Dive Brief:
- Procter & Gamble CIO Vittorio Cretella will retire in July after five years with the packaged goods manufacturer, the company confirmed to CIO Dive Wednesday.
- Seth Cohen, global CIO at PepsiCo, will join the company in April and take over the CIO position at P&G in June.
- “Between now and then, I look forward to onboarding him to P&G, including meeting the IT team and getting fully grounded in the digital transformation strategy that has been delivering growth, value and superior consumer experiences,” Cretella said in a LinkedIn post Wednesday.
Dive Insight:
P&G has made inroads on its AI strategy in the past year with more than 35 generative AI use cases, the continuation of its AI factory and the launch of chatPG. It’s a feat the company contributes in part to Cretella’s leadership.
“Over the past five years, Vittorio has accelerated our digital journey to deliver against the company’s growth strategy in three key ways: driving digitization as a critical enabler for our brands, building our digital acumen across the organization; and accelerating P&G’s use of digital capabilities such as the cloud, AI and automation,” a company spokesperson said in an email to CIO Dive.
As P&G looks to continue making progress on its strategy, Cohen has experience to lean on. During Cohen's tenure at PepsiCo, the food and beverage giant focused on connecting data and AI to specific business outcomes.
“We’re planning to execute a much more aggressive data and AI strategy against the core capabilities of the business and that will drive both more growth and more productivity,” PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta said during a conference in February.
PepsiCo is hoping to use technology to boost employee productivity and assist in reaching other business goals, Laguarta said. In June, the company began collaborating with the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence to advance research and best practices for responsible AI adoption.
PepsiCo did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the company’s search for a new CIO.
