Global advertising production consultancy MurphyCobb today set up Amplify, a separate business venture that it says will help brands decide where artificial intelligence, digital twins, virtual production, experiential formats and automation belong in the way advertising is planned, made and adapted. Francisco Lima runs it as general manager.

In Short

MurphyCobb, a firm that big brands hire to check how they spend money making ads, has opened a new business called Amplify to help those brands work out which new tools, including AI, are worth using when ads get made. This matters because brands are being pushed to make far more ads, faster, and plenty of them still cannot tell whether the new tools save money or make the work better. What changes is that brands now have one more adviser that says it is not tied to any tool maker, although it has not yet published prices, named clients or shown results.

What Amplify is meant to do

MurphyCobb frames the venture as a reaction to pressure it says every large advertiser now faces. According to the company, brands must produce more content, faster, across an expanding number of platforms, and the question for organisations is no longer whether emerging technologies matter but where, when and how they create value. Amplify, the company states, exists to help clients build better operating systems using independent, vendor-neutral guidance.

The remit is deliberately wider than AI. According to MurphyCobb, Amplify spans digital twins, virtual production, experiential and automation, alongside the content systems, data and production intelligence that sit underneath them. It is supposed to cover the whole content lifecycle, from upstream planning and creation to downstream adaptation and optimisation. How much of that span the venture will handle from its first day is not stated.

Conversion is the stated goal. MurphyCobb says Amplify will help clients turn early experimentation into operational reality, using validated, scalable production workflows to deliver improved efficiency, cost, speed and quality. It also plans to build an innovation roadmap with each client, so that exploration of further technologies continues after the first deployment.

"Amplify is our response to a fundamental shift in the market," said Francisco Lima, General Manager of Amplify. "Clients aren't asking why they need to invest in emerging technologies but where, how and what to do to govern, measure and scale it effectively across the organisation." He described the business as "a production-specialist partner sitting firmly on the client side of the table" that can "diagnose, validate and implement what truly works by building better operating systems."

Independence carries the weight of the pitch. "As Amplify is not tied to any vendor, platform or technology stack, we can ensure wholly independent advice and are uniquely positioned to support clients on that journey," Lima said.

Six stated areas of work

According to MurphyCobb, Amplify will support clients in six areas. Rapid clarity concerns identifying where technology is genuinely useful and where it is not. Proof before scale means establishing evidence and validating that a new approach delivers better results than the existing one. Under governance by design, the venture says it will build IP, provenance and risk controls in from the start. Minimising wasted effort involves testing technology against real problems with measurable baselines. The final two are independent advice, with technology and partners selected around client needs, and an evidence base for investment decisions and future operating-model change.

Read as a set, the six describe assurance and procurement more than production. The verbs Lima chose - diagnose, validate, implement, govern, measure, scale - belong to change management, and nothing MurphyCobb published today suggests Amplify intends to make finished advertising itself. The company's own notes to editors describe it as "a dedicated production innovation and transformation venture built to help global brands shift from emerging-tech experimentation to measurable production impact."

The parent company and its numbers

Pat Murphy, founder and chief executive of MurphyCobb, placed the venture on top of the consultancy's existing model. The new business, he said, draws on in-house expertise "underpinned by two decades within the production industry and an existing vendor-neutral approach." Its aim, in his words, is "simple - to reduce complexity, prove value and build solutions that deliver measurable impact at scale."

According to MurphyCobb, the consultancy was established in 2006 and advises blue chip advertisers including Toyota, Coty, Mars, L'Oréal, Heineken, Ikea and Colgate Palmolive on how to optimise their spend. Amplify, the company says, combines more than 20 years of production expertise and intelligence with a global ecosystem of emerging-technology companies and specialist practitioners. None of those companies or practitioners is named.

MurphyCobb puts its footprint at more than 100 markets, served by more than 100 specialist consultants. That market count sits well above figures published in the recent past. YFM Equity Partners, the private equity firm that invested in MurphyCobb in 2025, describes it as headquartered in London and operating in 38 countries, while a 2023 company profile by trade publication LBB put its presence at more than 60 markets. The three figures may count different things - having operations in a country and advising on productions shot or adapted there are not the same - but MurphyCobb does not define a market, and it does not explain the change.

The 2025 investment is relevant background. YFM lists the deal as a buyout of undisclosed value. At the time, Murphy said the backing would give the company the means to scale globally and deepen its technology offer, according to Prolific North. In January 2026 MurphyCobb promoted Simon Sikorski to global president with responsibility for expanding Control Room, its proprietary production technology platform, according to LBB, and Sikorski described the ambition as a move from traditional production consulting toward acting as a production performance partner. Amplify fits that stated direction. A consultancy that has advised brands on what they spend making advertising now proposes to shape which technology they make it with.

