Everything Artificial Intelligence with Applied Intelligence's Imteaz Ahamed

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Everything Artificial Intelligence with Applied Intelligence's Imteaz Ahamed"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The CPG Guys
• Hosts: Peter V.S. Bond & Sri Rajagopalan
• Episode: Everything Artificial Intelligence with Applied Intelligence's Imteaz Ahamed
• Release Date: April 16, 2025
• Description: Sri Rajagopalan, a CPG & FMCG eCommerce industry icon, and Peter V.S. Bond, a consumer loyalty guru, delve into how brands and retailers engage with consumers across various channels. This episode features a deep discussion with Imteaz Ahamed from the Applied Intelligence Podcast, focusing on the transformative role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry.

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1. Introduction to Retail Media Strategy

Timestamp: [00:00 - 02:02]

Sri Rajagopalan opens the episode by highlighting the burgeoning significance of retail media as a pivotal channel for brands aiming to engage consumers through measurable performance metrics. He emphasizes the necessity for brand marketers to integrate retail media into their marketing budgets to thrive in an omnichannel landscape.

Key Points:

• Retail Media Growth: Retail media is becoming essential for targeted consumer engagement.
• Cornell Partnership: Introduction of the Retail Media Strategy Executive Education program in collaboration with Cornell University, aimed at equipping industry leaders with best practices in retail media platforms, AI-driven campaign design, and performance measurement.

Notable Quote:

"For brand marketers, effectively incorporating retail media into their marketing budgets is essential for growth in today's omnichannel landscape."
— Sri Rajagopalan [00:00]

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2. Episode Kickoff and Guest Introduction

Timestamp: [02:02 - 05:07]

Peter V.S. Bond welcomes listeners and introduces himself alongside Sri Rajagopalan. He briefly mentions his consulting firm, ThinkBlue Consulting, and promotes his daughters' musical endeavors. The focus then shifts to introducing Imteaz Ahmed from Sydney, Australia, highlighting his role at Flywheel, the eCommerce acceleration division of Omnicom.

Key Points:

• Hosts' Backgrounds: Insight into Peter and Sri's professional endeavors.
• Guest Introduction: Imteaz Ahmed’s expertise in applied intelligence within the eCommerce sector.

Notable Quote:

"And it's not their fault. It's the talent base doesn't exist to absorb it."
— Imteaz Ahmed [07:43]

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3. The Evolving CPG Industry and Talent Management

Timestamp: [05:07 - 13:53]

The discussion delves into the transformation of the CPG industry, particularly the integration of eCommerce functions into traditional sales and marketing departments. Imteaz Ahmed critiques the prevailing consultancy advice that merges eCommerce with sales and marketing, arguing that the existing talent in brick-and-mortar operations often lacks the curiosity and skill set required for effective omnichannel marketing.

Key Points:

• Consultancy Recommendations: Merging eCommerce into sales and marketing is flawed due to mismatched skill sets.
• Talent Gaps: Brick-and-mortar teams typically do not possess the necessary expertise or interest in eCommerce and digital strategies.
• Career Trajectories: AI and eCommerce professionals may hit career ceilings within large corporations, suggesting a move to mid-tier companies for growth opportunities.

Notable Quotes:

"The talent base that exists in brick and mortar teams has zero interest in learning eCommerce."
— Imteaz Ahmed [07:43]

"You cannot be a C suite leader today without understanding AI."
— Sri Rajagopalan [33:41]

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4. AI's Transformative Role in Media Execution

Timestamp: [13:53 - 21:19]

Imteaz Ahmed introduces his product focused on revolutionizing media execution through AI. He explains the three stages of AI application: automation, AI-assisted workflows, and agentic AI, highlighting how each stage can enhance media buying and content creation processes within CPG companies.

Key Points:

• Stages of AI:
  • Automation: Streamlining specific tasks without true AI intelligence.
  • AI-Assisted Workflows: Enhancing existing processes with AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL·E for content creation.
  • Agentic AI: Advanced AI capable of performing complex tasks, potentially replacing large teams.
• Product Overview: A tool designed to integrate with retail media data clean rooms, offering comprehensive media execution, content optimization, and media attribution analysis.

Notable Quotes:

"The promise of agentic AI is it will do the work of 100 people with one person."
— Imteaz Ahmed [18:39]

"Your whole media arm could be run by one super brain human plus the software."
— Imteaz Ahmed [21:07]

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5. Responsible AI and Governance in CPG

Timestamp: [35:14 - 37:35]

The conversation shifts to the ethical implications of AI, specifically addressing the challenges of deep fakes and the necessity for responsible AI governance. Imteaz Ahmed suggests leveraging technologies like blockchain for verifying content authenticity and emphasizes the importance of establishing governance frameworks to prevent misuse of AI-generated content.

Key Points:

• Ethical Concerns: The rise of fake AI-generated content poses reputational risks.
• Governance Solutions: Implementing cryptographic methods and digital IDs to ensure content legitimacy.
• Industry Responsibility: CPG companies and media agencies must prioritize responsible AI to maintain trust and integrity.

Notable Quotes:

"Blockchain can be verified by other people, certifies it as authentic."
— Imteaz Ahmed [37:05]

"Without responsible AI governance, this stuff is going to get out of control."
— Imteaz Ahmed [37:35]

---

6. AI Addressing Volume Challenges in CPG

Timestamp: [37:35 - 40:39]

Imteaz Ahmed discusses how AI can tackle the CPG industry's volume challenges exacerbated by inflationary pressures and stagnant growth in brick-and-mortar sales. He provides a practical example of using AI to identify and target incremental audiences, thereby driving market share without relying on traditional mass advertising strategies.

