Marketing Personalization · Real-time Analytics
Unilever Foods needed to keep brands visible in AI-driven search, accelerate food innovation as trends move faster, and deliver tailored recommendations to foodservice operators using real operational context rather than generic web scraping.
Reported impact
Unilever Foods improved brand visibility in AI-mediated discovery, reduced development time for new food products, and gave foodservice customers more tailored recommendations based on their own operating context.
Unilever Foods describes a multi-part in-house AI implementation across marketing, R&D and foodservice. For digital visibility, the business uses AI search visibility platforms to monitor how brands such as Hellmann’s perform across large language models, detect prompt-level gaps, and trigger content updates including listicle pages, keyword changes and AI-friendly recipe formatting. In R&D, AI-powered product development analyzes taste signals, product data and customer feedback, digitally testing thousands of recipe variations so teams can predict promising flavour and texture combinations before physical trials. For Unilever Food Solutions, the UFS digital experience serves hyper-personalized recommendations by combining a proprietary data foundation, industry and trend research, 35,000 chef-authored recipes, culinary and product resources, and the expertise of 250 chefs with operator-specific inputs such as website information, menus, customer reviews and public social content.
For search visibility, recipe-related prompts are assessed through AI visibility tools, which surface gaps that feed content updates on brand websites. For product development, taste, product and customer feedback data are analyzed digitally to rank recipe options before physical trials. In UFS, proprietary recipe and trend assets are combined with operator website data, menus, reviews and public social content to generate real-time recommendations for foodservice operators.
"As a result of this approach, the brand achieved a 10-position boost in visibility rankings"
"By combining this powerful data foundation with real business details from the operators – including website information, menus, customer reviews and publicly available social content – we can provide real-time analysis"
"This included creating a dedicated Game Day sandwich listicle, updating descriptions with relevant keywords, reframing existing content into AI-friendly listicle formats and expanding the brand’s recipe section."
"Using AI, Foods R&D teams digitally tested a wide range of recipes before any live testing began."
"our Foods business is using AI search visibility platforms to understand how our brands perform across large language models (LLMs), identify any gaps and refine content strategies as needed"
"our R&D teams are using AI-powered product development to accelerate innovation"
"the UFS digital experience is built on proprietary data, extensive industry and trends research, a library of 35,000 chef-authored recipes, culinary and product resources, and the collective expertise of 250 UFS chefs working across 75 markets."
"the teams were able to minimise physical testing, cutting development time in half."
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