Wirz relies on KI and Jürgen Klopp for DVAG

Deutsche Vermögensberatung, with its 18,000 financial advisors and around 8 million customers with a turnover of 2.2 billion euros, is the largest independent bancassurance distributor in Germany. In order to further expand the company's brand awareness, a pitch was held last year, which Wirz won.

"We're a little proud to have prevailed against the best German agencies and then to have worked with probably the most popular German on a major campaign for one of the largest financial services providers in Germany," says Livio Dainese, Co-CEO of Wirz. "So many superlatives are almost embarrassing for us Swiss. All the more reason for us to show what we can do. For example, using artificial intelligence profitably."

A soccer coach as an actor?

Jürgen Klopp has been a brand ambassador for Deutsche Vermögensberatung for many years. So it is hardly surprising that he should play the leading role in the new TV commercial. The outgoing Liverpool FC coach is regarded as one of the best football coaches - which doesn't necessarily apply to acting. He prefers to leave that to others.

And by using artificial intelligence AI, he was able to do just that. The TV commercial was created almost entirely without his involvement. All he had to do was sit on a chair, make a few faces and have his face photographed from all sides. With that, Jürgen Klopp's work was practically done. For the AI teams from Wirz and The Mayda Creative Co. from New York, the real work began.

Jürgen Klopp was no longer present during the actual filming. The film was shot with body doubles. It was only in post-production that their faces were replaced with Jürgen Klopp's using deepfake technology.

Klopp's face and voice digitized

Both Jürgen Klopp's face and his voice were digitized for the commercial. To do this, an AI was trained for days with various original sound recordings of Jürgen Klopp and the voice was synthesized from them. Klopp never recorded the texts for the campaign, but a professional speaker whose voice was only replaced with that of the football coach afterwards.

"With this production, Wirz has impressively demonstrated that AI is not just a buzzword for them, but a valuable tool that they are obviously very good at using," says Holger Zindt, Divisional Board Member for Marketing at DVAG.

The TV commercial celebrated its premiere on Saturday during the half-time break of the top match in the German football league between Bayer 04 Leverkusen and FC Bayern Munich on the pay-TV channel Sky and shortly before the ARD news bulletin and will be shown in various versions on German television commercials over the next two years.

Responsible at Deutsche Vermögensberatung: Marcus Assmuth (Chief Development and Marketing Officer), Holger Zindt (Chief Marketing Officer), Michael Rebstock (Marketing Director), Patrick Roelecke (Group Head of Marketing & Project Manager), Birgit van den Valentyn (Creative Director Brand), Luis Pena (Client Partner, The BlueGreenOne). Responsible at Wirz Group: Livio Dainese, Caspar Heuss, Patric Franz, Vanessa Lehmann-Spalleck, Erasmo Palomba. Responsible at Zauberberg Productions in cooperation with Feit Film: Andrea Roman Perse (Managing Partner & Executive Producer), Wiebke Feit, (Producer), Brian Papish & Eva Strittmann Power (Producer), Anna Andriutsa (Post Producer), Charly Siegrist (Production Assistant), The Mayda Creative Co. - Ben Smith & Carl Addy (Director), The Mayda Creative Co. (VFX), Zu Al-Kaidi (VFX Executive Producer), Georgie Castle (VFX Producer), Thomas English (DOP), Pete Fullarton (Party Editorial), Marko Strihic (Edit). Responsible at DubDub Studios: Gregor Rosenberger (Voice Recording, Sound Design, Mix), Sandro Palomba (Voice Casting and Producing). Responsible at Music Agency Sizzer: Koen van de Wardt, Peter Jelle Idzenga (Music Producer), Richard Aardenburg (Music Supervisor), Michiel Marsman (Executive Creative Director Music), Sander van Maarschalkerweerd (Executive Music Supervisor). Further production partners: Valeriano Di Domenico (Photography), Grotesk.Group (AI Voice Training), Harald Schaack (AI Voice Training and Cloning), Nelly Selcho (AI Sound Coordinator), Lorenz Wahl, Kuchynskyi Yevhenii (Image Processing).