Dive Overview:
- PepsiCo brands Gatorade and Pepsi debuted new tech bells and whistles as part of their showcase at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity last week, and they shared the details with Marketing Dive.
- Gatorade demonstrated an artificial intelligence-powered AI hydration coach called Anna at the Sport Beach event in Stagwell, where the brand served as a sponsor. Trained with historical expertise from the Gatorade Sports Science Institute, our assistants break down the science of hydration into a format that consumers can easily digest.
- Meanwhile, Pepsi shared a first look at its Smart Can, a connected device with a wraparound screen, motion sensors and accelerometers that help personalize the user experience. The soft drink brand will be promoting the can-shaped device to creators and fans of football, gaming, music and food content in the future.
Diving Insights:
Cannes Lions, which ended on Friday, is an annual gathering honoring advertising's brightest minds and serves as the industry's de facto Oscars. This year, PepsiCo used the event to preview new experiments fusing marketing, design, and technology, with a focus on enhancing personalization.
Gatorade's AI hydration coach leverages current technology and talks festivities. We apply AI to educate users on the best ways to stay hydrated through an assistant that leverages decades of historical data from the Sports Drink Brand Lab. The concept is based on the idea that AI has the power to democratize once-exclusive services, giving average consumers the expert guidance available only to elite athletes.
Gatorade debuted a new AI hydration coach called Anna at Cannes Lions.
Permission granted by PepsiCo
At Cannes Lions, Anna appeared as a virtual avatar wearing a shirt and blazer via a touchscreen interface. Users can ask specific questions related to their hydration needs, but she can also ask more casual questions, like Anna's favorite Gatorade flavor. A spokesperson said the AI Hydration Coach aims to pilot in a small number of markets in late 2024 or early 2025, with the goal of ultimately engaging consumers across a variety of online and physical touchpoints, such as in-store displays. He said he was doing it.
Sister brand Pepsi's innovation leverages the iconography of the soda can and reimagines it as an “interactive portal” complete with digital screens, cutting-edge sound technology and motion sensors. Marketers have positioned the smart cans, which despite their appearance do not contain soda, as a way to give fans a personalized experience and potentially send them exclusive assets like access codes.
The smart cans will be considered for future Pepsi promotions with creators of games, sports and more, but are currently not available at retail stores. The timeline for the Smart Can marketing effort wasn't immediately clear, other than that Pepsi would share more information in the coming months.
Pepsi's push to push the boundaries in consumer technology recently emerged as it lost its longtime spot as America's second-largest soda brand to Dr Pepper. Marketing director Todd Kaplan, a company veteran, left the brand in early June.
