Speaking in conversation with Sean Conley, co-founder and chief executive at AI-moderated qualitative research tool provider Motives, MacKenzie said that his company’s use of AI avatars in its research had seen people connect with AI on a human level, often forgetting it was not a real person during interactions.

“AI, at this moment, is about how use the AI to get to people quicker, to get to the insight quicker and to get to telling our business what we need to do quicker,” MacKenzie said.

MacKenzie said that in the personal care category, many of the experiences consumers had with PZ Cussons products, such as Carex, St Tropez and Imperial Leather, were personal to them, and therefore not always suitable for a focus group environment.

“If you take people out of their home and put them into a focus group, it is an unnatural environment when you are talking about this stuff,” MacKenzie said.

“It is personal stuff, and people feel judged – if you’re in that environment where you realise the way you wash and bathe your kids is different to everybody else, that gives you a different reaction.”

AI personas, he added, could help gain intimacy with consumers and therefore understand better how they used products in their daily lives.

MacKenzie also commented on the use of video in research saying that “it is not me saying it, it is not my team saying it – it is the consumer, at point of usage, in their bathroom, showing you the product and how they use them that makes it very powerful”.

AI can help answer questions from people across the business who are not within the insight team, MacKenzie said. “It actually means they look at [the research], they understand it, it becomes part of their day-to-day work, and the quality of conversations our team have with them are so much better and so much richer, and you move the business in a quicker and more effective way.”

He added: “What the use of tech and AI is allowing us to do and improving our speed of insight is getting to the answers quicker, which gives the team more time to think, analyse and understand.

“What is the silver bullet in the world of insight? It is can I bring all of those data sources together that, as you go on that journey from consumer needs all the way through to shopper activation and purchase, can I bring all of those [data sources] together and understand them, so I have a more rounded understanding of what the future might look like?”