NielsenIQ named Purina as the first publicly announced client in its ConnectAI Charter Program. The announcement follows NIQ's launch of the program with five global organizations across personal care, pet care, beauty and beverages, with additional client announcements and case studies expected as engagements advance.
Through ConnectAI, NIQ forward-deployed engineers and data scientists are working within Purina's technology environment to explore how NIQ consumer and market intelligence can support AI-enabled workstreams and help teams access relevant insights more efficiently.
"Understanding the needs of pet owners requires a clear view of how consumer behaviors, shopping habits and category trends are evolving," said Brian Donovan, strategy and insights, Purina. "Purina is working with NIQ to explore how its trusted intelligence can be incorporated into Purina's everyday, AI-enabled workstreams, helping our teams access relevant consumer insights more efficiently and make informed decisions with greater confidence."
What is ConnectAI?
ConnectAI is an early offering within NIQ's "Intelligence that Fuels AI" strategy and the company's platform and builder model for turning consumer intelligence into decisions. It is designed to bring NIQ's proprietary data, models, product content, analytical constructs and business context into clients' own AI environments, where they can be combined with client data and systems to power agents and workflows around recurring business decisions.
The company said ConnectAI complements NIQ's AI applications and commerce intelligence strategy, giving clients multiple ways to use NIQ intelligence: through NIQ products, within their own technology environments or through jointly developed workflows.
"Organizations are moving beyond AI experimentation and focusing on how to put AI to work in ways that are scalable, governed and useful in real business environments," said Jim Peck, chairman and CEO, NIQ. "ConnectAI gives clients greater access to NIQ's uniquely detailed intelligence while keeping our proprietary data and models protected. It allows us to support the AI programs clients are already building in a way that is repeatable, secure and designed to deliver ongoing value."
Every ConnectAI charter engagement includes a dedicated team of forward-deployed engineers and data scientists who work alongside the client to configure agents and decision workflows around the organization's operations, priorities, systems and success measures. The model is designed to create repeatable platform services that can scale across organizations, while adapting to each client's environment and critical workflows.
"The gap that matters in the next decade is not between companies that have AI and those that do not. Everyone will have AI," said Irina Stoian, chief AI commercial officer, NIQ. "It's between companies whose AI runs on real, grounded truth about consumers and markets, and companies whose AI is guessing. We are selecting a small number of clients to build that foundation with us, inside their operations, with our engineers at their side. For those who move now, the advantage compounds."