Key Points:

• Volume Issues: Inflation and lack of growth in traditional channels necessitate innovative solutions.
• AI-Driven Targeting: Utilizing AI to identify niche audiences and personalize marketing efforts for higher conversion rates.
• Incremental Growth: Strategies to steal market share through precise, AI-powered advertising rather than broad-spectrum campaigns.

Notable Quotes:

"You have to steal share. Then you need to look at methodologies in which that helps you find that share."
— Imteaz Ahmed [40:01]

"Personalization is required. You cannot achieve personalization without the help of AI."
— Sri Rajagopalan [25:34]

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7. Structuring Teams for AI Implementation

Timestamp: [40:39 - 44:02]

The discussion emphasizes the importance of restructuring organizational teams to effectively harness AI's potential. Imteaz Ahmed outlines a threefold team structure comprising operational, growth, and technical teams, each tasked with sustaining day-to-day functions, driving innovation, and deploying AI technologies across the organization.

Key Points:

• Team Structure:
  • Operational Team: Manages daily activities and maintains business continuity.
  • Growth Team: Focuses on testing, validating, and capitalizing on AI-driven innovations.
  • Technical Team: Implements and integrates AI technologies into business processes.
• Collaboration: Encouraging IT departments to work closely with commercial teams to identify and address business challenges through AI.

Notable Quotes:

"We have to re-engineer that process to embed AI capabilities so that what used to take 200 days to do, how do we cut that to 20 days using AI."
— Imteaz Ahmed [43:20]

"If you can figure out how to embed a team that has these three capabilities, you can keep the lights on and have enough space to innovate."
— Imteaz Ahmed [44:02]

---

8. Conclusion and Future Directions

Timestamp: [44:02 - 48:01]

Wrapping up the episode, both hosts and Imteaz Ahmed reflect on the critical role AI will play in transforming the CPG industry. They advocate for ongoing discussions and collaborations to demystify AI, emphasizing its potential to deliver superior products and value to consumers. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to engage with the hosts and contribute to the evolving conversation around AI in CPG.

Key Points:

• AI as a Game Changer: Recognizing AI's unparalleled impact compared to previous technological shifts like eCommerce.
• Continuous Learning: Encouraging continuous education and adaptation to leverage AI effectively.
• Community Engagement: Inviting listeners to participate in future discussions and share their insights.

Notable Quotes:

"AI is probably the most transformational capability to hit this industry in a long time."
— Sri Rajagopalan [45:26]

"Let's not make it a one and done. Let's have both Applied Intelligence podcast as well as CPG Guys talk much more about this topic."
— Peter V.S. Bond [45:26]

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The CPG Guys provides an insightful exploration into the intersection of AI and the CPG industry. Through the expert perspectives of Imteaz Ahmed, Sri Rajagopalan, and Peter V.S. Bond, listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of how AI is reshaping retail media, talent management, ethical considerations, and overall business strategies within CPG. The discussion underscores the necessity for organizations to adapt swiftly, restructure teams, and embrace AI-driven innovations to maintain competitive advantage and drive sustained growth.

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Transcript

[Sree Rajagopalan]

Retail media is rapidly becoming the go to channel for brands, aiming to engage consumers with measurable performance along the path to purchase. Retailers are increasingly empowering brands to accurately target meaningful audiences based on their longitudinal purchasing behaviors and execute media impressions across on site, off site and in store channels throughout the entire marketing funnel. For brand marketers, effectively incorporating retail media into their marketing budgets is essential for growth in today's omnichannel landscape. To address this critical need, Cornell University has partnered with the CPG Guys, along with leading industry executives and visionaries from around the world to launch the first ever retail Media Strategy Executive Education program. This immersive four day program at Cornell Tech May 5th to the 8th, 2025 brings together industry thought leaders and renowned faculty to share best practices for building compelling retail media platforms. You'll discover how to collaborate on creating best in class tech stacks, measure performance to ensure brands Access the necessary KPIs based on Campaign objectives and establish strong partnerships between brands and retailers. In addition, the program covers optimizing brand strategies using AI driven campaign design at scale to achieve marketing goals. By the end of the Retail Media Strategy program, you'll have gained a deep understanding of the retail media ecosystem and how both brands and retailers can accelerate organizational transformation to thrive in the future of performance marketing. See the link in the digital liner note to this episode to learn more about the Retail Media Strategy Executive Education Program at Cornell Tech May 5th through the 8th, 2025. Welcome to the CPGuys Podcast. Your hosts Sree Rajagopalan and Peter Vs. Bond explore how brands and retailers engage in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now here are the CPG Guys.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Welcome to the CPG Guys. I'm of course sri co founder and co host of the CPG Guys and also co founder and partner of ThinkBlue Consulting who as builders, connectors and amplifiers we shape the future of commerce to drive your growth. Get in touch with us at srinkblueconsulting Co not Com. Please do listen to my older daughter Rhea Raj's music www.riaraj.com R H E R A J and a new song Hot Couture which has now been out for a month and my younger daughter Lara Raj is a member of the Geffen Records Universal Music Group Cat's Eye.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Who now are in the multi millions.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Of followers on all social media vehicles unable to join me today because I'm actually recording this live from Sydney, Australia is my fellow co founder Peter Vs Bond and he's not co hosting his podcast. He serves as the head of Industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the E commerce acceleration division of Omnicom. Before we actually get to our guests, this is a collaboration podcast, but I will ask you to consider following us on Apple podcasts and leave us a.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Rating and a review.

[Peter Vs Bond]

That rating tells us how we're doing as a podcast.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

The review actually tells us whether the.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Quality of the conversations we're having on the podcast is solid and clear. And now for a live event, a collaboration event all the way from Sydney, Australia, with Imtiaz Ahmed, founder of none other than the Applied Intelligence podcast.

