RECKITT'S FIRST GENAI RESULTS DEMONSTRATE CHANGING FACE OF MARKETING DURING CANNES LIONS INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF CREATIVITY

• Pilots illustrate how GenAI can enhance both productivity and growth, generating better outcomes in creativity and insights in less time.
• Up to 60% faster concept development and 30% faster ad adaptation and localisation.

21 June 2024: As the 71st Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity comes to a close with GenAI dominating the agenda, Reckitt, the company behind some of the world's most recognisable and trusted consumer brands in hygiene and consumer health, shares the results of innovative GenAI pilots that show how the technology is changing the face of marketing.

In partnership with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Reckitt undertook a series of pilots across Gaviscon, Finish and the company's overall marketing function, over a four-month period. The pilots illustrated the advantages of GenAI in enhancing insights, creativity, and productivity and generating better-quality outcomes, more consistently, in a significantly shorter length of time.

Speaking at the Festival last week, Fabrice Beaulieu, Reckitt's Chief Marketing, Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer (CMO), talked about the potential opportunities for Consumer Packaged Goods companies (CPGs) in harnessing GenAI, and the critical role of change management and intentional leadership to help ensure the opportunities translate into long-term growth.

Beaulieu said: "As expected, GenAI was the most talked-about topic at Cannes - from the formal Festival programme, to fringe events and discussions with partners along the Croisette. As the festival draws to a close, we are proud to share the results of these pilots, as we move to scaling up."

Key takeaways from Reckitt's GenAI pilots

• GenAI is a game-changer for new product development, with its ability to transform unstructured data into insightful new ideas and marketable concepts. Early findings showed that by using GenAI, teams can reduce concept development time by up to 60%, whilst significantly improving quality.
  
  
• GenAI can stimulate creativity and produce advertising content more efficiently. By using GenAI to adapt assets for full funnel use and localise them between countries, Reckitt found an approximate 30% reduction in the time needed to adapt and localise ads, with increased consistency in asset quality.
  
  
• GenAI takes the drudgery out of repetitive tasks. Findings showed that time spent on everyday tasks such as a post-campaign media analysis, could be reduced by up to 90%, with the quality improving two-fold.

Beaulieu continued: "These pilots give us clear insight and understanding of where the immediate opportunities for GenAI lie, which we are already acting upon."

"GenAI offers huge opportunities for growth, but only if harnessed in the right way – by rethinking the way the entire marketing community operates. Therefore, embracing GenAI successfully will come down to successful change management and intentional leadership."

"GenAI will transform our operations in a variety of ways, but ultimately the end goal is to help us deliver long-term value for the business and our stakeholders."

The pilots were conducted using a suite of tools that were tailored to Reckitt's needs. These included custom-built GPTs trained on Reckitt data and expertise, multi-modal GenAI tools for content adaptation and localisation, and an interactive interface to create, test, and refine new product concepts from consumer insights data.

Cutting Scope 3 emissions targets using AI and GenAI

Reckitt is also using AI and GenAI to help cut its Scope 3 emissions by 50% by 2030 (vs. 2015 base year) and achieve Net Zero by 2040. The company has already surpassed its initial targets for direct emissions and is now focusing on reducing Scope 3 emissions (which represent on average 96% of a company's total emissions), with its extensive network of suppliers.

Working with CO2 AI and Quantis, Reckitt collected over 300,000 data points to get more detailed insights into emissions per product, using AI and GenAI to transform these into a faster and more accurate carbon footprint, a process which previously involved manual categorization which was both time-consuming and less precise. 

In just under four months, Reckitt obtained precise emissions data for each of its 25,000 products, improving the accuracy of its emissions footprint by 75 times — moving from 333 representative products to 25,000. This data revealed new ways to reduce emissions by 2030 which will significantly contribute towards Reckitt's Net Zero target.