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Reckitt is betting that generative AI tools will not only unleash creativity at the multinational CPG, but help reduce its carbon footprint as well.
That’s according to Fabrice Beaulieu, who has worked across various roles within the business since 1999. In April 2022, he was appointed to Reckitt’s Group Executive Committee, overseeing marketing and sustainability functions across Reckitt’s 68 markets.
The company that produces household brands including Lysol, Air Wick, Durex and Finish, has just revealed 6% revenue growth for the first half of the year.
For CPG companies, which produce an enormous amount of plastic waste, cutting their carbon output has become an ever-daunting task. “My job is to create value for our brands and to make sure that we look at sustainability as an opportunity as much as risk management,” Beaulieu told Adweek.
Even before GenAI tools became more widely available, Beaulieu’s team used a virtual production model to produce spots for brands including Delsym, Air Wick, Veet and Lysol.
Life has never been more exciting for a marketer. Never.
Fabrice Beaulieu, Reckitt
GenAI will both speed up the production process and find more sustainable ways to get there.
“Over time, you’ll realize that you’ve liberated the creativity of your team, because in a virtual studio you can be on the moon, you can be in the ocean, you can be anywhere,” he continued. “We always said we want 80% of our productions to be shot like that.”
Reckitt brought along 40 marketers to Cannes Lions to learn what they could about the potential of GenAI, and then to report back as part of internal training on the tech to the rest of its global marketing team—from Tokyo to Sydney to Parsippany, New Jersey.
“It opens a new space of creativity, putting creativity on steroids and scaling it,” Beaulieu said. “Shooting virtually removes the shackles of the creative team—that’s been our journey of the past few years. Imagine what AI can do to your brand assets if, by design, you can digitize them. You can really supercharge the whole model.”
Beaulieu said virtual production gets the job done in less time and with a lower carbon footprint.