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Coca-Cola Will Test Artificial Intelligence To Enhance Creativity As It Resets Costa, BodyArmor

 


 

The Coca-Cola Co. will step into the future by testing artificial intelligence “to enhance creativity” as the beverage giant goes back in time to reset the Costa and BodyArmor brands.

In a partnership with management consultancy Bain & Co., Coca-Cola said it will test the technologies of OpenAI — whose systems include ChatGPT, DALL·E and Codex.

“I don’t think we’re even at the beginning of understanding what it might be able to do,” Coca-Cola chairman and CEO James Quincey said of artificial intelligence yesterday at the annual Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference.

“Can we use all their AI technology to drive and enhance creativity? As we’ve tried digital technologies across other aspects of our business, every time we’ve married the human with the technology, we’ve got a better result than either of the two alone.”

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ChatGPT is a chatbot that replicates human conversation. DALL·E creates images based on user word prompts while Codex converts written instructions into code.

In January of 2019, Coca-Cola acquired global coffee marketer Costa Limited for $4.9 billion just before the onset of COVID-19.

“The reality is the timing was very unfortunate — getting it just before the pandemic,” Quincey told financial analysts on a Q4 earnings call last week.

“If we can find a path, there's a tremendous growth opportunity for the Coke system there. We've got a vision. We now need to get the execution ramped up for Costa against the vision and in the coming years demonstrate that it holds water.”

At $5.6 billion, BodyArmor was Coca-Cola’s biggest acquisition — having started with a small investment in 2018 and concluding with 100% ownership in 2021.

But integrating it within the company’s system has not progressed smoothly.

Yesterday, Quincey cited “a bit of a bump in the road” for BodyArmor in 2022 “but there’s still huge potential and the system in North America has great plans—in combination with Powerade — to recharge and get back to growth in 2023.”

At 14%, BodyArmor’s unaided brand awareness in North America is “still relatively low.”

Asked about the company’s plans for the alcohol space—where Coca-Cola has nascent brands including Topo Chico and Jack Daniel’s & Coca-Cola — he said that in the long run alcohol has to be “material” to the company.

“We don’t need extra hobbies. We need extra things that are material at scale. At the moment we’re just in the very experimental stage.”

1 comment about "Coca-Cola Will Test Artificial Intelligence To Enhance Creativity As It Resets Costa, BodyArmor".
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  1. John Grono from GAP Research, February 23, 2023 at 7:20 p.m.

    What If?

    What if the competitve brands also used the same AI, not to analyse their brand but other or market-leading brands, and then gazump their competitor's probable advertising using the AI outputs?

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