The general manager

An item dated January 15, 2026 in MurphyCobb's company listing on LBB reported Lima's appointment as the consultancy's head of AI and production technologies. Before that he worked at Hogarth Worldwide, the production company within WPP, where conference biographies such as his IBC speaker page list him as global head of emerging creative technologies. An Adobe webinar page describes him as the lead on Hogarth's AI in Motion initiative for generative AI in filmmaking, and as the developer of an AI-first production pipeline that combined Adobe's Firefly with other tools. His LBB profile traces a career that began in computer graphics and visual effects in the early 1990s and ran through Discreet Logic, the compositing software company later part of Autodesk, and Brazilian broadcaster TV Globo.

That background cuts two ways. It gives Amplify's leader first-hand knowledge of how a holding company assembles a generative production stack; WPP's Production Studio application, for instance, was developed in partnership with Nvidiaand piloted with brands including Ford and L'Oréal. It also means the venture's independence rests on policy rather than on history. MurphyCobb does not describe how relationships with its "global ecosystem of emerging-technology companies" will be structured, whether any of those companies pay referral fees or margins, or how conflicts would be disclosed to clients.

A production problem that is no longer about making things

Coverage on PPC Land over the past six months points to a consistent pattern: AI has raised the volume of creative output far faster than it has raised quality or use.

Research that WARC conducted with TikTok, published on July 14, 2026 and drawing on 400 marketers in the UK, US, Australia and Brazil, found that 88% reported higher creative volume since adopting generative AI but only 45% reported a significant improvement in quality. TripleLift's survey of 200 advertising professionals across six countries, published on May 19, 2026, found 73% using AI for campaign optimisation against 25% for creative production, with 67% citing lack of trust in AI output as the main reason for keeping manual oversight.

Scale is not the constraint. A Cadbury campaign generated 130,000 unique AI videos, and Sir Martin Sorrell said in March that a single campaign could involve up to 1 million to 1.5 million theoretical assets. Deployment is. Bannerflow data covering more than 300 brands, published on September 14, 2026, showed that 78% produced video in 2026 while only 46% served video impressions.

The most pointed evidence concerns process. Typeface's Signal Report, released on June 22, 2026 from a survey of more than 200 marketing leaders at vice-president level or above, found that campaign timelines had lengthened despite AI adoption. According to Typeface, 92% of respondents said campaigns now require ten or more stakeholders, 44% needed 20 or more people for a single launch compared with 10% in 2025, and more than half needed at least nine vendors or tools. Some 88% said their teams could generate content quickly. Sign-off was the bottleneck.

That finding goes to the heart of the Amplify proposition. If generation is fast and approval is slow, the problem is organisational, which is exactly where MurphyCobb says it will work - on operating systems rather than on tools. It also means the gains the venture promises depend on approval chains and budgets inside client organisations that no outside adviser controls. Will a new layer of evaluation shorten those chains, or put one more name on the stakeholder count Typeface recorded?

Evidence standards are the other gap Amplify says it will fill. Much of the efficiency data in circulation is self-reported. SEGA's use of Bannerflow, for example, came with claims of production time cut by two thirds and a 44% lower cost per thousand impressions, measured against the customer's own baseline and not independently audited. Return on the wider investment remains unproven for many buyers: TransUnion research published on August 5, 2026 found that only 53% of marketing leaders report meaningful ROI from AI while 89% expect to increase AI spending.

Where the budget is moving, and who wants it

The commercial opportunity has been sized, at least in stated intent. A Google and Boston Consulting Group survey of 387 marketers, examined by PPC Land in August, found 86% anticipating increased investment in AI-driven creative development and production, the highest of four opportunity areas tested. The same deck charted a nine percentage point shift in non-working spend - the budget for services, tools and infrastructure rather than media - away from core creative and media services and toward AI solutions.

Production consulting is paid from non-working spend. So, presumably, is Amplify.

That deck also recorded which partner types marketers would consider for AI-driven creative work. AI and agenticplatforms led at 58%, followed by independent agencies at 53%, martech and creative tool providers at 51%, performance agencies at 37% and holding company agencies at 36%. Consulting firms did not appear among the five partner types listed for that category, although they registered 42% for AI-driven discovery. The survey measured consideration rather than spend, and it did not ask about production consultancies at all.

Tool selection is becoming a cost line in its own right. Sorrell, now chair of S4 Capital, cited a Forrester survey in August finding 60% of agencies prioritising spend on third-party tools against 35% prioritising cloud or compute. Every one of those tools is a procurement decision.

The supply side is crowded. WPP has reported as a single company since February 26, 2026, with WPP Production one of its four operating units. Adobe and NVIDIA agreed a partnership in March 2026 covering next-generation Firefly models, agentic workflows and 3D digital twins, and at Cannes Lions in June Accenture Song, Omnicom, Stagwell's Code and Theory and WPP committed to deploying Adobe's platforms for enterprise clients. Typeface and Firstsource set up Agentic Marketing Services in April to transform, implement and operate AI-native marketing systems for regulated enterprises. Independent agency Brunner bought AI creative testing firm AdSkate in July. Each of these sells software, output or services alongside whatever guidance it offers. Amplify's claimed difference is independence from all of them.

