Innovation at Cannes Lions 2026: What Is Behind Our AI Activation?
One question keeps resurfacing around Cannes Lions 2026: how do you scale creativity without diluting craft? This year, we’re offering a compelling answer – and inviting attendees to experience it firsthand. In partnership with Casino Barrière, we’ve unveiled ALL IN, an interactive innovation-driven activation at the Havas Café that turns the complexity of modern marketing into something tangible, playful, and personalized. Powered by Vermeer.ai, Havas’ proprietary generative AI platform developed by POP, the experience shows how a single idea can transform seamlessly across audiences, formats, and markets – showcasing content scale led by AI, without compromising craft.
Spinning stories in Cannes
At the heart of the activation is a reimagined icon: an exclusive Casino Barrière slot machine, redesigned for creativity.
The experience is intentionally simple: visitors step in, take a picture, and answer a few questions. They then move to the machine to spin three wheels – location, character, and game – unlocking one of the multiple narrative combinations crafted by our creative team. The outcome feeds directly into Vermeer.ai, which produces something far more valuable: a cinematic-quality hero film, displayed instantly on a large screen.
Once completed, the story expands again. The hero film evolves into a fully integrated campaign, automatically adapted into multiple formats – vertical, square, short-form video, banners, and static assets – each maintaining visual consistency and storytelling coherence. This is where the real innovation reveals itself.
“Vermeer was initially built to protect creative control and craft. What we’re demonstrating here is that it can also unlock scale and personalization – without compromise.” – Xavier Blairon, our CEO France, explained.
In other words, the same technology designed to safeguard quality is now enabling brands to multiply it.
Innovation: The power of atomic content
Using what POP calls Atomic Content, the system dynamically adapts individual components of the film – from characters to backgrounds and visual elements – to demonstrate how the same creative can flex for different audiences and use cases.
“With Atomic Content, we can change the different elements of a video – characters, environments, even subtle creative details – to make it relevant to a specific audience. It gives brands the ability to create content that feels personal at every touchpoint”, Xavier highlighted.
Scaling craft with AI, without compromise
What follows is perhaps the most powerful part of the experience. In a final twist, a bonus round inserts the participant directly into the narrative, placing their portrait within the campaign. Guests watch the process AND become part of it. They leave our ALL IN station with a custom-printed magazine ad, having witnessed the entire production arc unfold in minutes: from brief, to hero film, to fully adapted campaign.
The goal is clear: to give brands unprecedented creative flexibility while maintaining strict control. Xavier told us more about it:
“We’re giving clients the opportunity to build their own movie – but within a fully secure environment that ensures everything remains on-brand and compliant, both legally and creatively.”
Vermeer.ai acts as both engine and safeguard – a pipeline that allows creativity to expand without losing its boundaries.
The bigger picture
That’s why our ALL IN activation at Cannes serves as a proof point. It shows that:
- AI can enhance creative craft without replacing it.
- Personalization can deepen engagement without fragmenting identity.
- Scale doesn’t have to come at the expense of quality.
By blending playfulness with precision, we want to offer a glimpse into the future of marketing – one where every audience gets a story that feels made just for them, and every brand retains the craft that makes them memorable. At Cannes Lions 2026, that feels like a winning hand.
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