How Digital Twins are transforming product marketing | Omi.so

Jan 9, 2025

How Digital Twins are transforming product marketing | Omi.so

Getting a single product photo used to take 3 weeks — minimum. Schedule crews. Ship the bottles to studios. Wait for perfect lighting. Wait some more for post-production.

And if Italy’s shot needs snow in the background while Spain’s needs summer? Book another month of shoots.

Digital Twins are turning the tables. Yes, modern global marketing teams are abandoning traditional photo shoots entirely. Just ask Moët Hennessy — their 9 wine houses now produce hundreds of product visuals without ever touching a camera. Their teams create new content in minutes, not months, using something unexpected: Digital Twins.

Welcome to marketing's virtual revolution.

What are Digital Twins?

In engineering, a Digital Twin means creating an exact virtual replica of something physical — like a jet engine or factory line — that updates in real-time with sensor data. But marketing teams have adapted this concept into something different: high-fidelity 3D product models that transform how brands create visual content.

The distinction matters. Traditional Digital Twins focus on operational simulations — predicting maintenance needs or optimizing production flows. Marketing Digital Twins prioritize visual accuracy and creative flexibility. They're less about real-time updates and more about generating the product images, videos, and interactive experiences that drive sales.

From 3 weeks to 2 minutes: why brands are turning to Digital Twins to speed up visual content production

Traditional product photography traps marketing teams in an endless cycle: shoot, edit, revise, repeat. A single packshot can eat up hours just getting started — from 45 minutes of lighting setup to an hour of shooting and another half hour for cleanup and file prep. And that's before the days or weeks needed for feedback and revisions.

Digital Twins break this cycle. Once a product is modeled in 3D, teams can create any shot they need — from any angle, in any setting, with any lighting — in minutes. Endro Cosmétiques proved this when they updated their entire site for Christmas in just 2 days, work that used to take weeks.

They’re 3-10x more efficient

A basic eCommerce product page needs at least 5-8 images. Multiply that across hundreds of products, dozens of markets, and constant seasonal updates. Before Digital Twins, that meant endless studio bookings.

Today, brands like Daan Tech create 3+ times more content at a fraction of the cost. Their process is simple:

Build the 3D model once with Omi
Save perfect lighting setups
Create new scenes in minutes
Export in any format instantly

They cut costs from $50 to $1 per image

While traditional product photography involves compounding costs from studio rentals, equipment, specialists, technicians, and endless revision cycles, Digital Twins transform this expensive equation completely.

When Daan Tech switched to virtual photography, they achieved dramatic results:

Cost per image dropped from over $50 to just $1 on average
Total visual content costs reduced by up to 60%
Zero studio rentals needed
Unlimited revisions at no extra cost
Instant multi-market adaptation

Institut Esthederm proved this at scale when launching across 13 countries. Instead of booking studios in each market, their team created dozens of assets from a single digital model — adapting everything from lighting to backgrounds for each market's needs without any additional production costs.

They scale without sacrificing quality or brand control

Even leading brands struggle to maintain visual consistency across markets. Traditional photoshoots introduce countless variables — shifting shadows, varying lighting setups, subtle color inconsistencies — forcing marketing teams to choose between costly reshoots or accepting visual discrepancies. These challenges multiply when working with different (or changing) teams, complicating documentation and collaboration.

Digital Twins elegantly solve this challenge through centralized scene design approval and carefully controlled editing options. This approach allows corporate teams to establish brand standards while enabling decentralized production teams to create marketing assets independently, without constant oversight.

Consider Moët Hennessy's implementation: their wine houses now share precise virtual lighting configurations, prop collections, and design principles. Each brand's visual identity is firmly established, with scenes allowing only specific predetermined elements (such as bottles) to be modified. All other elements remain fixed, ensuring perfect adherence to brand standards.

The result? Every new asset created from these templated scenes maintains complete brand consistency, regardless of which team produces it or where it's deployed.

They improve engagement and conversions

Traditional product photography forces marketers to guess right the first time. With studio costs averaging $50-150 per final image, experimenting with different angles or setups gets expensive fast.

Digital Twins change this equation. Daan Tech's team tests different scenes, lights, and compositions until they get it perfect — all without rebooking studio time. For their compact dishwasher Bob, they create variations for every market segment: minimalist shots for design lovers, lifestyle scenes for urban homes, and technical angles for feature-focused buyers.

