New AI Partner and Innovation Tool Launch for Kantar

Kantar has announced a strategic partnership with Quilt.AI, including a non-equity financial commitment by Kantar to co-develop joint offers. The first fruit of this new alliance is a new innovation tool, EvaluateExplorer.

The partnership pairs Quilt.AI's technology platform and cultural insight with Kantar's understanding of people, culture and brand growth from decades of attitudinal and behavioural research. Clients are promised access to 'rich cultural insights spanning public digital conversations in search, social, LLMs and GenAI agents and in creator ecosystems around the world.'

EvaluateExplorer promises clients a more holistic understanding of the context shaping consumers' lives, wants and needs; and help in generating 'meaningfully different concepts for new products and services,' as well as optimising their design and launch. The tool uses AI 'grounded in cultural and behavioural insight, brand fit and proven commercial outcomes,' which Kantar contrasts with existing innovation software using more generic models, which it says 'tend to flatten nuance and overlook the underlying tensions, producing volume rather than value and missing the shifts that truly shape opportunity.'

According to Dr. Nicki Morley, Global Innovation Lead at Kantar, 'Brands invest millions in innovation yet one in three launches are dead or dying by their second year. It's not because they're bad ideas; culture shifts incredibly quickly these days and it's easy to end up chasing the wrong opportunity.'

Dr. Angad Chowdhry (pictured), co-founder of Quilt.AI, comments: 'Our partnership with Kantar brings together the best of human and machine intelligence, connecting what people say and do online with what creates sustainable growth. Unlike traditional social listening, Quilt.AI's approach goes beyond surface-level chatter to focus on culture and context.'

Web site: www.kantar.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.