Absolut Vodka: From Human Intelligence to Human-AI Collaboration in Real_World Marketing Decision-Making

This paper examines how Human–AI collaboration supports real-world decision-making in marketing-driven innovation through a longitudinal case study of Absolut Vodka. The study focuses on how Generative AI (GenAI) tools are currently being used to strengthen and extend a marketing-driven innovation strategy originally defined during the brand’s U.S. market entry in the late 1970s and 1980s. Drawing on archival material, insider insights from the original advertising development, and contemporary industry documentation, the analysis shows that Absolut’s AI initiatives are concentrated on the front stage of branding and consumer experience, particularly in promotion, experiential marketing, brand visibility in AI-mediated discovery environments, and symbolic product meaning. Rather than replacing human judgment, GenAI functions as a decision-support and creativity-augmentation layer embedded within key marketing decision domains. The paper contributes to the literature on Human–AI collaboration by illustrating how AI can reinforce strategic continuity in marketing-driven innovation, while also identifying areas of unrealised potential for deeper AI integration into back-end decision systems.