The results show in their metrics: their best-performing social ads consistently feature renders over traditional photography, driving higher engagement across channels.

Explore Digital Twins with Omi

The free version includes everything except a 3D model of your products.

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Digital Twins in marketing: your secret sales tool

Daan Tech replaced traditional photoshoots with Omi, cutting production time from days to minutes while maintaining full creative control. Read their story

While product visualization leads the charge, Digital Twins transform other marketing areas too. Here's what that looks like in practice:

Target any audience with tailored visuals

Digital Twins let brands tailor product visuals to specific audiences. Daan Tech proves this daily — showing their compact dishwasher in minimal spaces for urban buyers, rustic kitchens for country homes, and even in vans for travelers.

Test unlimited creative concepts in minutes

Digital Twins let teams test creative concepts instantly. Want to try different lighting setups? Change the backdrop? Reposition the product? Each variation takes minutes, not days. When Moët Hennessy explored new scenes, their teams tested dozens of options in a single session — moving from concept to approved visual without leaving their desks.

Launch products faster and gain weeks of sales

Digital Twins transform the product launch timeline. Instead of waiting for final label designs to create marketing assets, teams using Digital Twins can start immediately with their 3D model in Omi's Virtual Photo Studio (where you interact with the Digital Twin). This means getting visuals ready for every channel while products are still in development, literally gaining weeks of sales.

How AI takes Digital Twins to the next level

While Digital Twins already revolutionize how we create content, artificial intelligence amplifies their potential in exciting ways. Here's how:

You can get personal, at scale

AI enables rapid creation of tailored visuals for different market segments and customer preferences. Instead of creating each variation manually, AI can generate multiple versions optimized for different audiences — from different cultural contexts to various lifestyle settings. This kind of personalization has been shown to deliver up to 10x return on investment.

You can create immersive experiences

AI helps transform Digital Twins into interactive product experiences. It can generate realistic physics simulations, showing how products move and interact in different environments. For beauty brands, this means showing how products apply in different lighting. For fashion, it means demonstrating how fabrics drape and move.

You reduce your environmental impact

Traditional photoshoots often involve shipping physical samples and running energy-intensive lighting setups, contributing to their carbon footprint. Digital Twins help minimize these environmental impacts.

The bottom line: beyond better visuals

Using Digital Twins of their product line, Moët Hennessy scaled from complex international photoshoots to 100+ on-brand visuals in weeks (a major time saver). Find out more

Digital Twins aren't just changing how brands create content — they're transforming what's possible. When Moët Hennessy's teams need new shots, they don't check studio availability. They open their virtual photo studio, drag in their digital products, and start creating.

The result? Marketing teams that move at the speed of opportunity, not the speed of photo shoots. Teams that can seamlessly collaborate across design and marketing, using the same digital assets from product development through to campaign launch.

Behind the scenes, what makes this possible is rigorous technical execution:

Behavioral accuracy ensures products interact naturally with light and physics
3D brand guidelines maintain consistency across markets and channels
Rich metadata frameworks support versioning, usage rights, and asset relationships
Design and marketing teams work from the same master assets, eliminating silos

And with AI in the mix, the possibilities are endless.

Making the switch: from a physical to a virtual studio

Digital Twins sound complex, but implementation is surprisingly straightforward. Most brands start with three steps:

Request 3D versions of your products
Ship Omi your products (or prototypes) and our 3D artists will recreate their Digital Twins in photorealistic detail — from surface textures to how light interacts with different materials. This takes up to 2 weeks.
Build your template library
Set up your core scenes, lighting configurations, and brand standards once. These become your templates for future content. There are also hundreds of pre-made templates you can customize right away.
Start creating content
Because no technical skill is required to use Omi, anyone on your team can begin producing and exporting content immediately — from social posts to eCommerce visuals and even videos.

Create your Digital Twins with Omi

Traditional product photography costs add up quickly and predictably, with studio fees ranging from $500-3,000 per session, weeks of production time, and limited room to explore creative concepts. Factor in the environmental costs of shipping and studio setups, and the expenses mount even further.

But the real impact shows in missed opportunities. Seasonal campaigns that launch late. Market-specific content that never gets made. Creative ideas abandoned due to logistics.

With Omi, Digital Twins offer a different approach. Instead of coordinating photographers across continents, teams can: