Digital transformation is not only leveraging new technological opportunities to accelerate the business. It is a cultural change and a shift towards making digital the heart of the business. It is a journey that many traditional FMCG brands, are undertaking to compete in a market that is now seeing more agile direct-to-consumer start-ups. These days, to have a competitive edge is to be customer centric. To have a deep understanding of our customers' needs and fulfil them better than anyone else.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and programmatic advertising can prove to be great tools for FMCG brands in garnering better customer engagement. With the use of programmatic data, brands can generate personalised content for consumers. Unlike before, with programmatic data one can also generate real-time data with respect to a consumer's walks into the store. AI will also instantly allow the brand to understand market trends which lead to better customer personalization. We at exchange4media got in touch with marketing leaders and brands to get their perspective on how the FMCG sector can leverage from AI and programmatic advertising.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not something that we will use in the future but something that's being used today by brands across world in their marketing efforts. It's an integral part of marketing efforts for brands to help build a better customer experience. FMCG brands are adopting AI to help recognise customer behavior, provide predictive customer service, integrate it as part of the product offering and in many other ways. A leading FMCG brand used AI technology to help recognise micro facial expressions of joy, anger and surprise in a focus group research for a fragrance to help predict whether the consumer liked the product or not. The AI technology developed by Emotient, a startup recently acquired by Apple was able to more accurately predict preferences of the focus group than surveys. Knorr used cognitive technology, a component of AI in its latest campaign Love at First Taste campaign - "Flavour Profiler".