Kroger launches AI-generated email digest for suppliers

The reports include a balance of short-term and long-term performance: the KPIs from a brand’s traditional sales units, household trends from the last week and the recent quarters, comparisons of performance to competitors within the category, anomalies or differences on a geography level, and how promotions have performed compared to competitors. It may also include seasonal performance, such as how a brand performed during Halloween compared to the year before.

For example, the report may give brands insights into trends like a dip in yogurt sales or a spike in seasonal candy purchases, according to a news release.

Barbara Connors, vp of strategy and activation at Kroger Precision Marketing Powered by 84.51°, told Modern Retail that the newsletter was inspired by how category managers and consumer insights executives at CPG brands often spend time on Mondays analyzing the performance from the week before to present to leadership and make strategy decisions.

“We said, ‘There’s a real opportunity for us to bring those insights directly to our clients proactively, so they don’t have to go in on Monday mornings and run all the reports they need to fuel the intelligence they need to start their week.’ We bring it directly to them,” Connors said. “The advancements that have happened within AI really make that possible in a way where, five years ago, it wasn’t a reality.”

Connors said she and her team spent time evaluating what insights to pull and how to bring it to clients in a way that is “synthesized, relevant and actionable,” working with CPG brands large and small to see what kinds of recommendations and analysis they would want in the reports.

“It can be overwhelming for brands and marketers — who already are extremely busy and overwhelmed and looking to make very nimble decisions — to pivot their businesses to drive growth,” Connors said. “It’s really, in this case, anchored on delivering speed to insight. Here, AI is a really powerful tool internally that we can use to say, ‘How do we really deliver on the promise of speed to insight in a very tangible way?'”

She said the project has been in the works for about a year and launched Nov. 10, delivering more than 600 unique reports to clients before 8 a.m. Eastern Time.

“It tells you the most important things you need to know about your own brand and business and category, so that you can start your week really quickly to say, ‘OK, now what do I want to do about it?’” she said.

The feature also incorporates news from outside sources to add perspective on the industry and has an understanding of Kroger’s full suite of capabilities, so it can recommend actions like pushing out targeted offers to turn a certain trend around.

Connors said the feature incorporates several different evaluations by AI agents on top of Agent Monday’s analysis to ensure the insights are accurate and significant, as well as to avoid hallucinations.

She said that, beyond Agent Monday, the company is also developing AI-led summaries and insights that will be visible on the Stratum platform itself. The goal of Agent Monday and these other tools, she added, will be to go from getting an insight to identifying an audience and reaching that audience through a campaign within minutes.

“We don’t want to just drive speed to insight. We also want to deliver on speed of action and confidence in the actions you are taking,” Connors said. “This is then driving the science we build, the data assets we make available internally and to our clients, and then also the capabilities we’re building to connect platforms.”

Walmart similarly plans to launch several AI tools within Scintilla, its first-party data platform for suppliers and merchants. These include a conversational tool to help suppliers better understand Scintilla’s data, another tool that provides summaries of customer survey results, and enhanced recommendations for marketing and advertising strategy.

In addition to people like category managers, advertisers at CPG brands also take advantage of tools like Kroger’s Stratum and Walmart’s Scintilla. Chelsey Lang, director of retail media measurement at Ovative Group and a former analyst for Target, Room & Board and Kohl’s, said prior to Agent Monday, reports from retailers could be automated to a degree but didn’t have the component of AI insights.

“Anytime [a company is] able to deliver, straight to our inbox, a really simplified version of data that we were previously pulling and analyzing manually is going to make our jobs easier and allow us to just focus on what’s more important, which is reacting to what the data and insights are saying,” Lang said.

She said it is going to unlock a robust opportunity for deeper conversations between Kroger and advertisers about how they can react to business trends, both within their brands and against the category.

“Having a more simplified, easy, straightforward way to drop that in your email inbox on a Monday morning alleviates a lot of what we’re doing but also makes it easier for leadership teams, both at agencies and at advertiser leadership teams, to understand what’s happening within the business,” Lang said.