Finally, where do you think we’ll be in five years? Will AI be buying things for us, or will physical experiences still matter? AR: I think it will be both. Right now, consumers are using AI for research and decision-making, but not necessarily for transactions – yet. Change has been incremental, not sudden. That will likely lead to some form of agentic commerce, but at the same time, consumers are questioning what’s real and what isn’t. That may drive a renaissance of physical experiences and human connection. Both extremes can exist at once, with a fluid experience in the middle – much like we saw with e-commerce, showrooming and webrooming. Being open, prepared and adaptable is what will determine which brands win. Download Inside Retail’s Top 50 People in E-Commerce, presented by Australia Post, in full here.