Governance by design, meet Article 50

Amplify's third area - IP, provenance and risk controls built in from the start - lands in a changed regulatory environment. Article 50 of the EU AI Act, the transparency chapter, became applicable on August 2, 2026, with fines of up to EUR 15 million or 3% of worldwide annual turnover, as set out in the Commission guidelines and Code of Practice published on July 20. Under the Code, providers of generative systems apply at least two machine-readable marking layers, and deployers label deepfakes. Systems on the market before August 2 have until December 2, 2026 to bring marking into conformity, and detection interoperability follows on February 2, 2027.

The provenance layer is technical. The Code effectively requires both signed metadata of the kind the C2PA standard defines and watermarks such as Google DeepMind's SynthID, which survive transformations that strip metadata. For a workflow that moves an asset through several tools, formats and markets, keeping both intact is an engineering task in its own right.

Agencies are not bystanders either. Guidance from Dutch trade body VIA Nederland maps four disclosure triggers for agencies, with the operative test for synthetic images, audio and video being whether the finished content qualifies as a deepfake under the Act, and with obligations turning on the agency's role in the chain. Platforms have pushed responsibility downstream as well. Google placed the AI labelling duty for its ad products on advertisers, and the Display & Video 360 API gained a synthetic content attestation field on July 23.

Digital twins raise a specific complication. The term sits in Amplify's scope without a definition. In the Adobe and NVIDIA partnership it appears as 3D digital twins, but the same phrase is used for synthetic likenesses of people, and the rules for the two differ sharply. Version 2 of the IAB's AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework, published on August 18, 2026, exempts authorised digital twins of a living person used in endorsements, provided they are not placed in fabricated events. Article 50(4) of the AI Act contains no such carve-out, and the IAB framework itself tells advertisers in EU markets to follow the stricter rule. Disclosure is not free: the same framework cited an NYU Stern finding that labelling an advertisement as made with generative AI cut click-through by 31.5%.

MurphyCobb's announcement names none of these instruments. It does not mention the AI Act, C2PA, any jurisdiction, or where liability would sit if a recommended workflow produced unlabelled synthetic content. For now, governance by design is a heading rather than a specification.

What the announcement leaves out

Several details that buyers of consulting services usually weigh are missing. There is no pricing, and no indication of whether Amplify will bill by project, by retainer or on outcomes - a live question after the Google and BCG deck found 66% of marketers preferring outcome-based or performance-linked fees. No Amplify client is named; the brands listed today are described as MurphyCobb clients. There is no headcount for the venture, no case study, no geographic scope and no baseline against which the promised gains in efficiency, cost, speed and quality could be checked.

One omission bears directly on the independence claim. MurphyCobb operates its own production technology platform, Control Room, and has described expanding it as a priority. The company does not say whether Amplify's recommendations can include that platform, whether they will exclude it, or how a client would know which.

Why it matters

For advertisers, the practical consequence is a new category of adviser in AI production decisions, positioned between platforms that sell tools and agencies that sell output. MurphyCobb's existing client list gives the venture established relationships with large advertisers in consumer goods, automotive, beauty and home furnishings. Whether it finds buyers will depend less on the breadth of its remit than on whether its advice proves measurably different from what vendors and agencies already provide.

For agencies and production companies, a client-side evaluator with a mandate to test tools against baselines is another checkpoint. It could speed adoption where evidence is strong. It could also slow it, as the Typeface data on stakeholder counts suggests.

For the market as a whole, the announcement is a marker of where the debate has moved. For roughly eighteen months, platform and vendor effort concentrated on making creative cheaper to produce. The data PPC Land has tracked through 2026 suggests the tools now produce more than many organisations can review, approve or run. The contest now is over who decides what gets used, and on what evidence. Amplify's second principle, proof before scale, is also the most obvious standard by which its own claims will be judged.

Timeline

Summary

Who: MurphyCobb, a global advertising production consultancy established in 2006 whose clients include Toyota, Coty, Mars, L'Oréal, Heineken, Ikea and Colgate Palmolive, together with Francisco Lima, general manager of the new venture, and Pat Murphy, MurphyCobb's founder and chief executive.

What: MurphyCobb set up Amplify, a separate business venture offering vendor-neutral guidance on AI, digital twins, virtual production, experiential and automation across the content lifecycle. It lists six areas of work: rapid clarity, proof before scale, governance by design, minimising wasted effort, independent advice and an evidence base for investment decisions. No pricing, named Amplify clients, partners, headcount or performance baselines were disclosed.

When: The venture was made public today, September 21, 2026, eight months after Lima was named MurphyCobb's head of AI and production technologies and seven weeks after Article 50 of the EU AI Act became applicable.

Where: MurphyCobb says it operates in more than 100 markets, a figure well above the 38 countries cited by its investor YFM Equity Partners in 2025 and the more than 60 markets cited in a 2023 profile. Amplify's own geographic scope is not stated.

Why: According to MurphyCobb, brands face pressure to produce more content, faster, across more platforms, and need help deciding where emerging technologies create value. Research tracked by PPC Land shows AI has raised creative volume far faster than quality, trust or deployment, with approval processes rather than generation now the bottleneck. The venture's value to buyers will rest on whether its independence and its evidence can be verified.