Ogilvy and CAA launch ECHO to scale celebrity ads with consent controls

Ogilvy and Creative Artists Agency have launched ECHO, a proprietary AI advertising platform that uses approved digital likenesses to turn a celebrity or ambassador shoot into a larger set of localised, platform-specific campaign assets. The system became commercially available across WPP’s network in November.

ECHO is designed to extend a conventional shoot that might yield eight to 10 assets into roughly 30 to 50 media-ready versions for different markets, formats and cultural moments. It is powered by WPP Open, the group’s agentic marketing platform, and is intended to retain human creative oversight.

The platform connects Ogilvy’s creative workflow to The CAA Vault, CAA’s system for capturing, storing and licensing participating clients’ likenesses, voices and related intellectual property. Ogilvy developed ECHO under global chief innovation officer Carol Reed, with David Raichman and Guillermo Vega driving the project.

Its central safeguard is a consent and approval process. Likeness models are trained exclusively on high-fidelity Vault scans; automated checks assess talent-usage terms and brand-safety guidelines; and every generated asset requires final talent sign-off through a secure portal before publication. Cleared consumer-facing work carries a visible label: “[Talent Name] Approved | Recreated with AI”.

CAA clients retain ownership of their digital likenesses and can decide which businesses and markets may use them in advertising or endorsements. Terry Crews is among the actors who have opted into ECHO. The Vault’s full-body scanning rig uses 204 cameras to capture voice, physical movement, facial expression and walking style, and clients refresh the material every three to five years.

The CAA Vault predates ECHO. Veritone announced its partnership with CAA on May 14, 2024, saying its Digital Media Hub would ingest, organise and store the digital assets of participating talent. The Vault had previously been used for film de-aging and post-production fixes before its material became available to ECHO through WPP Open.

The launch addresses a market that Ogilvy puts at $25 billion annually for celebrity and athlete endorsements, while attempting to answer anxiety over unauthorised deepfakes and audience trust in synthetic media. An Ogilvy survey of more than 1,200 people in the United States, United Kingdom and India found that more than 76% thought explicit talent approval improved an advertisement’s appeal. Approval increased trust, credibility and reassurance for 62% of respondents in India, 45% in the UK and 43% in the US.

The same research found that up to 44% believed human creative involvement was diminished when an AI disclosure appeared without further context about the talent. Separately, a YouGov survey cited by Digiday found that 49% of Britons viewed AI-generated actors in advertising negatively, while 92% said AI-generated content made online information harder to trust.

Ogilvy and CAA expect the model to produce assets faster than classic shoots and reduce cost per asset by 65% to 75%, according to Digiday. Reed said the companies were negotiating several pilots that were expected to go live toward the end of 2026.