How Kind snack bars is using AI to curb creative, marketing costs at business 'inflection point'

"Kind snack bars is hedging its bets on using generative AI tools, like synthetic audiences and AI agents, to turn its business around. This year has been "an inflection point" for the Mars-owned snack brand, as Osher Hoberman, CMO at Kind North America, puts it. Kind has been struggling to capture Gen Z's attention and faces stiff competition from private label brands, Hoberman said."

"Creative testing and learning used to take anywhere from three to four months, and $10 million in marketing spend, Hoberman said. With AI, that turnaround time has shrunk to a week or matter of days, he said. Earlier this year in Q2, Kind started testing AI-powered creative to better target individual customers based on usage and preference. For example, showing Kind's protein product in a post-workout recovery context for one customer and in a breakfast on-the-go setting for another."

"At the same time, Kind built out synthetic audiences using models drawing from past audience work, campaign results and third-party syndicated data to better understand current and future shoppers. "The way we targeted with the personalization was more effective in brand and sales lift than previous campaigns that weren't addressable," Hoberman said. He later added, "It helped us to be more efficient with our media spend and informed our media channel mix.""

Kind snack bars adopted generative AI tools, including synthetic audiences and AI agents, to address declining attention from Gen Z and intensified private-label competition. AI reduced creative testing and learning from three to four months and $10 million in marketing spend to turnaround times of days, enabling scalable personalized creative that targets customers by usage and context. Synthetic audiences were built from past audience work, campaign results, and third-party data to better understand shoppers. Personalized, addressable campaigns delivered stronger brand and sales lift and improved media efficiency and channel mix. Marketers increasingly use LLMs and chatbots to simulate consumer feedback more quickly and cheaply.

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