Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

From Freestyle to Future: Coca-Cola Leads With Digital, AI

Artificial intelligence is not a new concept at The Coca-Cola Company. In 2009, the world's largest non-alcoholic beverage company introduced a touchscreen soda fountain, known as Freestyle. It allowed consumers to mix and match flavors from approximately 200 different beverages. This AI-enabled machine, connected to the cloud, provided the company with insights into consumer preferences and behavior.

Operating in over 200 countries and territories, Coca-Cola remains at the forefront of technology adoption, continually evolving to maintain its status as one of the world's most valuable non-tech brands.

James Quincey, CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, is at the helm of this transformation. Acknowledging the disruptive nature of the business, Quincey integrated AI into the company's eB2B platform, designed to connect businesses seamlessly. To date, the platform has successfully connected 6.9 million customers. "The initial pilots indicate that customers who receive AI-generated push notifications are more likely to make purchases based on the recommended SKUs, which results in incremental retail sales," Quincey said.

But the company's vision transcends beyond digitalizing relationships. Layering on an AI component has only nudged it toward the larger game plan.

In a recent article published by Yale Insights, Quincey outlined Coca-Cola's AI integration. "I would break it into three layers, and with each layer, it becomes slightly less clear where it'll end up. The obvious layer is how AI can help the internal workings of the organization. How AI can support and enable people internally, with call centers and client interactions, is relatively straightforward and obvious. The second layer, which is slightly more difficult but emerging with greater clarity, is how AI can help sales and help us be better partners to retailers. The third, which is least clear, is what we can do with generative AI and marketing," he said.

The Big Infrastructure Push

Coca-Cola has signed a five-year strategic partnership with Microsoft, marking a pivotal moment in its global technology strategy. This $1.1 billion investment, which builds on an initial $250 million agreement in 2020, aligns the company's core technology with Microsoft's cloud and gen AI capabilities. The companies will jointly experiment with new technologies such as Azure OpenAI Service to develop gen AI use cases across various business functions, including testing Microsoft 365's Copilot to enhance workplace productivity.

"This new agreement builds on the success of Coca-Cola's partnership strategy with Microsoft, showing our commitment to ongoing digital transformation," said John Murphy, president and CFO of The Coca-Cola Company. The partnership also involves migrating all Coca-Cola applications to Microsoft Azure and exploring new AI-driven innovations across marketing, manufacturing and supply chain processes.

"Our partnership with Microsoft is an important next chapter in Coca-Cola's journey toward a digital-first enterprise powered by emerging technologies," said Neeraj Tolmare, SVP and global CIO of the Coca-Cola Company.

Enhancing Marketing Campaigns With Gen AI

As the demand for personalized and scalable marketing campaigns is growing, Coca-Cola has moved swiftly to adopt advanced technologies. Partnering with NVIDIA and WPP, it has embarked on a new phase of its digital strategy.

Coca-Cola aims to scale its global campaigns by integrating NVIDIA's gen AI technologies, including NVIDIA Omniverse and NVIDIA interface microservices, NIM, into its production processes. This initiative can potentially transform how the company customizes and personalizes marketing content across more than 100 markets. "With NVIDIA, we can personalize and customize Coke and meal imageries with unparalleled speed and global reach," said Samir Bhutada, global vice president of StudioX digital transformation at The Coca-Cola Company.

WPP is playing a crucial role in this initiative through its custom production studio - Prod X. Coca-Cola will be integrating NVIDIA's NIM for Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) into its Prod X road map, which helps in creation of 3D assets that are both culturally relevant and globally scalable. The USD Search NIM provides access to a vast archive of visual assets, while the USD Code NIM enables developers to generate new 3D layouts swiftly by entering prompts. Prod X, powered by NVIDIA's Omniverse, will help streamline the creation of multilingual marketing content, addressing the challenges of producing brand-compliant and accurate assets at scale.

Through these initiatives, Coca-Cola is disrupting the market to drive long-term growth. It is using AI and other emerging digital technologies to engage consumers contextually, starting with basic metrics to advanced innovations to measure effectiveness and efficiency.

Cola-Cola's Alliance With Bain and OpenAI

Coca-Cola was among the first to join a global services alliance launched by Bain & Company and OpenAI. This partnership builds on Bain & Company's adoption of OpenAI technologies for its 18,000-strong multi-disciplinary team of knowledge workers. Coca-Cola further plans to harness the power of ChatGPT and DALL-E to boost turnaround time, enhance marketing strategies and improve consumer experiences.

Other Initiatives

The company is also using AI to engage consumers through innovative products such as Coca-Cola Y3000 Zero Sugar - a flavor co-created by humans and AI. This limited edition drink was supported by an AI-powered digital activation and experiential takeover at the Las Vegas Sphere. In March 2023, Coca-Cola also launched an AI-powered greeting card generator as part of its global holiday campaign. This allowed consumers in over 40 markets to send personalized digital cards to loved ones.