Soylent introduces AI bot to facilitate retail experience
Soylent is taking a major step towards integrating aritifical intelligence into its marketing and commerce strategies with the unveiling of Trish, an AI chatbot and spokesperson for the brand.
The AI project is being developed in partnership with creative agency Wieden+Kennedy. Trish will serve as a brand ambassador and usher consumers through the purchasing process on the brand’s site.
“Soylent believes in staying on the cutting edge of food technology and nutrition. We were looking for a creative and strategic partner with a thoughtful and innovative approach to complement our goals and objectives,” said Soylent CMO Adam Grablick. “Having worked with Wieden+Kennedy in the past, I knew the team’s fresh perspective and inventive spirit would be a perfect fit.”
Trish
Artificial intelligence, while not necessarily sweeping the market yet, is well on its way to becoming an integral new part of commercial tools in the future.
Most prominently, AI has been used in the proliferation of chatbots that facilitate transactions and answer questions from consumers as they shop.
Soylent, the company famous for its meal replacement drink favored by wealthy and tech-oriented customers, is now introducing its own AI-enhanced assistant to the retail transaction process as part of a larger rebrand to include more digital options for customers.
The Ai companion is called Trish and she will guide consumers through the retail process as they purchase shipments of Soylent from the brand’s mobile-optimized Web site.
Trish will appear when consumers visit the site to answer questions and guide consumers to finding the right product for them.
The new bot is part of Soylent’s larger effort to make its products more digitally accessible to its tech-oriented customers thanks to a new partnership with Wieden+Kennedy.
Soylent customers will be able to access Trish as soon as the AI program goes live.
Chatbot takeover
Soylent’s main customer base has always been made of those on the cutting edge of tech and culture.
Tech CEOs and wealthy business men and women are its main targets, so it makes sense that the brand is going after them through cutting edge digital methods.
An AI chatbot is a perfect way to make a digital commerce interaction more streamlined.
Domino’s is one example of a brand that completely embraced chatbots with a full-service Facebook Messenger ordering bot (see story).
Similarly, Viber went even further by having a complete shopping platform integrated into its messaging service (see story).
These campaigns, along with Soylent’s announcement of a new AI bot that will shepherd customers through the shopping process show how far AI has come as a powerful tool for commercial interactions.
“As a creative company that uses technology to help brands show up in unexpected ways, we love working with Soylent. They move fast to find better, cheaper ways to deliver nutrition, and they make us move fast to find smarter, more interesting ways to build a brand,” said Paulo Ribeiro, managing director for W+K Lodge. “Experimentation is at the heart of both companies, and it will show up in the work.”