Is This an Agency Meeting or a Live World Cup Match? It's Both, Thanks to LERMA\

Promo puts an AI spin on 'getting to know you'

You can spend the next 90 minutes following your fave team as they battle in the World Cup—or attending an agency credentials briefing with LERMA\ chief growth officer Taylor Smiley.

That’s a tough choice, right? (Just say yes.)

Well, now you can do both—sort of—with some help from AI.

Brand leaders who book a meeting with LERMA\ during World Cup matches might just see a digitized version of Smiley pop on screen. But he won’t be touting creative strategy or media plans. Instead, he’ll provide commentary, in real time, describing the action taking place on the pitch (instead of making a pitch).

“Our creative teams had a brilliant realization,” says Smiley. “Nobody wants another meeting during the World Cup. So, instead of asking people to ignore the match, we created a meeting that helps them enjoy it.”

The experience will look something like this…

To make a boffo first impression and show off its tech chops, “We took one of the most familiar agency rituals and reimagined it as an experience built around a cultural moment millions of people are already invested in,” says CCO Paco Conde.

The initiative will run throughout the World Cup. Naturally, the agency hops brand execs who partake will choose to schedule a real get-to-know-you in the near future.

Below, Conde breaks it down:

MUSE: Were you looking for a self-promo specifically tied to the World Cup?

Paco Conde: For a soccer fan, the World Cup is like the holidays when you’re a kid. You wait for it. You dream about it. The problem is, business doesn’t care. And suddenly, someone books a meeting during the match you’ve been waiting four years to watch. For CMOs and C-suite leaders, protecting their calendars is even harder. So we thought: What if the meeting itself became the protection? A meeting that looks important enough to block the calendar, but is actually live soccer commentary.

What kind of AI did you use?

Taylor isn’t a single AI—it’s five AI systems working together in real time, each handling a different layer of the experience. Taylor is synced to every World Cup match, live. Not specific games—all of them. He follows the action across the entire tournament. Behind all of that, a custom-built aggregation engine polls two separate live sports APIs every 10 seconds. There’s no pre-rendered video. The avatar is performing live.

Can you walk us through the process of making an AI version of Taylor Smiley?

Taylor recorded samples through ElevenLabs’ voice cloning platform, which analyzed his vocal patterns. But the voice is only half of it. Taylor’s personality lives in a detailed behavioral architecture that our team crafted by studying how the real Taylor behaves.

We built what we call a Natural Voice Guide: a set of performance directions that tell the AI not just what to say, but how Taylor would say it. And critically, Taylor AI doesn’t have a knowledge base that was recorded in advance. He doesn’t have a bank of pre-recorded opinions. His knowledge is live: real-time match stats, lineups, player ratings, pre-match predictions, even web search results—all pulled through tools he decides to use on his own, in the moment, based on what you ask him.

We captured the texture of how he communicates and gave it a brain that thinks in real time. So when Taylor gives you a stat or a take, he’s forming it right then, in his own words, from live data.

Explain how this works from the marketers’ POV. Is there some surprise factor?

They’re definitely in on the joke. The invitation makes it clear that this is a live soccer commentary experience, powered by Taylor AI, an AI version of Taylor Smiley, our chief growth officer. People invite LERMA/ to a meeting, not the other way around.

The only part we’re being serious about is not talking business during the World Cup. If someone tries to talk about capabilities, Taylor AI will check the real Taylor Smiley’s calendar to schedule a follow-up meeting. He’ll actually send the calendar invite.

What’s the gain for the agency?

It shows how we understand culture, how we use technology and how quickly we can move. We created a sophisticated AI avatar in less than a week. We honestly didn’t know if we could pull it off when we started, but that didn’t stop anyone. That says a lot about the culture inside the agency.

Of course, we’d love for it to lead to new conversations and real credentials meetings after the World Cup. But from a very selfish perspective, I also hope it helps me watch every Spain game. Hopefully all the way to the final.