Building Smarter Growth with AI
To help more enterprises seize the new quality growth opportunities brought by AI and support high-quality and sustainable development, Harvard Business Review launched the “AI New Quality Growth Power” video series. It invited representative enterprises from different industries and platforms, including Wanglaoji, Nestlé Health Science, Gaotu, and Kantar China, to share how they use AI to achieve breakthroughs in marketing and operations. These enterprises establish closer connections with users through AI, demonstrating the practical path of China’s new quality growth.
AI Takes Marketing to New Dimensions
When talking about changes in 2025, the experiences of these enterprises are particularly noteworthy. Especially in different industries, the understanding of consumers also has different emphases.
Wanglaoji, China’s popular herbal tea brand observed that China’s FMCG market is shifting from scale expansion to value deepening, with AI technology providing innovative tools for enterprises to accurately understand consumer needs; Gaotu Education found that learning needs are evolving toward “efficiency optimisation” and “effect improvement,” which brings opportunities for service upgrades in education technology enterprises; Kantar China’s research shows that consumers’ purchasing decisions are becoming more rational, prompting brands to pay more attention to the real value of products and user experience. In the field of special medical food, Nestlé Health Science sees the huge potential of the Chinese market and is accelerating localised innovation through AI technology.
The 2024 market landscape conveys a positive signal: consumer behaviour is shifting from broad-based growth to more rational and efficient choices. Although industry competition is becoming increasingly fierce, this also prompts enterprises to focus more on improving product value and operational efficiency. At the same time, niche markets with differentiated advantages are ushering in new development opportunities.
This means that enterprises urgently need more precise marketing strategies, more efficient operational models, and more innovative product services to stand out in the fierce market competition. This is not only a challenge for enterprises but also an excellent window for AI-driven new quality growth—under technological empowerment, whoever can first grasp user pain points will reshape the rules in the changing landscape.
Wanglaoji believes that now, with the post-90s and post-00s as the main consumer force, while pursuing cost-effectiveness, they also pay more attention to digitalisation and socialisation, emphasising personalisation and experience. This also forces the industry into a transformation stage: products need innovation, enterprises need digital transformation, and marketing models must also iterate. Wanglaoji is seeking innovative business growth methods through AI.
During the 2025 Spring Festival marketing period, Wanglaoji partnered with Baidu Marketing to focus on three core Spring Festival scenarios—travel, New Year greetings, and family reunions through Baidu Banfei, integrating AI technology into various Spring Festival scenarios to accurately reach young consumers and enhance brand influence.
With the help of Baidu Banfei, Wanglaoji gained broader marketing space, easily connecting with users through diverse creative expressions and precise targeting. Baidu Banfei can intuitively demonstrate the impact of AI on new quality growth power, such as how it empowers content production. After a year and a half of continuous iteration and refinement by Baidu AI, Baidu AI can help clients achieve minute-level, batch production in three directions: video, images, and text.
AI is not just a tool but also a superconductor between brands and users, synchronising business growth with user experience.
Facing New Trends in User Demand
In response to new trends in user demand, Gaotu – a leading online education platform in China emphasises building solution-oriented products, accurately responding to user expectations through end-to-end personalised experiences. In addition to improving user experience, Gaotu also recognises the importance of enhancing employee work efficiency and service capabilities. To this end, Gaotu is actively exploring the use of AI technology to achieve direct and efficient interaction with users.
For example, the Baidu Merchant AI Agent is like a 24/7 online gold-standard salesperson, helping Gaotu achieve multi-turn dialogues with students, accurately identify and analyse student needs, and provide real-time personalised services. After communicating with students, the Baidu Merchant AI Agent can also provide the results to teachers, allowing them to tailor learning plans for students.
The personalised, professional, and timely services provided by the Baidu Merchant AI Agent are exactly what Gaotu needs. Since its implementation, the Merchant AI Agent not only helps traditional chain institutions acquire customers but also hopes to help clients better understand the characteristics of potential users.
The agent is designed as a vivid and lifelike person, forming a multi-expert collaborative model beyond the brain for answering, recommending, responding, and performing business operations, helping clients acquire customers more accurately.
AI Becomes the Superconductor Between Brands and Users
On the other hand, the disruptive impact of AI in content production and marketing has quietly entered the vision of enterprises.
This is not just a technological innovation but also a reconstruction of traditional logic: from assembly-line content output to personalised narratives driven by precise insights, and from single-channel reach to full-chain emotional connections.
Facing the boundless potential of the Chinese market, Nestlé Health Science encountered challenges in understanding Chinese consumers. The company aimed to educate users about health knowledge and enhance their nutritional awareness.
To address this need, Nestlé Health Science identified Baidu as an ideal partner. On one hand, Baidu’s massive user base and diverse content scenarios enabled Nestlé to disseminate information through platforms like Baidu Knows, Baidu Encyclopedia, and Brand Baijiahao in multiple formats. On the other hand, Baidu’s AI products helped Nestlé better reach and serve the silver-haired population, jointly cultivating health awareness.
Gu Xinxin, President of Nestlé Health Science Greater China, stated: “AI can optimise corporate marketing strategies, providing customers with more precise and personalised solutions. Baidu Banfei has helped Nestlé Health Science expand user communication opportunities while meeting both user personalisation needs and our marketing objectives.”
Analysing Nestlé Health Science’s case, Liu Zeyin, Head of Baidu’s Commercial Advertising Platform Department, noted: “AI is fundamentally a new quality productive force that creates enterprise value. It not only enhances operational efficiency and breaks through traditional marketing limitations but also addresses previously inaccessible deep-seated issues through intelligent upgrades, propelling marketing services into a new dimension.”
According to Kantar China‘s insights, many brands like Nestlé Health Science are seeking new ways to connect with consumers. Many are building their content capabilities, creating more engaging marketing campaigns by applying AI to content production, thereby improving overall marketing effectiveness. Kantar China observed that numerous clients are adopting AI agents and digital livestreaming to achieve 24/7 online services. More enterprises are exploring how to use AI to create incremental value across marketing content generation, ads optimisation, and performance enhancement.
As growth paradigms shift from purely pursuing quantitative metrics to value redefinition, AI is emerging as a new growth engine driving high-quality enterprise development. While seizing AI opportunities, businesses must deeply consider how to integrate AI technology with their strategic positioning and core competencies to build unique competitive advantages.
AI technology is becoming the core driver of high-quality enterprise development. In this transformation, companies need to break through conventional thinking, deeply embed AI throughout business processes, and reconstruct user experiences and value chains through technological innovation.
Future intelligent marketing will no longer be limited to simple efficiency improvements but will achieve end-to-end intelligent reconstruction from demand insight to service delivery. Through deep application of AI technologies, enterprises can create warmer brand interactions and more precise service matching, ultimately realising mutual enhancement of commercial value and user experience. This represents not just a leap in technological empowerment but a comprehensive upgrade of business philosophy.