[Unknown Speaker]

Welcome, everybody, to the Applied Intelligence and CPG guys podcast.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

About that man.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, about that.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Where? Sydney, Australia.

[Unknown Speaker]

And welcome to my hometown. I must say this is my fourth time four years in a row because we're in 2025 now on the CPG podcast. And this is.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

You know what number five means?

[Unknown Speaker]

What does. What does number five mean?

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

The famous letterman jacket.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, wow. I can't.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

We're one away.

[Peter Vs Bond]

We're one away.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

So hopefully we'll make that happen soon.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, I have the T shirt, so.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

I T shirt is after two, but the letterman jacket is after five. Only three have it. Liz Buchanan from Nielsen iQ.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Christy Arjun, who was first to receive it. And there's only one other mystery person.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

And we will be revealing that in the next four weeks.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay. Can't wait. I would love to be the fourth person on that list. So welcome to my hometown. And this is also the third continent.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

I've always waited to say something when I got to Sydney, Australia. And let me see if you can guess what it is.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

8635 Sherman Way, Sydney, Australia. What is it?

[Unknown Speaker]

I don't know.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

I wonder if it exists. I told my kids yesterday we gotta go find 865 Sherman West, Sydney, Australia.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'm sure someone's put a pin in it on Google Maps. You could go find it. But yeah.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

I love your studio, by the way.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thank you for inviting us to the W Hotel. So, third continent. We've done this in. We've done this in North America a couple times in. In Khan lions earlier in 2024 and now in Sydney, Australia.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

So next Moonshot has got to be Asia.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, we should do Asia also. I have actually haven't been to South America, so, you know, Argentina. I. I saw that you were in Chile. Chile last. Last week. How was that?

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

We were speaking for Walmart down in Chile for their executive team as well as for their annual brand day where brands come in, talk to Walmart about what's next for the year and the JBPs and things of that nature. So we did the main keynote in terms of where 2025 is going in the CPG industry.

[Unknown Speaker]

Super cool. So let's dive into the CPG industry. It's going through a lot of change at the moment. One of the key things that I'm noticing is that a lot of the management consultancy houses are going around and telling a lot of CPG companies that you don't necessarily need the third leg of E commerce in your organization anymore, that you should be absorbing that e comm function straight into sales and marketing. What do you think the downstream impacts of that's going to be within the industry?

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

First, is it the right thing to do? Let's try to demystify that a little bit. Right. And what comes top of mind is I started an e commerce in 2012 when e commerce was just a word like E. And I think Amazon's grocery business was like $10 million.

[Unknown Speaker]

We used to call it E tailing.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

E tailing, exactly. That's how Etail east and west were born. If you remember, and I still remember, we were the first direct suppliers to Amazon to jet things of that nature through Frito. We've come a long way. It's been 12 years. You know, Covid should have flipped the script on digital completely, which it did for a while. Volume challenges hit the industry from. I still remember the day, March 17, 2023. Because there was no pricing underneath this, a major flaw of the industry got exposed. There is no growth in brick and mortar. It just hasn't been there in the last seven, eight years, 10 years. E commerce is all the growth engine. So for the best development of talent, best development of a brand, equity logic would tell you placing it in sales teams and empowering them is the absolute right thing to do. So the model that the consultants are working is a good one. Here's the flaw. The talent base that exists in brick and mortar teams has zero interest in learning. E commerce doesn't care about retail media. On the contrary, as we evangelists of digital would poo poo on brick and mortar once upon a time. Yeah, they've been poo pooing on digital all the time. And now with volume challenges, there's a little bit of desperation to focus back on the brick and mortar business. So unless you've got skilled people working this in mtrs, no better person than you to know it is a different skill set. The most important virtue in that skill set is curiosity.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

If you don't have curiosity. You're not going to succeed in Omnichannel. And I, no offense to anybody, don't shoot the messenger. I've worked with all of you. If you come from the brick and mortar world, you're 20, 30, 10 years trained in that world. You have not demonstrated the curiosity to want to go into new realms, to completely learn a new discipline. So the recommendation by consultants is wrong, flawed, even though it's the right one. And it's not their fault. It's the talent base doesn't exist to absorb it. What are your thoughts though?

[Unknown Speaker]

So from my point of view, I think creating the third leg was the right approach initially, essentially because, yes, you need to accelerate the development. You also need to think about your talent pipeline and tackle the opportunity. I think the way you absorb it back into the organization has necessarily been the challenge, which is one of the questions I want to ask you about, you know, somebody you know. You started an e Comm in 2012, I started in 2014. Going into your career, especially if you start in E commerce earlier in your career, it becomes apparent that the jobs that you are going to get promoted into next don't necessarily already exist. You kind of have to do the internal networking and internal like stakeholder management to create that next role. So I think the challenge has been there have been people that have done e Commerce for five years, seven years, eight years, 10 years. What's the next logical role that they go to next? So here I think is the gap of you have these people who've created something from nothing. All of this stuff didn't exist before. They've gotten all these new talents. They don't necessarily have exactly the same talent or exactly the same experiences that the offline talent has developed over the last five to 10 years. But these people can figure things out. And to tell them that you need five years worth of offline experience to get into nonsense, Cynthia, it's crazy.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Let's just call that out though. It's nonsense.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's absolutely somebody who has had to figure out how to create, for example, a direct to consumer business model even if it didn't work in an organization.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

