How brands can generate and personalize marketing content in real time

29.07.2025

The era of traditional product photography is coming to an end. Companies like Unilever are embracing photorealistic digital twins and artificial intelligence to produce content faster, more affordably, and at scale. This marks a technological revolution in visual marketing – unlocking tremendous potential for omnichannel campaigns.

A range of Unilever products, including Hellmann's mayonnaise, Axe deodorant, Vaseline, Tresemmé, and Dove shampoos, are lined up; copyright: Unilever

Scalable content production with digital twins

Unilever is leveraging digital twin technology to create photorealistic 3D representations of its product packaging. Combined with tools like real-time 3D, Nvidia Omniverse, OpenUSD, and AI, the company can now produce high-quality marketing content more quickly and flexibly – across channels and with brand consistency. In March 2025, Unilever shared initial results:

Up to 55% cost savings
65% faster production times
Significantly higher engagement rates

Is traditional product photography becoming obsolete?

Conventional photo shoots are expensive, time-consuming, inflexible, and poorly suited for the demands of modern omnichannel campaigns. They reach their limits when it comes to personalization, cross-channel consistency, and time-to-market. Digital twins offer clear efficiency advantages in all these areas.

Digital twins: a game-changer for visual marketing

Digital twins are more than just 3D models. They’re the backbone of modern brand communication, offering:

Scalability across social media, e-commerce, and AR/VR
Real-time personalization – colors, variants, environments
Interactivity for immersive brand experiences
Faster time-to-market for product updates or campaign adaptations

Attention, emotion, conversion! Sales promotion and marketing measures can have a huge impact. To achieve this, they must be applied in a targeted manner and implemented using the best tools. Find inspiration for this at our dimension Retail Marketing at EuroShop from February 22-26, 2026!

AI + digital twins = content at the push of a button

AI can generate countless content variations from a single digital twin, tailored to target audiences, platforms, personas – even individuals. This enables hyper-personalized marketing while significantly reducing manual effort.

Bridging the gap between product design and marketing

Another major advantage: the same digital twin can be used throughout the entire product lifecycle – from development to marketing. This results in:

Consistency across all touchpoints
More efficient collaboration between design and marketing teams
Fewer errors and faster execution

Two sports shoes face each other, the left one glowing orange, the right one blue, against a dark background; Copyright: Adobe Express, AI-generated

Challenges and outlook

While the transition requires investment and know-how – especially for traditional production companies – the long-term benefits far outweigh the challenges. In today’s digitized, virtualized, and hyper-personalized marketing world, digital twins and AI are true game-changers. Companies like Unilever, IKEA, Nike, and BMW are already showcasing how scalable, sustainable, and interactive content is created today.

Sources: Unilever press release, Penri Jones, CEO of Arloesi LinkedIn article

Portrait of Sven Reck, freelancer for the EuroShop editorial team, in front of a red background; copyright: Sven Reck

Author: Sven Reck | EuroShop.mag

Sven Reck has been supporting EuroShop.mag as a freelancer for several years. Among other things, he creates photo series on store design, writes articles on best practices in retail marketing and use cases on new technologies in the retail sector. He also enters the content into the CMS and ensures user-friendly presentation and search engine optimization.