AI News|可口可乐如何利用人工智能保持软饮料市场的领先地位

As the world’s largest beverage company, Coca-Cola serves more than 1.9 billion drinks every day, across over 500 brands, including Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Fanta, Sprite, Dasani, Powerade, Schweppes and Minute Maid.

Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) power everything that the business does – the global director of digital innovation, Greg Chambers, said: “Artificial intelligence is the foundation for everything we do. We create intelligent experiences. Artificial intelligence is the kernel that powers that experience.”

作为世界上最大的饮料公司，可口可乐每天供应超过19亿饮料，遍布500多个品牌，包括健怡可乐、零度可乐、芬达、雪碧、达萨尼、Powerade、Schweppes和Minute Maid 。

大数据和人工智能（AI）为企业所做的一切提供动力——全球数字创新总监Greg Chambers说：“人工智能是我们所做的一切的基础。我们创造智能体验。人工智能是推动这种体验的核心。”

01

What Problem Is Artificial Intelligence Helping To Solve?

Marketing soft drinks around the world is not a “one-size-fits-all affair”. Coca-Cola products are marketed and sold in over 200 countries.

In each of these markets there are local differences concerning flavours, sugar and calorie contents, marketing preferences and competitors faced by the brand.

This means that to stay on top of the game in every territory, it must collect and analyse huge amounts of data from disparate sources to determine which of its 500 brands are likely to be well received. The taste of their most well-known brands will even differ from country to country, and understanding these local preferences is a hugely complex task.

人工智能有助于解决什么问题？

在世界各地销售软饮料并不是“一刀切”的事情。可口可乐产品在200多个国家销售和销售。

在这些市场中，口味、糖和卡路里含量、营销偏好和品牌面临的竞争对手方面都存在着地区差异。

这意味着，为了在每个地区保持领先地位，它必须收集和分析来自不同来源的大量数据，以确定500个品牌中哪些可能会受到好评。他们最知名品牌的口味甚至会因国家而异，而了解这些地方偏好是一项非常复杂的任务。

02

How Is Artificial Intelligence Used In Practice?

Coca-Cola serves a large number of its drinks every day through vending machines. On newer machines, typically the customer will interact through a touch-screen display, enabling them to select the product they want and even customise it with “shots” of different flavours. The company has begun fitting these machines with AI algorithms allowing them to promote drinks and flavours that are most likely to be well received in the specific locations where they are installed.

The vending machines can even alter their “mood” depending on where they are located – with machines in a shopping mall displaying a colourful, fun persona, those in a gym more focused on achieving performance, and those in a hospital appearing more functional.

Coca-Cola also uses AI to analyse social media and understand where, when and how its customers like to consume its products, as well as which products are popular in particular localities. With over 90% of consumers making purchasing decisions based on social media content, understanding how its billions of customers are discussing and interacting with the brand on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is essential to its marketing strategy. To do this, Coca-Cola analysed engagement with over 120,000 pieces of social content to understand the demographics and behavior of its customers and those discussing the products.

Another application of AI was in securing proof of purchase for the company’s loyalty and reward schemes. When customers were asked to manually enter 14-digit product codes printed on bottle caps into websites and apps to verify their purchases, uptake was understandably low due to the unwieldy nature of the operation.

To encourage more customers to engage with these schemes, Coca-Cola worked to develop image recognition technology that allows purchases to be verified by taking a single smartphone picture.

人工智能在实践中是如何使用的？

可口可乐每天通过自动售货机供应大量的饮料。在较新的机器上，客户通常会通过触摸屏显示器进行交互，使他们能够选择他们想要的产品，甚至用不同口味的“快照”对其进行定制。该公司已经开始将这些机器与人工智能算法相结合，使它们能够在他们安装的特定位置推广最有可能受到欢迎的饮料和口味。

自动售货机甚至可以根据他们所在的地方不同改变他们的“心情”——商场里的机器是一个多彩有趣的人物形象，健身房里的机器表现得很专注，而医院里的机器则显得更实用。

可口可乐也把人工智能用在分析社交媒体和了解他的顾客在什么地点，什么时候，怎样消费他们的产品以及什么样的产品在一个特定地区流行。超过90%的消费者基于社交媒体内容做出购买决策，了解其数十亿客户如何在Facebook、Twitter和Instagram等平台上讨论和与品牌互动对其营销战略至关重要。为了做到这一点，可口可乐分析了超过12万条社交内容，以了解其客户的人口统计和行为。

人工智能的另一个应用是为公司的忠诚度和奖励计划提供购买证明。当客户被要求在网站和应用程序中手动输入瓶盖上打印的14位产品代码，以验证他们的购买时，由于操作的笨拙性，利用量低是可以理解的。

为了鼓励更多的消费者参与这些计划，可口可乐致力于开发图像识别技术，通过拍摄一张智能手机照片来验证购买情况。

03

What Technology, Tools And Data Were Used?