I won't even go that deep in Theos. Just working with Amazon on a pure play model has nothing, nothing overlapping with working with Walmart and the brick and mortar model or why even go Walmart, let's say Northeast Grocers, WakeFun. There's hardly any skill set overlap, right? So one of the biggest flaws in the CPG industry from a talent development perspective and this one's on Chros. Purely squarely. This one sits on Chros. Right? These E Commerce people, Omnichannel people are entrepreneurs. They have curiosity. They're builders. They know how to deal with adversity. They've been championing the need for funding their entire career. They're having to defend their budgets their entire career. This is true entrepreneurism at its best. My advice to all of them, once you've gained that skill set in a very large Fortune 500, big market cap, billions of dollars, get the heck out. Because there is no next role for you. You're going to peak as a vps, VP of ecom and then you're not going to be the next president. I'm going to explain why. In the years of course many of you are going to look at me and say that's not true. You were the head of sales for General Mills, right? But I'll be the first one to tell you and admit John Newdy hired me into General Mills. I think he took a risk and he said, you are my guy. I want you to run sales. It was Covid. They needed the skill sets of Omni Channel bought in and infused into the organization. If Covid didn't happen and that hadn't happened, I doubt General Mills would have hired me as the. I don't think General Mills. This is my personal opinion. So I'm very clear now. But having sat in enough boardrooms over three plus years at General Mills listening to conversations as well as with the industry, everybody the CPG guys interacts with and listening to what they say to us, you know, the offline conversations we have, it's clear there is no next path to be a specialist in a business that's already 25%. I'll give you a great example. Your Walmart leader 20, usually 25% of any large market cap business has a future as the next head of sales, the president of sales, maybe as a brand president. E Commerce is also 25% of the business. Why can't you be the next president of sales? So it's a little bit of flawed thinking, right? But underneath all of this we must answer the question why? Why is it that way? And the answer is actually very simple. Imtiaz running the other 75% of the business requires compliance to age old models. Listen very carefully to the words compliance and adherence. That part of the business is not going. You don't need movers and shakers, you don't need new ideas on the tables. Even the innovation that's created is Primarily line extensions. And the ask by Wall street of the very large market cap companies is give me 1% growth models. You're a pension stock. Yeah, I don't need entrepreneurism from you. So once you've learned those entrepreneurial skills, unless you can become a follower and a compliance person, literally taking marketing playbooks and executing without way too much outside the box thinking, I'm not criticizing anybody, of course you can give me 30 examples of look how we created this brand and this product and it was outside the box thinking. But there are a million products sitting on the shelf. If you have 30, that doesn't really. It's not a large base. So to me that's why there are no future careers for E commerce people. What's the advice? What should you do? Right, because your career is not going to peak as a e Commerce VP in a large market cap company. Go to a $500 million company and run the show for them. Be a brand leader there, be the head of sales there and they will welcome you because of the knowledge and they'll want your Rolodex.

[Unknown Speaker]

Amazing.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

How do you feel though? You've run the same journey though.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I feel for me, I've recently left record and I'm starting a career in terms of building AI products for enterprise companies. So looking at how AI is significantly accelerating the development of not just software but the way in which we're doing work, for me it's an exciting opportunity and right at the right time. So Rekkit gave me an amazing career in learning all of the things that you talked about.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Having entrepreneurs.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, no budget to do anything, beg, borrowing, stealing from every relationship I've ever had, justify, justify and why do you get this special treatment? So taking all of that learning, taking the relationships and also the key thing for me is E commerce people come with this innate ability to learn new things very fast. And I think with this new way of AI technology, generative AI technology that's coming online, the way that we will do work in CPG in enterprise companies is fundamentally about to change over the next 12 to 24 months. We're not even talking five year cycles anymore.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

And I think that's flawed thinking by chros who think this will not impact the white collar workforce in marketing which primarily runs warehouse brands. AI is going to change your job if you're a cmo. You have to know what AI is in the first place to be a cmo. And I'm so sorry, like don't hit the messenger in 2025, January 2nd when we recorded this, if you're not able to articulate the difference between applied AI, intelligent AI, you probably know 10 other forms of AI and just AI, you're not, you're not qualified to be a CMO. I'm sorry, that's a reality we live in.

[Unknown Speaker]

The way I saw it really nicely broken down on infographic on LinkedIn. And it was basically explaining the three stages of AI. The first one is pure automation, the second one being AI assisted workflows, and the third one being agentic AI. So let me explain and give you examples on each one.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Tell us about your product as well and how it plays in all three.

[Unknown Speaker]

Sure thing. So the first part of it is automation. And a lot of existing software companies or existing SaaS companies are moonlighting that they have AI, but it's not really AI. So automation is basically taking specific tasks and using software to execute them for you. So a very basic example of that would be day parting. So if you're spending, I don't know, $5,000 a day on a particular keyword on Amazon, instead of spending all of that money in the first hour or first couple of hours in a day, day party would break that budget up for you on an hourly basis to ensure that you have the most efficient spend and you're turned on all 24 hours a day rather than exhausting your budget very quickly. So that's just pure automation, that's not AI. The next part, which is putting AI into a workflow, think about a content creation process that a company would have to produce assets to execute on retail media or on Meta or on Google, et cetera. Now people within that workflow are embedding chatgpt to help them come up with more claims, or help them come up with call to actions, analyze what's happened historically and give them new recommendations. Or they're using products like Dall E to come up with images based on historical images that they've used previously. So that's like putting AI into the existing workflow. The last part and the most exciting part, and this is where the next billion dollar companies are coming, is agentic AI. So if you think about the role of a media buyer, a media buyer does lots of things within a CPG or within any other enterprise company, but essentially they're managing a budget. They're looking at how do they use that budget within the different platforms that they buy media on. They are briefing content, they're receiving content that gets published, they're looking at mmm or they're looking at different attribution models and then they're making decisions on where should I put my media dollars to achieve the business objective that I've been given. Right. So the promise of SaaS, the promise of SaaS when SaaS took off, you know, 10, 15 years ago, is that SAS will do the work of 100 people. 10 people, yeah. The promise of agentic AI is it will do the work of 100 people with one person.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

So that one person actually thinking MTRS, it'll do a work of a thousand people with a quarter person.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's essentially where it's going.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Yeah, it's got thousands of people's brains at a processing speed that's unfathomable for us today.

