Ogilvy Introduces ECHO to Bring Talent Consent into Creative AI

Ogilvy has launched ECHO, a proprietary, consent-first artificial intelligence (AI) platform designed to transform single celebrity and brand ambassador shoots into real-time creative content systems. Developed under the leadership of Carol Reed, Global Chief Innovation Officer of The Ogilvy Group, the platform aims to help global brands scale AI-generated advertising while protecting talent rights and intellectual property.

Celebrity and athlete endorsements represent a $25 billion annual global market. However, traditional production workflows and the growing rate of digital asset burnout can leave brands without fresh campaign content for months between production cycles. At the same time, talent faces increasing risks from unauthorised deepfakes and unmanaged synthetic media, while brands must address consumer concerns around transparency and trust in AI-generated content.

ECHO seeks to address these challenges through a strategic partnership between WPP and Creative Artists Agency (CAA). The platform connects verified talent scans stored in The CAA Vault CAA’s solution for capturing, storing and licensing the digital likeness, voice and intellectual property of talent with ECHO’s creative activation engine.

This enables brands to develop localised, platform-specific campaign assets from a single hero shoot. The process is supported by machine-enforceable contractual protections and mandatory talent approval before any asset is published. The approach is intended to help brands respond to cultural moments in real time while maintaining human-led creative oversight and protecting talent rights.

Laurent Ezekiel, Global CEO of The Ogilvy Group, said:

“Ogilvy has always delivered iconic work by combining creative ambition with commercial impact. With ECHO, we are solving the fundamental tension between speed, scale, and trust in the AI era. By pairing Ogilvy’s creative ingenuity, CAA’s world-class clients and leadership in responsible AI, and WPP’s enterprise scale, we are giving our clients unprecedented competitive advantage allowing them to lead culture in real time with total trust and uncompromised craft.”

Carol Reed, Global Chief Innovation Officer of The Ogilvy Group, highlighted the importance of talent control and consent in the evolving relationship between advertising and entertainment.

She said: “We are witnessing the ‘NIL moment’ between advertising and entertainment. Instead of fearing AI or using it to produce cheap volume, building ECHO in partnership with CAA proves that technology can protect artists while setting storytellers free. Our global research confirms that consumers don’t want AI to sideline the artist; they want explicit proof that the talent is in control. By embedding talent consent, machine-readable contracts, and creative craft directly into the platform, 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.”

Alex Shannon, Head of Strategic Development at CAA, said the partnership builds on CAA’s efforts to give talent ownership and control over the use of their digital likenesses.

He said: “We built The CAA Vault to ensure that talent owns, controls, and can safely monetize their digital likeness on their own terms and only with their consent. By connecting The CAA Vault to Ogilvy’s ECHO platform, CAA is giving many of the world’s leading brands a secure, consent-first activation layer, delivering full visibility and protection for talent and high-craft, verified creative at the speed of culture for brands.”

Platform Features and Capabilities

Designed by creatives for creatives, ECHO is driven by David Raichman, Executive Creative Director and Global AI Creative Lead, and Guillermo Vega, Chief Creative Officer for Ogilvy North America. The platform integrates directly with WPP Open and standard post-production tools.

• Consent-First Governance: Automated compliance engines assess generated assets against machine-readable talent usage terms and brand safety guidelines. No asset can be released without final approval through a dedicated, secure Agent and Talent Approval Portal.
• Scaled ROI and Campaign Reach: ECHO can expand a traditional shoot producing 8–10 assets into approximately 30–50 media-ready assets. These can be adapted for cultural moments, multiple markets and platform-specific formats, with the potential to reduce average cost per asset by up to 65–75%.
• Verified Likeness Protection: AI representation models are trained exclusively using raw, high-fidelity scans stored in The CAA Vault, supporting talent ownership and control over their digital likeness.
• Verified AI Watermarking: All approved consumer-facing assets carry a visible verification watermark reading “[Talent Name] Approved | Recreated with AI”, providing transparency about the use of AI in the creative process.

David Raichman, Executive Creative Director and Global AI Creative Lead for The Ogilvy Group, said:

“Trust in advertising has always come from two things: someone you believe and an idea worth believing. AI has challenged both. ECHO puts them back together: the talent’s consent on every asset, and a creative idea strong enough to deserve it. That’s the next frontier of content: More of it, faster, and for the first time more trusted, not less.”

With ECHO, Ogilvy is positioning consent, transparency and creative oversight as central elements of AI-powered advertising. The platform combines verified talent likenesses, contractual safeguards and scalable content production to help brands increase campaign agility while maintaining control over how talent is represented in AI-generated creative.