Colgate-Palmolive Seeing Success With AI-Fueled Promotion Schedules
It’s not easy to ride the hype cycle into productivity, but Colgate-Palmolive is seeing its efforts pay off both internally and with its retail partners.
Speaking at an investors' conference this week, CEO Noel Wallace shared a high-level look at some of the successes the CPG is having with artificial intelligence. They’re now able to use AI to score every piece of digital content around the world against historical info, thereby increasing deployment confidence.
The company is also using artificial intelligence to identify optimal promotional calendars, an effort the exec was particularly bullish about.
“That’s how we look at gross-to-net, which historically was all very labor-intensive, where we had to look at strenuous spreadsheets to really decide how things were working,” said Wallace. “Now we can put it into AI models and decide what's working or what's not.”
Using machine learning and prescriptive analytics, Colgate-Palmolive is running billions of scenarios to optimize efforts. They’ve tested it with a major retailer with strong results, per Wallace, and are now working to refine the model.
“As we perfect that model, we will roll it out to more retailers in more geographies around the world.”
Scaling Artificial Intelligence
Wallace has been especially pointed about the importance of moving beyond AI pilots in order for the technology to have true impact. Without scaling, he noted at a conference earlier this year, “it's just talk and PR.”
As part of this, Colgate-Palmolive is educating all salaried employees around AI, including teaching about prompting and learning about both internal and external platforms. In doing so, they join such companies as Procter & Gamble, which has made AI education part of their official onboarding process.
They’ve also recorded success in leveraging artificial intelligence within retail-ready product development, using AI algorithms to help identify the ideal consumer for specific scents.
Hear More from Colgate-Palmolive
Learn more how Colgate-Palmolive is driving innovation and growth at the Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Summit!
Held September 23-25 in Princeton, NJ, the event will include Todd Hassenfelt, global digital commerce senior director, strategy and execution, who will discuss some of the learnings they’ve gained withing their AI efforts.
Vivek Rastogi, senior director, global digital commerce, will also present on the challenges and opportunities surrounding retail media.