[Unknown Speaker]

So if you're a media holding company today, you should be scared, you should be frightened because your business proposition or the business.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

But you know they're going to do everything to push back. Of course they call it a bluff, call it a buzzword, but that, but.

[Unknown Speaker]

That business model is essentially selling hours, right? So whereas now here's what I worry.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

On the media side, right? The largest media houses evolved over time and to the day they call it a relationship based business. That's how businesses are won and lost and that's how they've justified age old, the CEO stay forever, leadership stays forever, account leaders stay forever, like 20, 30 years, 40 years on the job and the justification is going to pop up. Well, AI cannot replace relationships. How do you think of that?

[Unknown Speaker]

I think AI can do all of the work and I think specifically within this space, if you can drive the cost down from a workflow point of view to.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

And you can, because if it's one to a thousand, one to 100, whatever the case might be, this should be a no brainer.

[Unknown Speaker]

So the companies that do that first, which is essentially what I'm trying to build right now, how do the CPG.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Guys become part of that is what I.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, essentially what I'm trying to achieve here is to do all of that work, which I know is 90% process driven, which machines can do better. There's about 10% of that work that is currently strategy, which I don't trust the AI to do completely as yet. It can be trained in that and it will be trained in that, but.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

That'S only a matter of time.

[Unknown Speaker]

We're talking months, not years away. So the way that the whole media execution arm of a CPG company today will change in the next 12 months.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Is that the focus of your product, the media side?

[Unknown Speaker]

The focus of my product is yes, very much on the media side, on the media execution side.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

So to be buying execution, including content and then analysis and optimization like a.

[Unknown Speaker]

Loop, as well as the media attribution, looking at both offline and online impact as well.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Which is the analysis.

[Unknown Speaker]

Which is the analysis. So essentially your whole media arm could be run by one super brain human.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Plus the software, the tools, the software itself. What's the software called? Have you named it yet?

[Unknown Speaker]

So we're still pondering over a name. We've actually been building this. I've actually been building this for over a year now and luckily we validated it through another big cpg.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

So you're already. Beta is already over at this point.

[Unknown Speaker]

Beta is already over and I'm going into a mode of finding other customers who are very leaned into AI.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

So you're moving from beta to the early adopters?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes, yes.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

So the C. From. From a CPG guys, message standpoint, our listening audience, media buyers, we have hundreds if not thousands. Right. What's the big message you'd want to communicate to them? When should they come to you? At what critical point of the journey? What specific need? To me this is very clear. Right. It's the whole 360 journey. But if, if they wanted to get a start and test something.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

What would you advise?

[Unknown Speaker]

I'm happy to help people understand what is available right now. What is noise versus what is reality. Please feel free to reach out to me and if you're at a size and scale where I can help, I'm more than happy to help and put you in touch with our team that can build all of this stuff out for you respectively. But what it really requires is a leaned in organization that understands that we need to unlearn all of the things that we've done previously.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

How many of those exist? Especially the large companies. Yeah, I'm not talking mid tier and small. They're always willing to learn because the necessity is the mother of invention. They don't have shelf space on the shelf.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

So they're always fighting for that which causes them to learn. Large companies tend to take their shelf space for granted and are really defending a small part of the universe that's lost and regained through innovation. What would you say to those companies? Why should they come to you?

[Unknown Speaker]

They need to come to me because specifically from a media execution point of view, the software is getting smarter than humans in the sense that the audiences that you need to now target are so small and they need to be talked to in a completely different way. Simply executing at mass scale doesn't necessarily work anymore. We've tried this model in multiple brands, multiple categories. I was seeing way more success than.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

The traditional way of doing things to me. And I'm going to use the word flaw. Okay, here's where the flaw comes in of that mass advertising. There's a time and moment. It was necessary because the platforms actually existed. Those were the ways the brand could communicate to potential buyers. Right. And so tv, print, mass digital, the early birth of Yahoo, Google, all that stuff. We live in a world today where our lives are largely controlled by a 6 inch device 24 hours of the day. Right. I hate to admit it, but all of us get up in the morning and that's the first thing we reach for. We don't even say hello to our spouses or good morning. That's what we reach for, Right? That's the reality of the world we live in. It's not you and me, it's everyone. Damn world. Yeah, right. In that sort of scenario, attention. It's a. Gary Vaynerchuk in his new book calls it out clearly, right? The war for attention. That's what media should be and is about. And that attention is individualized. Mass doesn't work in the individual scale. What do people do when they see mass stuff? Swipe. But if it's engaging to the individual. And so Facebook started understanding this with algorithms to give you content that you wanted. Pretty much all platforms. TikTok is one of the best you can possibly think of. So personalization is required. You cannot achieve personalization without the help of AI and a tool. Of course it's not doable. And I'm not sure Most senior marketers, SVPs of brands, CMOs, they're ready for this change in the world that's coming with AI. And to me, the whole reason behind it is that again, I'm not taking digs just because I'm not in corporate America and I can have fun with this. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. They're trained via marketing. 5104. Philip Kotler's book that says the four Ps are the only thing that matter. And that's the brand playbook you have to build. You're living in a world now where some of those P's don't even matter when you're online. And the war for attention. What do you think?

