Five Facts That Make an Impact: CIO Says Coca-Cola is Creating Real Magic Through Generative AI
One-third of the world’s population touches a Coca-Cola product every day—from the iconic glass bottle of Coke to Dasani water, Minute Maid juice, Costa coffee and many more of its 500 beverage brands. Neeraj Tolmare, senior vice president and chief information officer for The Coca-Cola Company, shared how the 138-year-old beverage giant is making this happen through its proactive approach to generative artificial intelligence (AI), as part of the Whitman School of Management’s IMPACT Speaker Series, held Nov. 6.
Joining Coca-Cola in 2018, Tolmare oversees the company’s information, cyber, data and digital organizations, as well as serves as chair of The Coca-Cola System IT board. He previously worked in other executive positions at Fortune 100 companies, including HP Inc., Cisco Systems and Palm Inc.
In front of students and faculty, Tolmare sat down with Whitman Interim Dean Alex McKelvie to discuss how generative AI is helping The Coca-Cola Company maintain its position as the number one soft drink brand in the world.
Here are some of the highlights from the conversation:
AI Is Not Just a Shiny Object
Unlike many major corporations simply testing the waters of AI, The Coca-Cola Company is proactively embracing technology, particularly generative AI. “We are a highly innovative company. We move quickly and experimentation is built into our company culture,” Tolmare explains. “It’s important to recognize the role technology plays in every business. The more you know, the more capable you will be about learning in that space.”
With that philosophy in mind, Coca-Cola partnered with OpenAI in 2022, and, in January 2023, it launched ChatGPT to its employees. Recently, the company agreed to test drive ChatGPT-5, OpenAI’s fourth generation of the technology.
“We recognized early on that AI is not just a shiny object that will eventually go away. It’s revolutionary technology that will fundamentally change the way we live our lives and look at business. We’ve not only embraced generative AI, but we’ve challenged our employees to experiment with it,” Tolmare says.
Generative AI Is Creating Real Magic
Tolmare explained how the company created original digital assets from The Coca-Cola archives using a first-of-its kind AI platform built exclusively for the company by OpenAI. “Create Real Magic” is the first platform of its kind to use the capabilities of ChatGPT-4 to produce text along with DALL-E to generate images based on the text.
“We took some proprietary art and offered it to creators around the world, asking them to use generative AI—and the result was that we created a huge amount of new content in a condensed time frame at one-tenth of the cost,” Tolmare explains, noting that some of the results will be highlighted on digital billboards in New York City and London.
Some of these digital assets were used to create Coca-Cola’s recently launched Christmas campaign, which allows consumers to interact with a Santa Claus avatar to record messages or music that are sent to family and friends through a digital snow globe.
“This is only possible through AI technology, and the response has already been amazing,” says Tolmare. “We took 20 digital assets and made thousands of different messages in dozens of different languages. People all over the world are already interacting with it.”
Managing Your Data Is Key to Business Growth
The Coca-Cola Company has intentionally become 100% cloud-based, using all three major cloud solutions to allow seamless movement of its massive amount of data. But, according to Tolmare, it’s not how much data you have but how it’s managed that matters.
“You can have all the data you want, but is your data giving you what you need to grow your business? We are making a ton of progress in establishing a single repository for all our data to be housed, so we can mine it with the right algorithms,” he explains.”
Coca-Cola’s ability to use AI to manage Big Data is already entrenched in the way the company does business. With 30 million-plus outlets selling its products globally, the company has the ability to drill down into its data to understand the needs of even a single mom and pop store selling its products.
“For example, we can use data to predict what is the next best SKU for a cooler sitting in an outlet in Mexico City,” Tolmare explains. “This means the owner is never out of stock, only has to purchase what is going to sell—and sales go up. AI is allowing us to go down to that level of granularity, and that creates loyalty.”
The Risk to Your Data Is Real
Tolmare acknowledges that there is a level of nervousness about putting things in the cloud and that the company had to create a certain philosophy to get people on board with this new technology.
“The risk to your data is real,” he says, noting that the company understands it is always a target, so it is continuously working internally to learn to react and recover should a cyberattack occur.
“Coca-Cola has the most robust cybersecurity that I’ve ever seen.
And, we are constantly running simulation ‘war games’ to keep ourselves protected,” adds Tolmare. “We will create an attack that goes all the way to shutting down one of our manufacturing plants to see how quickly we can recover because every minute one of our plants is down has a major impact on our company, our products and our profits. Global data and having information 100% in the cloud is an advantage, but we are continually making sure we are secure. It’s a must.”
“Be a Sponge”
As the event wrapped up, Tolmare gave students his advice on ways to succeed.
He reassured students that it’s OK to not know exactly what they want to do after graduation, noting that he didn’t start his career intending to work in technology. “Be comfortable trying different paths, and the right path will come to you,” he says.
“Early on, every two years, I intentionally went into a role that was completely new to me. It was daunting, but that’s the beauty of wanting to learn things. I tended to gravitate toward the difficult things first, then the rest became easy. I looked for the hardest problem to be solved and raised my hand. I wasn’t afraid to fail,” he says. “You have to be a sponge and learn from others around you by keeping an open mind. Learn from everywhere and everything.”
Tolmare concluded by predicting that, in 10 years, The Coca-Cola Company will be even more reliant on data than it is today with manufacturing plants operating digitally using little manual effort.
“The Coca-Cola Company will be even more data driven than it is today, able to deliver your most desired beverage at an arm’s reach at any time, based on what you enjoy and want,” says Tolmare. “And, we will continue the journey of bringing joy and happiness to the world.”