How Coca-Cola Is Using AI to Redefine Brand Building
- Hardik Shah
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The Coca-Cola Company is quietly demonstrating how a century-old enterprise can embed artificial intelligence across creative, commercial, and operational layers to strengthen growth.
Artificial intelligence now supports everything from ad development to forecasting and pricing decisions. What began as a set of isolated digital experiments has evolved into an enterprise capability spanning marketing, bottler collaboration, and performance analytics.
“It’s not a digital transformation—it’s a business transformation,” said Chief Operating Officer Henrique Braun at the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference.
That discipline is reflected in the results. In its latest quarterly earnings, Coca-Cola reported 6 percent organic revenue growth and a 31.9 percent operating margin, demonstrating that the integration of data and creativity is delivering tangible business outcomes.
Act I — From Digital Experiments to Systemwide Intelligence
Coca-Cola’s shift toward AI began on the creative front. Campaigns such as Masterpiece—developed with OpenAI and Bain—used generative tools to merge art and product storytelling, compressing months of work into weeks. The same approach guided the 2024 Christmas campaign, which adapted in real time across more than 50 markets.
“We’re learning how to engage with consumers with more granularity than ever,” Braun said. “It’s about having a two-way conversation that keeps the brand personal.”
These creative pilots established a foundation for broader intelligence. Each activation now produces a stream of data that informs pricing, assortment, and demand forecasting. What begins as a marketing experiment ends as an operational insight—a hallmark of Coca-Cola’s new model for value creation.
Act II — Building an Intelligent System
Beneath the storytelling lies a digital infrastructure connecting more than 200 markets and hundreds of bottling partners. Bottlers now deploy predictive sales tools that identify route efficiencies, anticipate shifts in consumption, and recommend the next SKU most likely to perform.
“They’re understanding what’s the next proposition that’s going to add more value,” Braun explained.
Through its Digicon & Tech forum, Coca-Cola’s network exchanges these AI use cases, turning local experimentation into global best practice. This data sharing has begun to shorten reaction times across the system, aligning marketing plans, inventory decisions, and promotional spending.
CEO James Quincey noted on the earnings call: “We continue to outperform across all geographies, despite uneven macro conditions.”
At the enterprise level, AI models support forecasting, ROI measurement, and procurement optimization—functions once driven primarily by manual analysis. CFO John Murphy highlighted the payoff:
“EPS grew 6 percent despite 6 percent currency headwinds—proof our productivity mindset is working.”
Together, these initiatives represent a unified operating system for growth—one that connects consumer demand, commercial execution, and enterprise efficiency.
Act III — Culture as the Multiplier
Technology alone cannot sustain transformation. Coca-Cola’s progress rests on a cultural principle Braun describes as “constructive discontent”—a bias toward improvement even in periods of strong performance.
“AI didn’t just make Coca-Cola smarter—it made it hungrier,” he said. “We’re just getting started for the future.”
That mindset gives the company permission to modernize without losing its identity. While algorithms enhance speed and accuracy, human judgment still defines how the insights are applied—especially across markets that vary in consumer behavior, regulation, and infrastructure. The balance between automation and stewardship has become a defining capability for Coca-Cola’s leadership team.
The Broader Implication
Coca-Cola’s experience illustrates how artificial intelligence can move from pilot projects to institutional process in a legacy organization. The company’s advantage now lies less in the technology itself than in its ability to apply it with operational discipline and cross-system alignment.
As more consumer brands experiment with AI, the differentiator will not be who adopts it first, but who integrates it best. Coca-Cola’s current trajectory suggests that maturity—not novelty—will define long-term success.
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