On Father’s Day, California barbecue chain CaliBBQ made a creative case for AI when it switched its usual phone operators for an AI agent named Shawn.
The brand trained an LLM to sound like owner Shawn Walchef. Powered by AI startup Palona, the agent handled roughly 150 calls and helped drive an 18% sales increase over 2024, hitting about $26,000 across 268 orders. Walk-in takeout orders jumped 92% year-over-year.
Earlier metrics from Thanksgiving this year showed similar gains: net sales rose 7% to $10,444, voided orders dropped 45%, and phone orders handled by the AI increased 17%, according to data shared by the chain.
Looking to 2026, CaliBBQ plans to expand AI support for catering and explore Palona Vision, a multimodal system that combines vision, voice, text, and data into a single “brain,” the brand told ADWEEK.
The technology can answer calls, flag long lines, or automate catering orders, all from one AI system. The goal is to maintain operational consistency across both front- and back-of-house while keeping staff focused on serving guests. – Trishla Ostwal
General Motors popped the hood on the tech
115-year-old General Motors popped the hood on its AI marketing transformation in 2025.
That shift was led by chief transformation officer, Molly Peck, and powered by Metropolis, GM’s in-house AI platform trained on its own brands, products, and tone.
The tool was built in partnership with S4’s Monks, which helped develop a brand-compliant database that GM’s team could query to quickly generate and source images and video to meet a growing and voracious demand for online content.
Through a self-service portal, GM’s marketing teams can prompt Metropolis to “produce high resolution, contextually precise images in both still and in video…in the matter of moments,” Deborah Heslip, global chief client officer at Monks, told ADWEEK in October.
GM stressed its embrace of AI does not come at the expense of human creativity. As part of its 2024 revamp, it hired 72andSunny and Anomaly as creative AORs on Cadillac and Chevrolet, respectively. These agencies provide brand strategy and platforms that are then scaled using AI. – Rebecca Stewart
Intuit became AI-first from the inside out
