What are digital twins? Marketers weigh the opportunities and risks

Brands’ growing appetite for more content at a fraction of the costs has led to the emergence of digital twins — AI-powered replicas of a person’s likeness, voice, and even thought patterns. Take Coca-Cola’s latest campaign for the FIFA World Cup featuring an AI-generated professional football manager, José Mourinho, debating himself. Whether audiences will accept these twins, however, is still up for debate. 

“We get closer and closer to the uncanny valley every single day,” said Kimeko McCoy, Digiday senior marketing reporter, the author of this story, on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast.

Tim Peterson, Digiday executive editor, video and audio, added, ”I feel like ‘digital twin’ is quietly the most dystopic term that’s come about since the rise of ChatGPT and generative AI.”

The soda brand is one of several testing the waters. Snickers also partnered with Mourinho two years ago for a similar stunt. This year, Avocados From Mexico’s Super Bowl spot featured actor Rob Riggle as a realistic AI avatar doling out game predictions and guacamole recipes.

Brands are banking on digital twins to turn talent into hyperpersonalized, always-on digital personas. AI tools promise to strip away production costs and scale content, taking a week’s worth of material with human talent and churning out seemingly endless variations. 

As AI continues to sprawl, so do its definitions.

In the case of Mourinho debating himself, the football manager worked directly with Coca-Cola and other partners to capture audio, video and build the technology. In theory, Mourinho’s digital twin acts and thinks like the real Mourinho. 

Marketers have also used the phrase digital twinning to describe the process of replicating an in-person activation, like a concert or a pop-up event, to a digital experience. It creates more ad inventory.

While AI promises scale and efficiency, marketers are grappling with bottlenecks around guardrails, sign offs and other caution tape. That’s not to mention audience sentiments. Recall shoppers’ response to Coca-Cola’s “Holidays Are Coming” AI-powered ad.

Some marketers see AI tools, like digital twinning, as something that lives on the edges of the work rather than in it.

“If it’s an ad buy, it makes sense when it comes to the planning and coming up with the brief for the campaign or analyzing the reporting after the fact,” Peterson said. “Handling the actual buy? That gets a little trickier.”