[Unknown Speaker]

If you told me back in Covid that men on Pinterest or dads on Pinterest was a thing, I wouldn't believe you. But it was a thing. And if you look at it through the four Ps, you know, placement would tell you from a media point of view don't necessarily need to be there. So there are all these nuggets of opportunity coming up all the time. And if you simply follow a playbook and you create a playbook or a marketing plan once a year and you don't revise that and you don't have that consistency of revising your strategy and execution plan all the time, you can get in for lunch.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

If you go back four years ago and said, you and I will be digital content creators. That's what we're doing right now.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. I wouldn't believe you.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

You and I wouldn't have believed it either. Right. But this is what the world is about and this is what, this is how personalized content is created and how products are sold these days. Right. So let's go into a little bit of a niche area if it's okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

Sure.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

And our audience would love to hear about connection between media and this. And that area is the famous word retail media. Retail media on most days still feels like it's a mess for. Because there's no standardization of metrics. Every RMN claims it has the best metrics and there's only one way or the highway to measure and optimize. Retail media is not included in the Triple Ms. As of now, largely because agencies haven't figured out how to adopt it. When it comes to budgeting purposes, it's a standalone budget, but now moving from trade to media. Right. Messy, messy, messy world. But to me, AI a tool is probably one of the best ways to incorporate it and make it part of the MMM thoughts.

[Unknown Speaker]

Specifically when a retail media has a data clean room, which our biggest retail media partners like Amazon and Walmart now do, the clarity that you can get from the transactional data that is, that is married to the media interaction data is phenomenal.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

So the RMNs are willing to give up data. That's a fact at this point.

[Unknown Speaker]

The biggest ones are the biggest ones. Yes. And the challenge right now is do you have the right talent and resources to actually crunch that data and make sense of that? And this is where my product kind of comes in is it crunches the data coming out of data clean rooms to give you that clarity and to give you the understanding of what are those top, middle and bottom of funnel interactions that actually happen before a conversion takes place. And then how do you grow that lifetime value whilst monitoring your media spend per cohort over that lifetime value as well?

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

To me, the greatest applicability of your tool is going to be for the mid tier CPGs. And like my, here's my thinking, why mid tier and of course startups, Startups at will, right? The large companies are interested in raising the dividend a few cents every year and they have an age old blueprint with very high trade rates on how to do that. So the need to change is minimal. Minimal and not required. Mid tiers need to fight for that shelf space. They need to optimize dynamically. My belief is you can help them do that dynamically, be in a 360 loop, measure, optimize, get better every single day with your budgets, etc. Etc. That's one of the greatest outcomes you can deliver. So let's get into applied AI in a deeper way. Right? In the United States market that we serve today, that you and I serve today, right? AI is obviously present at this point. Senior leaders are reading about it left and right. I have yet to see a senior leader of a large market company raise hands and say, hey board, we're going to adopt this, we're going to do it this way. At least publicly. Nothing's been announced, right? Why do you think that's the case?

[Unknown Speaker]

If I hear another like corporate executive talking about how they've implemented AI by our chatbot, I'm just going to like scream.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

By the way, the CPG guys are going to be at Cagney, okay, in February. Do you know what Cagney is? Consumer Goods Analyst of New York.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

That's where the largest CPG guys and the CEOs, CFOs go down and analysts ask them questions about the year to be. We are there as press. We will be asking questions about how are you adopting AI and clean rooms. Publicly stated it. It's up to you how you want to choose to answer it, but go on.

[Unknown Speaker]

I think it's very not well understood within executive boards, within CPGs. I think a lot of people are looking at this stuff for like, oh, I can make content cheaper now. Oh, I can simply implement Microsoft Copilot. And we don't need to write meeting notes anymore because Copilot is going to do that for us. I think that's fundamentally missing the point. All of these things are just slightly additive to what already exists and not necessarily thinking about what is that end to end workflow that we have as an organization and how do I embed AI and still keep humans in the loop and fundamentally change that process. So one of the things I worked on was, and I was Running a sizable content team is instead of being able to produce 100 assets per week, we were looking at how do we scale that to 1,000 assets per week without increasing the size of the team, but at the same time improve content effectiveness. So it wasn't just about, let's just produce more assets because we can, because there's generative AI. It's also about how do I ensure that the conversion of each asset that I produce converts better than the must deliver? Basically, yeah, at a baseline it needs to deliver the same conversion, but ideally deliver more. So what we were thinking about is not necessarily just telling our designers, you know, we don't need you anymore, but essentially telling them, hey, through retail media, through data clean rooms, we have all of these signals now telling us which creatives actually work and within those creatives, which marketing claims actually work, which call to actions actually work, or what color scheme actually works for your particular brand, on which particular retail media platform, using all of these insights to train the models to help the designers create better assets. So if you already have all of this expertise in house, how do you just equip them with better tools and better software to help them do their job better? I think what we missed the point, and this happened in the last wave of social media and then E commerce, is that all these companies said, oh, let's just bring in the 21 year olds that are on TikTok or the 21 year olds at the time who know Instagram or Facebook, and they'll solve all of our problems. I think the people that you have existing in your organization that have bought media for 80 plus for, you know, a long time, and have 80% of that institutional knowledge about your brand category and your company, it's easier to level those people up using AI rather than starting from scratch every single time.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

The challenge, the challenge is this is the story of the e commerce person and the brick and mortar person. Usually for most companies, brick and mortar is like 75% of your business. And then E commerce is that we're at a pace where it's already 25 at this point. And I constantly hear back from leaders. Well, it's easier for me to take these people and do my best with them rather than try to move these people here. And that's why they'll never be the head of sales or the head of marketing or anything. So that logic is not helping.

