Mars Petcare introduced artificial intelligence to optimize promotions

2021: Automate promotion calendar

Mars Petcare introduced a system to automate and optimize the generation of the promotion calendar based on an AI solution developed by Rubbles, which announced this on November 8, 2021. According to the results of the project, Mars expects an increase in the efficiency of promotions by 10%. It is planned that in the future the decision will begin to take into account cross-effects between promos and regular sales. Increasing the efficiency of the promo calendar will optimize the indicators of the food category for pets.

According to Nielsen, from 2015 to 2019, the share of promotional sales in the top 20 FMCG categories (in monetary terms) increased by 23%. According to the results of the first half of 2021, this indicator at offline stores is at the level of 52-53% and breaks all records online: the share of online sales of food products with discounts in Russia reached 69%, non-food products - 77%. This means that consumers continue to actively buy goods at discounts, which encourages manufacturers and retailers to look for other ways to increase the effectiveness of their actions, including with the help of artificial intelligence.

So, Mars Petcare built the process of planning a promotional calendar using scenario analysis. This became the main one for the development of the project together with Rubbles - the introduction of technologies that allow you to create recommendations for the optimal promo calendar. In this process, sales specialists determine the limitations that the future promo calendar should meet, and key performance indicators for optimization. Computer-based training, in turn, generates promo calendars taking into account the specified parameters. Thus, the solution improves performance indicators, for example, increasing the margin of promos while maintaining market share.

Шаблон:Quote 'author = said Alexander Zarakovsky, head of product analytics at Rubbles.

Шаблон:Quote 'author = noted Mikhail Gushchin, senior leader of the digital transformation of Mars Petcare.

{{quote 'author = added Natalia Senechkina, Director of Customer Marketing and Category Management at Mars Petcare. |

The use of AI technology in working with promos allowed us to move from retrospective promo analytics to predictive one and create a tool that, through optimization and scenario planning, allows us to form the most effective promo calendars, both in terms of Mars Petcare's business performance and categorical metrics in general. This tool dramatically changes our approach to promo management,}}