Coca-Cola collects data on local drink preferences through the interfaces on its touch-screen vending machines – over 1 million of them are installed in Japan alone.

To understand how its products are discussed and shared on social media, the company has set up 37 “social centers” to collect data and analyse it for insights using the Salesforce platform. The aim is to create more of the content that is shown to be effective at generating positive engagement. In the past, the process of creating this content was carried out by humans; however, the company has been actively looking at developing automated systems that will create adverts and social content informed by social data.

It also uses image recognition technology to target users who share pictures on social media inferring that they could be potential customers. In one example of this strategy in action, Coca-Cola targeted adverts for its Gold Peak brand of iced tea at those who posted images that suggested they enjoy iced tea, or in which the image recognition algorithms spotted logos of competing brands. Once the algorithms determined that specific individuals were likely to be fans of iced tea, and active social media users who shared images with their friends, the company knows that targeting these users with adverts is likely to be an efficient use of their advertising revenue.

For purchase verification, off-the-shelf image recognition technology proved to be insufficient for reading the low-resolution dot matrix printing used to stamp product codes onto packaging. So, Coca-Cola worked to develop its own image recognition solution using Google’s TensorFlow technology. This used convolutional neural networks to enable machine recognition of codes that could often appear differently depending on when and where they were printed.

使用了哪些技术、工具和数据？

可口可乐通过其触摸屏自动售货机上的界面收集当地饮料偏好的数据——仅在日本就安装了100多万台。

为了了解如何在社交媒体上讨论和分享其产品，该公司设立了37个“社交中心”，以收集数据并使用Salesforce平台分析数据来获取见解。其目的是创造更多的社交内容能够有效地产生积极的参与度。在过去，创建这些内容的过程是由人类完成的；但是，公司一直在积极开发自动化系统，该系统将创建由社会数据合成的广告和社会内容。

它还使用图像识别技术，针对在社交媒体上共享图片的用户，推断他们可能是潜在客户。在这一行动的一个例子中，可口可乐将其冰茶金峰品牌的广告对准了那些发布了显示他们喜欢冰茶的图片的人，或者利用图像识别算法发现了竞争品牌的标志的人。一旦算法确定特定的个体可能是冰茶的粉丝，以及与朋友分享图片的活跃社交媒体用户，该公司就知道，将这些用户作为广告目标可能是有效利用他们的广告收入。

对于购买验证，现成的图像识别技术被证明不足以读取用于在包装上标记产品的低分辨率点阵印刷。因此，可口可乐公司利用谷歌的TensorFlow技术开发了自己的图像识别解决方案。这种方法使用卷积神经网络来实现机器识别代码，根据打印时间和位置而不同而判断。

04

What Were The Results?

Analysis of the data from vending machines by AI algorithms allows Coca-Cola to more accurately understand how the buying habits of its billions of customers varies across the globe.

It uses this to inform new product decisions – for example, the decision to launch Cherry Sprite as a bottled product in the United States was taken because the data showed that this was likely to be a winning initiative.

Computer vision analysis and natural language processing of social media posts, as well as deep learning-driven analysis of social engagement metrics, allows Coca-Cola to produce social advertising that is more likely to resonate with customers and drive sales of its products.

Applying TensorFlow to create convolutional neural networks enabled scanners to recognise product codes from a simple photograph, increasing customer engagement with Coca-Cola’s different loyalty programs around the world.

结果如何？

通过人工智能算法对自动售货机数据的分析，可口可乐可以更准确地了解全球数十亿消费者的购买习惯是如何变化的。

它利用这一点来指导新产品的决策——例如，在美国决定将樱桃雪碧作为瓶装产品推出，因为数据表明这可能是一个成功的举措。

计算机视觉分析和社交媒体帖子的自然语言处理，以及对社交参与指标的深入学习驱动分析，使得可口可乐能够制作更容易与顾客产生共鸣的社交广告，并推动其产品的销售。

应用TensorFlow创建卷积神经网络使扫描仪能够从一张简单的照片中识别产品代码，从而提高客户对可口可乐全球各种忠诚度计划的参与度。