[Unknown Speaker]

No. And there's an inherent tension there as well. Right. Because you fundamentally have to change the way that you do things. And people are usually Set in their ways. But the next.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

You cannot be a C suite leader today without understanding AI. True or false?

[Unknown Speaker]

Of course. And you know, you look at every single, and obviously every single tech CEO right now is going to be talking about the benefits of all of this stuff. But this is the next industrial revolution that we're about to embark on. And the people that miss it, it's.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Their fault though if they miss it, they will personally as CEOs be responsible for not having acted.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well. It's as simple as.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

And it's a responsibility though you owe that to your shareholder as well.

[Unknown Speaker]

The one of the great things that CPG companies do is, is have projects like productivity projects. Right. So how do we.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Every three years. Clockwork.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, clockwork. We have to do this. And it's over and above the plan. So we have to find these incremental opportunities.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

The blueprint is so straightforward. November, December, it starts very secret. Jan, Feb, it starts spreading. March, April, actually happens like clockwork.

[Unknown Speaker]

Clockwork. And any cpg, you go, this is, you know, it's embedded in the process. What I'm calling for now is how do we look at the existing workflows? How do we, how have we always done the same things that we've always done? How do we re engineer that process to embed AI capabilities so that what used to take 200 days to do, how do we cut that to 20 days using AI? We'll set these targets per department and have a program to actually deliver against them. So it's not just a productivity goal.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

It'S also a intelligent productivity goal. It's not just optimizing the workforce to do more with less.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

And you get better outcomes and you.

[Unknown Speaker]

Deliver better shareholder value. But that's what the promise of this technology actually is. It's not just create better PowerPoints. For me, which I haven't seen a great PowerPoint come out of. Copilot.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Eventually that will, at some point, that will happen in the next year. I'm pretty confident. So let's go to an area which. Let's talk about responsible AI. Cool. One of the topics that has been floating around in the industry last six months, 12 months, is deep fakes. Fake AI, maybe there's a better word for it. But the creation of content that often is not what people want to see. Personalized content doesn't even look like it's made by AI looks so original in nature, but it's a fake. And it can ruin someone's reputation, it can tarnish somebody, it can say the wrong things. It can create cult like behavior. I can go on and on about that. How does the CPG industry govern AI? So we minimize and focus minimize the sort of fake AI and focus on responsible AI. Doesn't there need to be a governance party set up asap? Maybe Imtiaz can do that too.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's a very great product to think about as well I think and I don't think that we're there as yet but this is where I Think cryptography blockchain NFTs have a role to play in terms of verifying content is actually legitimate. Now the systems for that are probably not set up to execute that properly across all of the different media platforms but essentially that's what we need to have a system in which we can verify content has been published by the right person using the right almost like.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

A digital ID like blockchain. Blockchain like that can be verified by.

[Unknown Speaker]

Other people, verified by anyone certifies it as authentic. Similarly I think with all the media accounts that we have in the world there needs to be some form of verifiable authenticity of who actually posted this stuff.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

What a great opportunity for holding code media agency to build one and own this.

[Unknown Speaker]

Of course, like it just makes sense to do so. Otherwise this stuff is going to get.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Like it's already supposed to do it for medium metrics. You can literally have a new bureau just to do this. Of course monetizable opportunity for somebody very much so. So let's go to a different area with AI. CPG industry's biggest challenge in the last two years has been volume. Why? Because of all the inflationary price increases the previous three years Covid till 2023. How can AI help with this crazy volume challenge issue that a CPG company is dealing with? Because logic and reason would tell you based on years and years of old school training until CPG companies are willing to lower price that volume equation is not going to shift and private label is keep going to winning in bits and bites. Ankle bites. Can AI help with this issue to drive volume again through personalization and content and curated content versus just focusing on.

[Unknown Speaker]

Inflationary pricing the challenge of volume specifically. You know we've always searched for both organic and inorganic growth sources, right? So thinking about organic growth, to me.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Though India is the for the large companies, yeah growth is either come through E commerce, right? Costco is an exception to that rule in brick and mortar. Dollar General has been exception or M and A.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes, I think AI can help you market to new audiences that have is it personalization it's not just personalization, it's also hunting for the right audiences. Let me give you an example of intelligence.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Basically.

[Unknown Speaker]

Let me give you an example of what you can do using a data cleaner. Let's say in the US it's Huggies versus Pampas. Right. Using a retail media data cleanroom. If you're Huggies, you can do a search for the audience that searched Pampas last 30 days but did not purchase that category from that retailer. And it will spit out 300,000 people that demonstrated that behavior. You could then serve them a DSP ad telling them why your product, why your diaper is better than any other diaper in the market. That will help you find, I would argue, the most incremental audience for the diaper segment. Right. So from a volume point of view, if you want incremental market share, if you want incremental growth, and that category is not necessarily going to grow because there's not birth rate growth in the US then you have to steal share.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Yep.

[Unknown Speaker]

Then you need to look at methodologies in which that helps you find that share. And that's why you have to invest in AI.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Yeah. So we've covered quite a few topics right. From responsible AI growth, AI for growth. We talked about clean rooms which is a topic of often discussion in the industry. We've gone quite the ends of volume challenges and we started right up front with talent. We talked about jobs and the future of jobs holding co opportunities as well as media buying. What do we not cover? What should our audience, what should audience be thinking about in the AI?

