Ogilvy Launches ECHO, the Industry's First Talent Consent-Based Creative AI Platform

New York - Nov. 9, 2026 - Ogilvy today announced the launch of ECHO, a proprietary, consent-first AI platform that transforms single celebrity and ambassador production shoots into live, real-time creative content systems. Developed by Ogilvy under the leadership of Global Chief Innovation Officer Carol Reed, ECHO establishes the industry's first enterprise trust and governance framework that enables global brands to scale high-craft generative advertising while protecting talent rights and IP.

Celebrity and athlete endorsements represent a $25 billion-dollar annual global market, yet traditional production workflows combined with the elevated rate of asset burnout in today's digital landscape can leave brands dark for months at a time between campaign cycles. At the same time, talent faces rising risks from unauthorized deepfakes and unmanaged synthetic media, as brands also navigate diminished consumer sentiment and trust around AI-based content.

Through a new strategic partnership between WPP and Creative Artists Agency (CAA), ECHO bridges this massive industry gap. By operationalizing verified talent scans stored in The CAA Vault, CAA's full-service solution for the capture, storage, and licensing of talent's digital likeness, voice, and IP, with ECHO's creative activation engine, brands can generate localized, platform-native extension assets from a single hero shoot backed by machine-enforceable contract protections and mandatory talent sign-off on every asset before publication. The result is real-time culturally relevant campaign assets that maintain strict human-led creative oversight, while maximizing the value brands can extract from their marketing spend.

Laurent Ezekiel, Global CEO of The Ogilvy Group: "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: "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: "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."

ECHO is designed by creatives, for creatives - driven by David Raichman, Executive Creative Director, Global AI Creative Lead, and Guillermo Vega, Chief Creative Officer for Ogilvy North America. The platform's workflow integrates directly into WPP Open and standard post-production tools, with key platform features and core capabilities including:

• Consent-First Governance : Automated compliance engines check generated assets against machine-readable talent usage terms and brand safety guidelines. No asset can be released without final sign-off via a dedicated, secure Agent & Talent Approval Portal.
• Scaled ROI & Campaign Reach : Expands a traditional 8-10 asset shoot into approximately 30-50 media-ready assets for real-time cultural moments, multi-market localizations, and platform-specific formats-potentially reducing average cost-per-asset by up to 65-75%.
• Verified Likeness Protection : AI representation models are trained exclusively from raw, high-fidelity scans stored in the CAA Vault, ensuring talent retains digital ownership and control over their likeness.
• Verified AI Watermarking : All cleared consumer-facing assets carry a visible verification watermark, "[Talent Name] Approved | Recreated with AI" , establishing a new industry benchmark for transparency.

David Raichman, ECD, Global AI Creative Lead for The Ogilvy Group: "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."

Proprietary Global Research: The Commercial Power of Talent Consent

To validate the platform's foundational architecture, Ogilvy surveyed more than 1,200 respondents in the United States, United Kingdom, and India using intuitive association research methods designed to elicit automatic responses and capture the implicit or underlying strength of attitudes as well as traditional survey methods to capture self-reported information. The proprietary study evaluated consumer attitudes, intuitive reaction times, and ad appeal across varying AI disclosures. Key findings include:

• Consent as a Universal Trust Signal: More than 80% of consumers across all global markets recognized talent-approved messaging as a definitive cue of talent-approved AI usage.
• Talent Approval Linked to Stronger Ad Appeal: Explicit talent approval strengthened ad appeal among over 76% globally, enhancing appeal beyond generic AI disclosure.
• Building Reassurance and Trust: Explicit talent sign-off increased trust, credibility and reassurance for 62% of consumers in India, 45% in the UK and 43% in the US-and successfully built reassurance even among consumers generally skeptical of AI.
• The Human-in-the-Loop Imperative: When AI involvement was disclosed without talent context, up to 44% of consumers felt human creative involvement was diminished. Explicitly pairing the celebrity's name with verified approval successfully restored the vital human connection.

ECHO is powered by WPP Open, WPP's pioneering agentic marketing platform. By embedding this advanced creative capability within WPP Open, WPP ensures clients benefit from the integration of secure talent data infrastructure with creative precision. ECHO is commercially available across the WPP network as of November 2026. For more information, email [email protected] .

ABOUT OGILVY

Ogilvy has been creating impact for brands through iconic, culture-changing, value-driving ideas since the company was founded by David Ogilvy more than 75 years ago. It builds on that rich legacy through Borderless Creativity-innovating at the intersection of intelligence, imagination and influence, with experts across advertising, sports & entertainment, PR & social, consulting, and health collaborating seamlessly across more than 120 offices spanning 90 countries. Ogilvy was named Network of the Year at the 2026 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and ranks as the #1 global agency network for creative excellence and effectiveness by WARC for the fourth consecutive year, signifying its ability to deliver creative solutions that drive unreasonable impact for clients and communities. Ogilvy is part of WPP, the trusted growth partner for the world's leading brands. Powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform WPP Open, WPP unites cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, creativity, production, enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel.

ABOUT CREATIVE ARTISTS AGENCY

Creative Artists Agency (CAA) is a leading entertainment and sports agency, with global expertise in film, television, music, theatre, sports, digital media, publishing, sponsorship sales and endorsements, media finance, consumer investing, fashion, brand marketing and licensing, executive search, games, and philanthropy, among other areas. Distinguished by its culture of collaboration and exceptional client service, CAA's diverse workforce identifies, innovates, and amplifies opportunities for the people and organizations that shape culture and inspire the world. CAA, founded in 1975, is headquartered in Los Angeles, and has offices in New York, Nashville, Memphis, Chicago, Miami, London, Munich, Geneva, Stockholm, Shanghai, and Beijing, among other locations globally. For more information, please visit www.caa.com.

Media Contact: Kappie Kopp / [email protected]