In the yr since OpenAI debuted ChatGPT, generative artificial intelligence (AI) has captivated trend watchers across promoting, technology and culture at large. Among consumer brands, the generative AI charge has been led by certainly one of the industry’s most storied names, Coca-Cola. In just nine months, the beverage giant has applied the technology in a wide range of ways, creating certainly one of the yr’s best campaigns and showing a way forward for other brands in 2024 and beyond.
While many brands were on the sidelines watching the AI arms race at the start of 2023, Coke was quick to reap the benefits of a partnership between management consultancy Bain & Company and OpenAI to launch its “Create Real Magic” platform. Since then, the marketer has used the technology for a lot of digital and experiential channels, with a recent campaign that took advantage of the buzz around the Las Vegas Sphere.
Marketing Dive spoke with Selman Careaga, president of the global Coca‑Cola category, about the soft drink giant’s partnership ecosystem, the launch of the AI-assisted Y3000 flavor as a part of Coke’s ongoing Creations platform dedicated to limited-run products and the way the company uses generative AI for each consumer-facing and internal tasks.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MARKETING DIVE: Coca-Cola was the first company to enroll for the Bain-OpenAI offering. What role has it played in your efforts this yr and the way does it relate to your other agencies?
SELMAN CAREAGA: First of all, it’s a partnership. For us, it’s not partnering with one or the other: We have a team of agencies and partners that we tap into. It’s a blurred world now. Bain is a consulting firm, OpenAI is a pacesetter in the technology space. Then you may have the WPP agencies, who’re also in a fast-forward world attempting to create digital experiences.
It’s an ecosystem of folks that we partner with and that’s the solution to move forward, creating things which can be a platform versus in the past where you’ll just get one agency, develop the platform, it could take months and then you definitely learn from that and pitch another ideas. Today, the world is more flexible in that regard.
We began with “Create Real Magic” using Bain and OpenAI, and we learned from that. We were very excited with our results. More than 120,000 pieces of content were posted and folks were interacting with the platform for greater than seven minutes. We took those learnings and we chosen the 20 top creators out of that platform and in the summer we met with them [at the Real Magic Academy] to debate how we could improve that as we move forward.
One of Coke’s iconic polar bears, created with generative AI
Courtesy of Coca-Cola
How did Coke’s AI experiments culminate with the Christmas campaign?
CAREAGA: What you might be seeing now for Christmas is a results of what we learned on the platform, mostly around how people can interact in a better way that’s more exciting. We consider we’ve made a platform now that’s rather more people-friendly to create a Christmas card that they will share with family members using Bain and OpenAI.
When we predict of our ecosystem of agencies that we work with, after all, we partner with WPP mostly. The gist of that Christmas idea — the world needs more Santas — got here from partnering with WPP, especially VMLY&R, as a part of their agency network. Within that, we had a chunk of video content and we’re coming up with two short movies that will probably be streamed. We’re tapping into the streaming world now as well; we learned from last yr that it’s a way for us to attach another way with people.
You mentioned the Real Magic Academy. How is generative AI affecting how Coke looks at the role of creators?
CAREAGA: You start with the experts first. You find out how they use that technology, how they interact with the assets that Coca-Cola has after which the right way to take it to a more mainstream, scalable experience, which is now what we’ve done with Christmas. I don’t think it’s nearly using AI and AI replacing all the things that we do, because we feel that AI is a tool to get faster, higher insights. The [human intelligence] component is critical. For us, HI is as necessary as AI.
How is generative AI helping Coke meet its needs around personalization at scale?
CAREAGA: In the past, you’ll create some piece of content or a quiz or a fantastic Christmas ad and hope people prefer it. Today, with the Christmas card for instance, it’s a two-way street by way of how we engage with people and permit people to play with such an iconic brand as Coca-Cola. That’s a giant shift from how we’d do things, especially the Christmas season, in the past. Now now we have a platform that enables people to interact with the brand in numerous, highly scalable ways.
Everything that we do, we at all times respect the values that Coca-Cola has stood by for the 137 years of its existence, whether it’s authenticity, optimism, uplifting and welcoming people to have small moments of happiness. We at all times start with that angle and whether it’s a tool, a technology or an experience, it has to live as much as those brand values that we’ve at all times had. As we move forward, we’ll proceed to respect the values but attempt to experiment and learn from these technologies as well.
Can you tell me about how AI was used throughout the launch of Y3000?
CAREAGA: Y3000 is our eighth iteration of Coca-Cola Creations. With Creations, it’s not a couple of latest product or a limited-time offer on the shelf, it’s really about creating experiences that tap into the digital world and the live world.
For us to provide you with a latest formula takes quite a little bit of time. I can guarantee that we were discussing the right way to work with AI even before it became such a hot topic. The intent was to make use of AI and HI to know how people consider the future: the emotions, the color, the flavors, the taste. We used those insights after which we worked with our R&D team and so they got here up with a formula for Y3000.
Once the product was launched, the Sphere represented a really unique opportunity to make use of probably the most modern out-of-home space that you may have today in the world and use it in a way that would not only create amazing visuals, but let people interact with our Y3000 platform via a QR code that’s creating lots of engagement.
How is Coca-Cola balancing using AI for internal and external marketing applications moving forward?
CAREAGA: We see it from each angles, including people-facing experiences or content that we will create — Y3000 and Create Real Magic are only a few examples, and hopefully next yr, you’ll see another exciting stuff coming up that we’re working on. But in the background, in our internal world of design and our processes, we’re tapping into it, whether it’s research or analytics that may create higher insights in a faster, more relevant way. We can use AI as a tool along with our human insights team to provide you with more relevant ideas we will work with.
With everybody beginning to do an AI project, we now have a team that understands the partners we’re working with and the way we will filter all the things AI-related. That’s something that we didn’t have in the past. It allows us to create more synergies.
As long as we feel that we will create something that folks can engage with and create experience for our brands, we will certainly proceed to make use of the tool. If we will make something faster and use higher insights as well, I believe we’ll proceed to make use of that tool.
Read the full article here