[Unknown Speaker]

I think the structure of teams and the way that you do work and I learned this in E commerce and it's amazing how you know this, amazing how the parallels in the E commerce boom, social media boom, digital boom, is exactly the same as what is happening right now with AI. The structure of a team is threefold. One, you need to have a team that can do your day to day, your operations. Two, you need to be straightforward, you need to keep the lights on, need to service your customers, need to keep everything going. Two, you need a growth team. So people who know how to test all of this stuff validate it very quickly, understand risk profiles of missing out on certain things because it doesn't necessarily make sense. It's very easy to fall into its shiny new object syndrome. Right. So people that can essentially understand what you need to test and what you need to do versus what you don't need to do. And the third team that you need to have is people who innately understand technology and how to deploy technology very fast within your organization. And this is a call out to all of the CPG IT organizations. If you think that you're going to. If you think that your job in your company is to replicate what Google.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Does, customer service, chatbot, customers, chat job.

[Unknown Speaker]

You're missing the point. The IT function needs to be an.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Enabler to commercial into everyday applied business.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. And I would add that means we're.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Talking raw material procurement to manufacturing to creation of product to transportation to marketing. There's a role for AI across the spectrum. It's not customer service and chatbots. That's customer service and chatbots should be 100% of the universe today. Like we shouldn't even be discussing that.

[Unknown Speaker]

But every IT business analyst that's working in the cpgs, they need to sit with the commercial people. They need to sit with supply chain, educate them, educate them and also listen and understand what the problem is.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Take them to Cesar, take them to the relevant conferences. So I'll be at NRF in mid January. What I'm acutely going to look forward to report back on as a CPG guy is the role of AI in retail. I know I'm going to be disappointed. I'm anticipating that, but I want to be. I want the carpet pulled out under my legs on this one. And for the retail industry to demonstrate I was wrong and AI is in all these different facets.

[Unknown Speaker]

So coming back to the structure of your team to tackle these opportunities, you need that growth team, you need that tech opera, you need that technical team that can understand how to deploy that technology. And you need your standard operating team. If you can figure out how to embed a team that has these three capabilities, each wave that comes generative AI is, is what we're talking about right now. Who knows what is coming in the next six months. But as these opportunities arise, you can still keep the lights on, still have 80, 90% of your business under control, and then have enough space to innovate and test things that could fundamentally change the way you do your business.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Awesome. The thank you for making time in Sydney.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thank you for, for coming to my hometown. Man, this is.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

It's been good fun. And thank you on the 2nd of January for making it out. I know you had to drive and be a half hour away and I sincerely appreciate that you made time came. I was not going to miss the opportunity to meet you in person and do a podcast episode. So I'm glad we were able to work it out. So sincerely thank you. I will talk to our audience for a second here. A reminder to all our audience that if you want to just like Imtiaz, if you want to be on the show, get in touch with [e-mail] if you think you or anybody in your company has something to contribute to this wonderful industry that has given us so much to all our fans, especially a LinkedIn fan base growing by the hour, by the day. We can't thank you enough for your clicks, likes DMs, meeting us at conferences, shooting podcasts just like Imtiaz did with us today. And for all the love you give us and have grown CPG guys to over 450 episodes, I can never say thank you Imtiaz. Anything from your side, man.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thank you for being on Applied Intelligence Podcast, Sree. It's an honor to be part of a community of people that really care about the industry and care about the development of the industry and more specifically the support that you guys give to people who want to make a difference. It's very cool.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Let's not make it a one and done here. AI is probably the most transformational capability to hit this industry in a long time. Although the mind wants to say it's E commerce, it's not. AI is clearly going to be a game changer in our CPG industry as it's understood and adopted more. So let's not make it a one and done. Let's have both Applied Intelligence podcast as well as CPG guys talk much more about this topic at the end of the day. Mtias, you and I seek the same thing. We're seeking to educate the industry and give them tools that they can rely on us for education so they can indeed do the most important thing our industry wants. Deliver the best product at the right price for the consumer. So I look forward to us engaging more, curating more content, really demystifying this topic more. Hopefully the next time we're speaking, let's talk about your product. All the different elements of the product, the capabilities. By then, my guess is you've already moved away from beta mode, as we said, into early adopter mode. And maybe you can talk about what that early adoption looks like.

[Unknown Speaker]

Super cool. And on that next episode, I better have my jacket ready to go.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

That will be your number five. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Perfect. Thank you so much, Sri.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Thank you. With that, it's a wrap of this episode of the CPG Guys.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thank you so much.

[Peter Vs Bond]

That was fun all the way From Sydney, Australia with Imtiaz Ahmed from the Applied Intelligence Podcast of course, let me remind the audience that you can find all of our content by simply going to a web browser and typing cpg.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Zygos guys.com as the URL.

[Peter Vs Bond]

If you think you or your company.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Has some thought leadership to contribute to.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Our community discussion, drop us an email at contact cpg guys.com Again, that email is contact.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Maybe you can join us on the podcast.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Don't forget to drop us a [e-mail] on the top of the navigation bar or on the Apple Podcast. Those ratings and reviews matter. They tell us how the podcast is.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Doing and whether we have the right guests.

[Peter Vs Bond]

To all the followers on LinkedIn, we can't say thank you enough times for downloading and listening to the podcast week or week, episode after episode, twice a week, thrice a week, sometimes for meeting us at conference, recording at conferences, for the click likes, direct messages influencing what.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

We have in this podcast.

[Peter Vs Bond]

To all our sponsors. The show doesn't exist without you.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

I can't say thank you enough times.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Imtiaz it was a pleasure to do this joint collaboration podcast with you. And that's a wrap of this episode.

[Imtiaz Ahmed]

Of the CPG Guys.

[Unknown Speaker]

The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGuys, LLC or the individual author, hosts or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPG Guys, llc. The views expressed by guests are their own, and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. The views expressed by CPT Guys, LLC do not represent the views of their employers or the entity they represent. CPT Guys, LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of or reference to or inability to use this podcast or the information we present in this podcast.