How Reckitt is beating the AI odds with its approach to pilots

"With that dubious success rate in mind, CPG advertiser Reckitt has taken a strict approach to its own generative AI marketing projects, piloting specific use cases designed to save its staffers time and stress before rolling them out to its 700-strong marketing organization. The approach - which Bastien Parizot, Reckitt's svp of IT and digital calls "functional reinvention" of the marketing workflow - has delivered, speeding up creative asset adaptation by 30%."

"The intent was not to run a pilot. The intent was to build solutions that we could embed into marketing teams. Think of the process of approving [campaign] artwork; there's a lot of regulatory, brand [and] legal rules that you need to respect. Those are known in advance, so we built a solution to make sure that is checked automatically. Then the marketer can focus on the design [of the asset]."

"We've created gen AI solutions for [brand performance monitoring], with which they save 20-40% of their time. They combine Nielsen data and other data into a report ... in about 15 minutes. On insights, the idea is different. We sit on a goldmine of data. We connected about 35 different data sources, external and internal, and they have a tool where they can access those insights and create product concepts with it."

Enthusiasm for AI implementation among marketers remains strong despite concerns about an economic bubble and high pilot failure rates. Reckitt piloted targeted generative AI use cases with the goal of saving staff time and reducing stress before scaling solutions across its 700-person marketing organization. Pilots automated known regulatory, brand and legal checks in campaign artwork approvals so marketers can focus on design. Brand performance monitoring tools combine Nielsen and other inputs to produce reports in about 15 minutes, saving 20-40% of marketer time. About 35 internal and external data sources were connected to enable insight-driven product concepting and broader market deployment in 2025.

Read at Digiday