Retail / Consumer Packaged Goods
Unilever Enhances Product Imagery Production With Digital Twins
Unilever
Objective
Unilever is one of the world's largest and most global consumer goods companies with 3.4 billion people using their products every day across the world. Unilever is enhancing its product imagery workflows using Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) workflows, real-time 3D rendering, and digital twins powered by NVIDIA Omniverse™ and in collaboration with Collective World, creative technology partner.
Customer
Unilever
Partner
Collective World
Use Case
Content Generation
Product Configurator
Products
NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise
Key Takeaways
- 2x faster content creation workflows, reducing production timelines from months to weeks and weeks to days
- 50% reduction in production costs for product imagery across global markets
- 100% brand consistency across all marketing touchpoints
- 5:1 reduction in content duplication, streamlining content production workflows
- Real-time collaboration between global teams, creative agencies, and stakeholders
Rethinking Product Imagery Pipelines for Modern Digital Marketing
Unilever’s products are used by 3.4 billion people daily across the world.
The consumer goods giant’s global portfolio includes iconic brands such as Dove, Knorr, and Vaseline. Engaging billions of people each day means keeping up with rapidly evolving consumer behaviors and cultural touchpoints that spring up faster than you can say TikTok trend. Moving that fast at such a big scale pushes Unilever’s marketing teams to innovate with AI and adapt with agility to reshape its creative operations.
Traditional product photography workflows resemble movie productions, centered on highly technical, time-consuming shoots that create extensive rework cycles. To complicate things further, different teams require separate shoots: Social media agencies need images for digital channels, merchandising teams need content for ecommerce platforms, creative agencies need assets for television, and regional market teams require localized versions in different languages.
This fragmented approach meant that a single product line with multiple variants, sizes, and language requirements could demand thousands of individual visuals. The lack of a unified digital asset system forced repeated and costly product reshoots, creating bottlenecks that prevented Unilever from engaging consumers at speed.
Dove
Nexxus
From Bottlenecks to Real-Time Collaboration
Unilever developed digital twins of their products using the Omniverse platform. Digital twins are photorealistic 3D models with a powerful capability; they also function as comprehensive databases for the products. Each digital twin contains all variants, languages, lighting setups, camera angles, and even approved "sensorals" (splashes, foams, etc.) for the product it represents. Unilever's digital twins are designed to serve every marketing need across all global digital and physical touchpoints. This single source of digital truth dramatically reduces complexity and streamlines decision making, as every model, size, and label variant is centrally approved and instantly accessible.
Working with creative technology partner Collective, Unilever implemented a sophisticated workflow built on three key technological pillars:
Real-Time 3D Rendering: Traditional rendering required hours of waiting between iterations, creating bottlenecks that stalled progress. Real-time technology enables instant visualization, collaborative review sessions with clients, and immediate creative adjustments—including dynamic content, such as 360-degree product views, pour demonstrations, and interactive experiences essential for modern ecommerce. Automated rendering tools allow teams to generate multiple viewpoints and variants with a single button press, supporting every channel—from social media to online retail.
OpenUSD Integration: Leveraging OpenUSD, Unilever parallelized their production pipelines. Linear workflows requiring each department to wait for the previous one to finish gave way to a vastly more efficient environment in which lighting artists, environment designers, and visual effects specialists could work simultaneously on layered USD files.
NVIDIA Omniverse Platform: Omniverse provided the building blocks, APIs, and SDKs to integrate real-time 3D into enterprise content production. Omniverse Enterprise Nucleus Services enabled global teams to collaborate on single USD files in real time, creating a metaverse-like environment in which stakeholders worldwide could work together.
The implementation process began with converting CAD product manufacturing data into polygonal meshes, then applying physically accurate materials from Omniverse's library. Print-ready label files were integrated, respecting all substrates and metallic foils to create models that were 100% physically accurate. The resultant models were so precise that when lit virtually, they appeared identical to real products.
TRESemmé
“We're accelerating beauty across our entire portfolio, enabled by technology. Real-time 3D technology and AI platforms like Omniverse have helped us create product imagery that's two times faster, 50% cheaper, and at a level of realism we've never achieved before. This has led us to 100% brand consistency all across the world.”
Esi Eggleston Bracey
Chief Growth and Marketing Officer, Unilever
Tangible Results Today, Futureproofing for Tomorrow
The transformation delivered measurable improvements across Unilever's global marketing operations. As Chief Growth and Marketing Officer Esi Eggleston Bracey put it, “We've transformed what was once a complex, slow process into a marketing system that frees up our teams to focus on what they do best – think bigger, be creative, push boundaries and create magic for our brands.
“This isn't about pushing out more content – anyone can do that. It's about starting with a deep understanding of people’s needs and desires, executing our campaigns with creativity and backed by a high-quality content creation machine to deliver desire at scale. Our product twins can be deployed everywhere and anywhere, accurately and consistently so content is generated faster and on brand.”
Content workflows accelerated dramatically, with production timelines shrinking from months to weeks, and weeks to days. Product imagery was created twice as fast, and for half the cost, as the traditional way. For the first time, Unilever achieved 100% brand consistency. Products appeared identical across every touchpoint from television commercials to e-commerce platforms, and content duplication was reduced company-wide by an average ratio of 5:1.
The new real-time collaboration capabilities broke down geographical barriers, enabling global teams to work together on projects, with stakeholders able to see modifications live in 3D space. Both the speed and quality of feedback were improved.
Asset complexity was also reduced thanks to the digital twins functioning as comprehensive databases containing all product variants, sizes, labels, and language versions within a single file. Beyond static imagery, digital twins enabled dynamic content creation including 360-degree views, pour demonstrations, and interactive product experiences essential to modern e-commerce platforms. Automated rendering tools allowed teams to generate multiple viewpoints and variants with a single button press.
For all of the immediate benefits Unilever is realizing today, the transformation has also laid the groundwork for their marketing future. Integration with NVIDIA Blueprints positions Unilever to incorporate generative AI capabilities while maintaining brand safety and product integrity, creating the foundation for next-generation marketing automation.
“We’re creating tools that not only transform workflows today, but also lay the foundation for the future. Most importantly, though, we’re freeing up more time for what truly matters—ideas and creativity.”
Adam Cleaver
Founding Partner, Collective
More Collaborative and Efficient Workflows, for Less
Unilever's digital transformation underscores its commitment to serving a vast global consumer base in a fast-moving digital world. Building a library of product digital twins using NVIDIA Omniverse enabled the Unilever platform to revolutionize creative workflows while maintaining brand integrity across diverse markets. Leveraging real-time 3D technology and OpenUSD, Unilever achieved the speed, efficiency, and consistency demanded by modern consumers, all while fostering collaboration and slashing costs.
Speak with an NVIDIA expert to learn about Omiverse digital twins for content creation.