As the pandemic halts filming, ad agencies are increasingly turning towards digitally altered, deepfake-style ads that repurpose old footage for new uses
With the pandemic having shut down production, companies are asking ad agencies to create commercials made up of digitally altered footage. Tweets: @edbott , @tiffkhsu , @joshsternberg , @changeist , and @kerrymflynn Tweets: Ed Bott / @edbott : And so begins the latest chapter of this dystopian novel we're all trapped in. https://twitter.com/... Tiffany Hsu / @tiffkhsu : A recent State Farm ad shows a digitally manipulated 38-year-old Kenny Mayne in 1998, making predictions about 2020. The original pre-coronavirus plan had the ESPN broadcaster, now 60, doing man-on-the-street interviews in Chicago. https://www.nytimes.com/... Josh Sternberg / @joshsternberg : When deep fakes come to advertising. What can go wrong?? https://www.nytimes.com/... @changeist : Let this sentence sit with you for a moment: “The ad industry had started to show interest in digital manipulation before the pandemic.” https://www.nytimes.com/... @kerrymflynn : “Unable to film new commercials during the coronavirus pandemic, advertising agencies are turning to technologies that can seamlessly alter old footage” - @tiffkhsu https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
With production shut down mid-pandemic, brands are falling back on their archives: the State Farm spot Tiffany Hsu describes digitally ages ESPN's Kenny Mayne into 1998 footage rather than filming new material, turning manipulation software into a substitute for a shoot. The move lands just as Forrester forecasts a 25% collapse in US ad spending and tens of thousands of agency job cuts, so budget pressure and the production freeze are pushing in the same direction.
The technique isn't staying a stopgap: within months, AI firms like Synthesia were productizing corporate-friendly deepfake video for training and marketing, signaling that pandemic-era improvisation was hardening into a service category.
First-order effects
- Agencies and their brand clients can keep delivering broadcast-quality commercials without crews or talent on set, as State Farm's digitally altered Kenny Mayne spot demonstrates — the immediate beneficiary is any advertiser with usable archive footage.
Second-order effects
- Talent and likeness rights move to the center of ad production: by 2022 the Wall Street Journal was covering celebrity deepfakes used with or without permission, and startups like Hour One were paying people to license their likenesses for AI-voiced characters, forcing agencies to negotiate consent where they once negotiated shoots.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, casting and production economics restructure around synthetic media — filmmakers were already asking how to cast actors for deepfake roles in broadcast-quality productions — pushing the industry toward standardized likeness licensing as the counterpart to today's usage rights.
The trend: The pandemic production shutdown is accelerating advertising's shift from filmed shoots to licensed and manipulated synthetic footage, normalizing deepfake techniques in mainstream brand work.