AI Test Kitchen • Building a Recipe for AI-Powered Success

When it comes to harnessing the power of AI, there are endless opportunities to cook up a storm. So, how does one know which recipes to use? The Kitchen—Kraft Heinz’s in-house agency and creative chef behind its iconic brands—could immediately see the value of AI technology, but simply didn’t know where to start. In need of a sous-chef, they asked our tech-savvy Formula.Monks to help them develop ideas and create a roadmap to implement AI throughout their business model. Therefore, we organized an in-person workshop to identify where and how AI could drive high value across all of The Kitchen’s operations with the aim to increase efficiencies, save costs, and elevate strategic, creative and production output. The outcome? An action plan to power their business with AI.

We started off by centralizing the question of “how might we?” to uncover the numerous areas of opportunity. From establishing AI foundations to trendspotting, creative development and production, our shopping list of possible AI use cases included lots of ingredients. So, we made sure to boil our ideas down to four focus areas: sharpen the primary insight, social trendspotting, creative ideation, and brand virtualization. Then, we created pilot implementation plans for each theme, thus defining the business value, the proposed scope, recommended tools and technologies, and the estimated effort as the concept evolves. Ultimately, we distilled all of this information into a single strategic AI roadmap, outlining how The Kitchen can build a brand virtualization foundation, while executing pilots that spur adoption of tools, learning and development, and creative ideation.

In addition to the main dish—the roadmap—we delivered four key takeaways. First, we advised The Kitchen on protecting Kraft Heinz’s data from AI model exposure, as we always say that any strong AI strategy starts with an airtight data strategy. Second, we highlighted the importance of communications around the role of AI within an organization, which can accelerate people’s acceptance and adoption of a new technology. Innovation sprints, for example, offer a safe space for talent to learn by doing and collectively push innovation forward. Third, we showed The Kitchen that the easiest point of entry is testing out AI use cases that don't require internal data, like those that spark creative processes. And as a final note, we emphasized that AI tools are constantly evolving, so it’s critical to have a solid foundation and establish a framework and process focused on adaptability— so that they're ready to adopt when the next big thing comes along.

Through the workshop, we were able to show The Kitchen how they can use Kraft Heinz’s data to build a large language model ecosystem that supports various AI tools and use cases—and ultimately empower their talent by equipping them with flexible tools that can be used across a wide array of workflows. With that, they can now return to their chopping boards with a refined palate and a clear understanding of how to leverage AI to unlock new opportunities and add more value to their business model.