Mark Anthony’s Sam Wong Shares AI Blueprint: Leadership Buy-In & Collaboration
For major consumer goods and retail companies, integrating AI into company ecosystems is no longer a question of “should I?” but rather “how will I?” The landscape, however, is riddled with obstacles, requiring enterprises to build a strategic roadmap before going all-in on AI.
Sam Wong, senior director of data, analytics and AI at the Mark Anthony Group — an international drinks company with products such as White Claw Hard Seltzer — recently highlighted how the company overcame challenges to create an AI incubator and offered a roadmap for successfully implementing the technology.
“When AI first came out, everyone wondered what to do about it,” Wong said during his Analytics Unite presentation, noting that many companies took a “let’s hold on” approach. Mark Anthony’s founder, Anthony von Mandl, however, had a different take on the topic.
“He was actually quite progressive, and wondered how AI could make Mark Anthony Group different and [how we could] leverage that capability,” Wong recalled. “So, we actually had sponsorship to explore the question, ‘What are we going to do with AI?’”
More: Last year, CGT recognized Wong in its Visionaries awards program. Read his profile here.
That buy-in meant Wong had the resources to create a team dedicated to building a focus incubator for AI and taking the time to explore various use cases.
On its path toward implementation, the team considered how to align AI strategies to corporate goals, identify the value the program would bring to the company and determine the complexities involved.
“When we went to actually create this innovation, we had challenges. What's the data that’s required? Is it even in a state that we can use? Are there alternative approaches we could take to implement this?” Wong recalled asking.
It took about a year and a half of incubation before the company began putting AI into production.
Tips for Launching an AI Incubator
Wong said there are several questions to consider, including “How do you build it? What are the lessons learned? How do you promote it? How do you demonstrate it? How do you market it?”
He suggested taking these five steps:
1. Create a mission statement. Clearly define objectives and goals. “Is it just to come up with ideas or to drive and build it as well? Is it to inspire, to really define what you want that incubator program to be?” That statement is important because it could impact the ability to secure sponsorships down the road, he noted.
2. Get leadership-wide buy-in. “At the end of the day, as much as you want to try a bottom-up approach, you're only going to be successful if you’re able to get sponsorship at the leadership level,” Wong said. Having leadership’s support, for example, helped Wong and his team secure funding for his incubator project.
3. Link everything to business value. It's not only about the technology, but what it is going to serve.
4. Engage in cross-functional teamwork. The most successful initiatives happen when the collaboration is very strong, he said.
5. Educate the organization. Consumer goods companies must remove the scariness of AI or the non-stack things like data quality and master data. AI teams should tell leadership that the investment in data matters to their business value and that it will help support potential expansion into new areas.
Also read: How embedding AI can accelerate product development launch cycles
When the team began working on a pilot, Wong told team members that AI was not here to take away their jobs, but to simply give them more time.
“This is going to give you more capability to mine all of this information that’s at your fingertips and allow you to have more ammunition to be effective and empowered at the account.”
Since implementing its AI incubator, the company has launched several generative AI initiatives, including a sales AI assistant that helps sales employees focus on the right SKUs at the right time, a proprietary ChatGPT tool called “MAG” GPT and AI functionality within the supply chain to improve visibility.
