Collective Founding Partner, Adam Cleaver, explores how, with a digital twin in place, AI becomes a powerful ally rather than a risk, allowing brands to explore new ideas without compromising accuracy or integrity.
With the release of GPT-4.0’s new image-generation capabilities, there’s growing interest in how generative AI can be used in advertising. And while the results can be visually striking, they’re far from reliable when it comes to product representation.
The truth is, AI-generated imagery still falls short on accuracy, consistency, and brand control. It can create mood and context, but it can’t guarantee that your product looks exactly as it should - every time, across every output.
Digital product twins allow brands to maintain pixel-perfect consistency and streamline creative production at unprecedented speed and scale, and they can also be combined with AI workflows.
A digital product twin is a hyper-realistic, virtual replica of a physical product - built from manufacturing CAD data to ensure absolute precision. While not created by AI, digital twins use AI to enhance realism, automate outputs, and streamline workflows - without ever compromising accuracy or brand integrity.
They use what we call ‘measured materials,’ meaning every part of the model accurately reflects the physical properties of the real product - like the opacity of plastic or the refractivity of liquid. Move it, and it behaves like the real thing. Light it, and it reflects and refracts just as it would in the real world. This goes far beyond typical 3D modelling, delivering realism that makes your product feel truly real on screen.
They can also be manipulated in real time, so you can make changes instantly - switch out labels, adjust lighting, or explore different environments without waiting hours for renders. It’s faster, more flexible, and built for the pace modern marketing demands.
Digital twins are already transforming industries such as automotive design and city planning, and now, visionary brands are harnessing their power to redefine marketing workflows. Unilever, for example, has successfully integrated digital twins into its global product visualisation strategy, saving half the cost and delivering a wide range of assets in half the time of traditional photoshoots.
Once implemented, digital twins streamline approvals, reduce complexity, and future-proof creative production - empowering agencies and brands to scale smarter while keeping brand visuals pristine.
AI-generated imagery is visually appealing, and it can do great things, but it isn't repeatable with the pixel-perfect accuracy brands demand. Digital twins, however, offer 100% accuracy by using real-world data that reflects exact product dimensions, materials, and colours.
Digital twins offer an unmatched level of visual fidelity. Every detail - from materials to lighting and reflections - is simulated with precision, giving brands pixel-perfect accuracy across all creative outputs and a reliable, high-quality foundation for product visualisation.
With a single digital twin, brands can generate high-fidelity visuals across all marketing channels, from e-commerce listings to print, social, TV, and immersive AR/VR experiences - without ever needing new photoshoots or manual adjustments.
Producing creative assets is typically time-consuming and expensive. Digital twins slash production costs in half and double the speed of traditional photoshoot workflows, ensuring brands can rapidly deploy campaigns (at scale) without sacrificing quality.
Platforms like NVIDIA Omniverse allow marketing teams, creatives, and clients to collaborate live, making content edits instantly - streamlining feedback loops and eliminating the back-and-forth of traditional approvals.
Digital twins plug straight into AI and CGI pipelines and can be paired with generated backgrounds or environments while keeping your product visuals accurate, consistent, and on-brand.
Built on Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) file format, digital twins aren’t locked into any one platform. Whether working in Houdini, Blender, Unreal, or Omniverse, teams can seamlessly integrate assets across various tools without duplication.
Adopting digital twins doesn’t require a full-scale overhaul of existing creative processes. Agencies can start with a modest pilot program to validate their efficiency:
Once implemented, digital twins streamline approvals, reduce complexity, and future-proof creative production - empowering agencies and brands to scale smarter while keeping brand visuals pristine.
But perhaps most surprisingly, a digital product twin isn’t just a 3D model - it’s a living database. Each one can contain all approved variants: languages, sizes, colours, labels, and more. Need to update for a new market or product line? Just swap in the right element - no rebuild required. You can also store scenes, lighting setups and camera moves, so your signature angles and swoops become part of a reusable, ever-growing asset library.
And this is just the beginning. Digital twins can also tap into live data - like sales trends or inventory levels - to power real-time marketing decision-making. Colours can be instantly updated to match what’s hot in a particular market, new product features spotlighted in response to customer feedback - all without rebuilding assets. It’s a faster, more responsive way to adapt and scale campaigns with precision.
Generative AI brings exciting creative possibilities, but it can’t single-handedly guarantee the brand safety and consistency modern marketers demand. Digital product twins serve as the rock-solid foundation - accelerating workflows, reducing costs, and maximising creative output in an automated, brand-safe way. With a twin in place, AI becomes a powerful ally rather than a risk, allowing brands to explore new ideas without compromising accuracy or integrity.
Agencies and brands looking to optimise production, boost efficiency, and future-proof creative assets should embrace them now.
Adam Cleaver is the Founding Partner at Collective who are running a free virtual workshop on digital twins and real-time 3D for IPA members on 29 April.
Register for the digital twins and real-time 3D workshop
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