Ben & Jerry's row deepens as three board members removed Three members of Ben & Jerry's independent board will no longer be eligible to serve in their roles, after the ice cream company introduced a new set of governance practices. These include a nine-year limit set on board members' terms. Chair Anuradha Mittal, who earlier said she had no plans to resign under pressure, is among those affected. The move was criticised by the company's co-founder Ben Cohen, who called it a blatant power grab designed to strip the board of legal authority and independence. His remarks are the latest in a long-running row between Ben and Jerry's and its owner over the Cherry Garcia maker's social activism and the continued independence of its board.

Ben & Jerry's brand could be destroyed, says co-founder Ben & Jerry's will be destroyed as a brand if it remains with parent company Magnum, the company's co-founder Ben Cohen has told the BBC. His remarks are the latest in a long-running spat between the ice cream brand and its parent company over its ability to express its social activism and the continued independence of its board. The comments came on the day that the Magnum Ice Cream Company (TMICC) started trading on the European stock market - spinning off from owner Unilever. A spokesperson for Magnum said the firm wanted to build and strengthen Ben & Jerry's powerful, non-partisan values-based position in the world. Ben & Jerry's was sold to Unilever in 2000 in a deal which allowed it to retain an independent board and the right to make decisions about its social mission.

Ben & Jerry's co-founder quits over social activism row Ben & Jerry's co-founder Jerry Greenfield has left the ice cream maker after almost half a century at the firm, deepening a dispute with parent company Unilever. In a letter shared on social media by fellow co-founder Ben Cohen, Mr Greenfield said the Cherry Garcia maker had lost its independence after Unilever put a halt to its social activism. His exit marks the latest episode in a row that started in 2021 when Ben & Jerry's said it would stop selling its ice cream in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. A spokesperson for The Magnum Ice Cream Company, which is being spun off from Unilever, said it was grateful to Mr Greenfield but disagreed with his stance. In his letter Mr Greenfield said leaving the firm was one of the hardest and most painful decisions he had ever made but he could no longer in good conscience work for a business that had been silenced by Unilever.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the marketing field, offering businesses new ways to personalize their messaging, analyze customer data, and create more effective marketing campaigns. By using machine learning algorithms and predictive analytics, companies can better understand customer behaviors, preferences, and needs, and tailor their marketing efforts accordingly. In this blog post, we'll explore some real-world examples of how businesses are using AI to improve their marketing efforts. Whether you're a small business owner or a marketing professional, understanding how AI is being used in marketing can help you stay ahead of the curve and make more informed decisions about your marketing strategy. So let's dive in and explore some of the most compelling case studies of AI in marketing.

Unilever and Suntory are among the beverage brand owners best positioned to take advantage of future artificial intelligence disruption in the industry, according to recent research. The assessment comes from GlobalData's Thematic Research ecosystem, which ranks companies on a scale of one to five, based on their likelihood to tackle challenges like AI. According to the analysis, Unilever is well-placed to benefit from its investments in artificial intelligence. The group, which operates the Lipton iced tea brand in partnership with PepsiCo, was the only company to attain the top score in GlobalData's non-alcoholic beverages'Thematic Scorecard'. In the 12 months to the end of September, Unilever advertised for 323 new artificial intelligence-related roles and mentioned artificial intelligence five times in its filings.

Unilever and Lindt & Sprungli are among the companies in the food industry best positioned to take advantage of developments in artificial intelligence, our analysis shows. The assessment comes from GlobalData's Thematic Research, which ranks companies on a scale of one to five based on their likelihood to tackle challenges like artificial intelligence and emerge as long-term winners of the food sector. According to our analysis, Unilever, Lindt and Japan-based snacks group Calbee feature in the list of companies best positioned to benefit from investments in artificial intelligence, all of them recording scores of five out of five. Unilever indicated good levels of investment in AI, with the company looking for 323 new jobs in the field since October 2020, for example. The table below shows how GlobalData analysts scored the biggest companies among packaged food and food ingredients manufacturers on their AI performance, as well as the number of new artificial intelligence-related jobs, deals, patents and mentions in company reports since October 2020.

Bleenco launches new no-code AI platform for accessible and customizable AI-solutions. Munich, Germany: Bleenco, the Munich-based Artificial Intelligence startup has launched "Bleenco Go", the first no-code AI platform delivering AI for real-world solutions in industrial settings. It offers accessible AI solutions for operational managers that allow them to elevate human safety and operational efficiency, and the tools and components for AI R&D departments to build and maintain AI solutions for their daily businesses – without the need to code. With the launch of the platform, Bleenco brings global AI knowledge together in one place and revolutionises the way operational managers and R&D innovative departments can implement AI solutions in their organization's daily businesses. Bleenco Go focuses on tackling the typically challenging aspects in the development cycle of AI solutions that constitute 65% of the development costs and 80% of the recurring costs to keep the solution up to date and running.

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 is becoming good at many "human" jobs--diagnosing disease, translating languages, providing customer service--and it's improving fast. This is raising reasonable fears that AI will ultimately replace human workers throughout the economy. Never before have digital tools been so responsive to us, nor we to our tools. While AI will radically alter how work gets done and who does it, the technology's larger impact will be in complementing and augmenting human capabilities, not replacing them. Certainly, many companies have used AI to automate processes, but those that deploy it mainly to displace employees will see only short-term productivity gains. In our research involving 1,500 companies, we found that firms achieve the most significant performance improvements when humans and machines work together. Through such collaborative intelligence, humans and AI actively enhance each other's complementary strengths: the leadership, teamwork, creativity, and social skills of the former, and the speed, scalability, and quantitative capabilities of the latter. What comes naturally to people (making a joke, for example) can be tricky for machines, and what's straightforward for machines (analyzing gigabytes of data) remains virtually impossible for humans.

Artificial intelligence (AI), the use of human-like intelligence through software and mechanisms, enables the disruption of the most diverse segments. After all, this is an industry that has grown an average of 20% per year for the past 5 years, according to a survey by BBC Research. Many organizations have already joined the "future" and gained space by efficiently applying AI in everyday activities. For example, some banks started to perform financial services without the help of a human; farms use drones capable of identifying points in a crop that need more irrigation and automatically trigger sprinklers. AI is not set to replace the recruiter's work, the importance of the interview, the empathy, and the sparkle in the eye that we sometimes feel when interviewing a candidate.