Artificial intelligence dominates corporate strategy decks, but for CPG leaders the conversation has moved past hype. They’re not having nightmares about robots replacing marketers, they’re asking how AI can help them anticipate consumer preferences and act faster than competitors.
From Hype to Intelligence
While generative AI dominates headlines, the real story in CPG is how companies are using AI to unlock insights from mountains of unstructured consumer feedback. This is where hype gives way to measurable impact. Ratings, reviews, support tickets, and social chatter contain a goldmine of signals about consumer preferences, frustrations, and unmet needs.
The power comes from a combination of people willingly sharing opinions: rating a product online, posting on social media, or calling in to explain frustrations, and the ability of AI to turn that flood of user-generated content into something structured and actionable. For decades, those signals were scattered, noisy, and too expensive to analyze at scale. AI is changing that.
According to McKinsey, CPG companies that embed consumer insights into decision-making see 85% faster growth in sales and margins compared to peers that don’t. Historically, these insights were derived from long-cycle market research surveys or expensive panels. Today, AI-driven platforms enable real-time analysis, giving brands the agility to respond to shifting consumer sentiment within weeks or even days.
How Brands Are Using AI Today
Consider Nestlé USA. The company has leaned on AI-driven feedback analysis to better understand sentiment shifts across categories. Product ratings and reviews have become an essential part of their social intelligence tech stack because they uncover the why behind consumer sentiment, tying it directly to a specific SKU or even a particular retailer. This depth of insight allows Nestlé USA teams to spot consumer pain points early and react quickly, whether that means addressing packaging concerns or seizing on an emerging market opportunity.
Liquid I.V., one of the fastest-growing hydration brands, takes a similar approach. Instead of waiting months for survey data to validate a new flavor, the company blends product reviews with consumer care data to see the full story. Within days of a launch, teams can tell whether a flavor is resonating, or if subtle concerns about taste are beginning to take hold. That speed of insight informs both product development and marketing strategy, giving the brand confidence to scale winners and course-correct on underperformers.
OLLY, the B-Corp certified wellness brand behind gummy supplements, faced a familiar challenge: reviews and feedback were scattered across platforms, making it difficult to extract reliable insights quickly. By unifying consumer sentiment into a single source of truth, OLLY was able to cut manual review collection from days to minutes, spot potential product concerns earlier in the launch process, and align cross-functional teams with access to the same trusted insights.
As Sara Ellefson, Marketing Analytics Manager at OLLY, explained:
“Requests would come in last-minute and I’d have to manually pull review data from multiple sources. It took hours, sometimes days. With AI, it can be reduced to minutes.”
Together, these stories underscore a simple truth: AI in CPG is not about futuristic robots. It’s about making better decisions, faster, by building a deeper, more unified understanding of the consumer.
Tools Powering the Shift
Platforms like Yogi illustrate how this transformation is happening in practice. Rather than relying on siloed tools, Yogi unifies the voice of the consumer across product reviews, social chatter, support tickets, and surveys. This consolidation is powerful because it eliminates the blind spots that arise when teams only look at one channel in isolation.
For consumer goods brands such as Nestlé USA, Unilever, Liquid I.V., Microsoft, and OLLY, the value is clear: they gain precise, SKU-level intelligence at scale, without the delays of manual analysis. This empowers teams to move from reacting to proactively shaping product, marketing, and e-commerce strategies.
Why It Matters Now
Consumer expectations are evolving at record speed. According to PwC, 32% of consumers will abandon a beloved brand after just one bad experience, and 59% will leave after multiple poor interactions. In this climate, being even a month late in detecting an emerging consumer frustration can cost millions in lost loyalty and sales.
At the same time, retailers are demanding more accountability from brands. Walmart, Amazon, and Target all prioritize products that deliver not just strong sales but also strong consumer satisfaction scores. That means insights gleaned from consumer feedback aren’t just “nice-to-have,” they’re now directly tied to shelf space and retailer partnerships.
Beyond Listening to Acting
The next frontier is not just listening but acting decisively on consumer signals. AI can surface the insight, but competitive advantage comes from how quickly organizations can align around it. Leading brands are building processes that integrate AI-driven insights directly into product roadmaps, marketing campaigns, and retailer strategies.
For executives, the key question is no longer “Should we use AI?” but rather: “Are we set up to make decisions at the speed AI now enables?”
Closing Insight
The hype around AI will continue to swirl, but the companies pulling ahead are those that treat it as a tool for consumer intelligence, not a buzzword. By unifying feedback across reviews, social chatter, support, and surveys, and embedding those insights into daily decision-making, CPG brands are not just keeping up with consumers, they’re anticipating them.
That’s what separates the winners from the laggards in today’s consumer landscape. And while generative AI captures the headlines, it’s platforms that turn feedback into actionable intelligence, like Yogi, that are quietly reshaping how CPG companies grow.
- About Mariya Babaskina
- About Yogi
Mariya Babaskina is the Vice President of Marketing at Yogi, where she helps enterprise brands elevate consumer insights into smarter decisions and stronger connections. With over 15 years of experience shaping customer experience and Voice of Customer strategies for global brands, she has held senior marketing roles at leading SaaS companies and high-growth startups. Today, she partners with brands like Olly and Nestlé USA to showcase the power of turning feedback into action. A proud Dean’s List graduate of the University of Georgia, Mariya continues to champion innovation in consumer insights.
At Yogi, we believe in the transformative power of listening. Every consumer voice carries immense impact, whether it be a personal story, shopper pain, or a suggestion for innovation. Yet, many brands fail to unlock this tremendous value, missing critical insights that are essential for staying competitive in today’s fast-paced market. Yogi sifts through the chaos of data to uncover the whispers and shouts that are reshaping product landscapes and defining consumer experiences for consumer goods brands.
True understanding goes beyond processing words; it’s about grasping the underlying meanings and sentiment behind them, categorizing and organizing these insights in a way that’s meaningful and easy to act on. Utilizing the power of AI and deep machine learning, Yogi transforms raw data from ratings, reviews, social chatter, and support tickets into structured, clear insights down to the SKU and attribute level. This process provides brands with precise, actionable intelligence that is directly aligned with business goals, paving the way for impactful outcomes and de-risking future investments.
Yogi serves as a strategic ally across the organization—from insights and innovation to consumer experience, marketing, and e-commerce. At Yogi, every piece of feedback not only supports confident, data-driven choices but also elevates consumer engagement by turning insights into real value. Every decision maker has timely access to these insights, ensuring that business strategies are no longer disjointed, effectively backed by shopper voices, and responsive to consumer needs.
By delivering exactly what consumers seek, Yogi fosters deeper brand loyalty and satisfaction. This dedication to delivering value strengthens not just brands, but the entire consumer relationship, enhancing life’s everyday moments through better products and experiences.
Join Conagra, Nestle, Microsoft, and other market leaders getting consumer intelligence at record speed with meetyogi.com.
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