Ogilvy and CAA launch partnership to clone celebrity talent for AI ads

“We are witnessing the ‘NIL moment’ between advertising and entertainment,” said Carol Reed, global chief innovation officer at Ogilvy, referencing the Name, Image and Likeness industry that has grown around college sports influencers in the U.S. in recent years. “We’ve created a system where the biggest stars can license verified digital replicas safely… unlocking unprecedented agility for brands and assured control for talent.”

Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Terry Crews is among the actors who have opted in. Reed declined to name clients using the system, but said several campaigns were already being planned. “We are in the process of negotiating a few pilots right now that should be going live towards the end of the year,” she said.

‘The next frontier of content’

The solution, called Echo, gives Ogilvy access to material kept in “The Vault” an in-house digital scanning facility built for CAA by tech company Veritone four years ago. Ogilvy and CAA’s partnership was a year in the making, per Reed. The studio uses 204 cameras to capture every facet of an actor, athlete or creator — from their voice to body language, facial expressions and the way they walk.

That material, which is refreshed by CAA clients every 3-5 years, is already used for de-aging or post-production fixes in films. Now, the agency’s staffers can pull it into WPP Open, the system behind the holding company’s various endeavors in creative production, agentic media buying and self-service creative tools, for internal storyboarding, mock-ups or final creative assets.

While the negotiations between actors or creators, their representatives and Ogilvy’s clients will still play out the same as always, the partnership is expected to yield more assets than classic shoots, at a faster pasce, and reducing cost-per-asset by 65-75%.

The combination of digital capture and AI content generation could “fundamentally change celebrity endorsement economics,” according to Gartner analyst Nicole Greene.

David Raichman, executive creative director and global AI creative lead at Ogilvy, called the system “the next frontier of content… more of it, faster, and – for the first time – more trusted, not less.”

If that sounds outlandish, consider the campaigns launched by Coca-Cola and Snickers earlier this year featuring soccer coach and CAA client José Mourinho — or rather, his digital clone. Ogilvy’s partnership with the agency, which Reed said could stretch to include other talent companies in the future, gives it the chance to scale up such projects.

‘A first-mover advantage”

Echo isn’t Ogilvy’s first effort in this realm. Five years ago, Ogilvy used digital scans of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan to advertise small businesses across India during the Hindu festival of Diwali. That project served as a kind of “prototype” for Echo, according to Reed.

She said the agency expects the partnership to be particularly useful for ads featuring sports personalities. “They’re locked into training and seasons, so there’s long periods where they’re not available,” she said. “Now they can kind of engage and work throughout a season where normally they wouldn’t be available.”

AI tools have become increasingly common in agency and in-house creative production efforts, though they’re typically deployed with performance media assets in mind — ads for digital display, paid social or mobile app environments — rather than campaign materials featuring a famous face. Though Reed said the agency expects to use the system initially for social assets, Ogilvy’s partnership gives it an edge for clients looking to take advantage of AI gains across the entire spectrum of advertising production.

“Agencies need a first-mover advantage right now,” said Greene.

For CAA, it’s a chance to “grow the pie,” according to Alex Shannon, the talent agency’s head of strategic development. Stars can take on commercial work unfettered by the schedule of their day job on the pitch or in the movie studio — allowing them to work with more brands overall, but also capitalize on moments when their profile might be highest, such as the climax to a sporting season or during the launch of a film or TV show.

“Now, brands have the ability to move at the speed of culture, and athletes are able to do even more to engage fans at times when that relevancy is so critically important,” she said.

‘Still a human behind it’

The partnership between Ogilvy and CAA includes a framework designed to govern how and when the agency’s clients can use the likeness of talent. CAA clients own their digital likenesses, and are able to pick and choose which businesses and markets they’re happy to appear in ads for or formally endorse.

“Talent always gets to see everything and approve everything at the end,” said Reed. AI advertising materials will also include a watermark that clearly marks a video or image as both AI-generated and approved by the star in question. Reed said the measure is a means of reassuring consumers that “this isn’t a deep fake”, as well as staying ahead of future AI regulation. (The European Union, for example, has mandated gen AI providers put watermarks on content produced using their tools since August.)

CAA has been aggressive in defending the value of its clients’ likenesses, signing an agreement with YouTube to remove celeb deep fakes from the video platform in 2024. But while watermarks might keep Ogilvy clear of future AI rules, they might not aid consumer comprehension.

“The whole point of talent is to scale authentic relationships and credibility,” said Greene. Yet consumers, when asked, are typically cool on the idea of AI-generated glitterati hawking brands. Nearly half (49%) of Britons have a negative view of AI-generated actors appearing in ads, according to YouGov, while 92% said AI generated content makes it harder to trust information online in general.

Reed argued the system is principally an extension of Ogilvy’s “palette”, rather than a means of flooding the web with celebrity slop. “The intention is that still there is a human craft and a human behind it,” she said, adding that the agency still expects to recommend a traditional shoot when a situation demands it. “Authenticity is one of those things that is going to be even more important,” she said.

Reed said that the partnership could mean brands find it easier to work with several lower-profile names (and skip the usual scheduling difficulty) rather than shelling out for a single movie star. “I’m hoping that you’ll see more [brands] opening up to B-tier athletes,” she said.

That use case may prove particularly important to Ogilvy. CMOs place an increasingly high importance on their agencies’ ability to manage their large rosters of creators and influencers, and to do so in a cost-effective manner. Eliminating the need for a TikTok personality or podcaster to actually be on location could add a sharp edge to the agency’s current pitch.