The Stack in Paris. The Soul in Cannes.
June 18, 2026
Welcome to Edition 13 of The Takumi AI Brief - my weekly read on the AI shifts marketers should actually care about.
This week is a bit different.
Over the next ten days, two very different conversations are happening in Europe.
VivaTech in Paris is about the machine.
AI infrastructure, agents, commerce, enterprise transformation, automation, the stack. Cannes Lions will be about the magic.
Creativity, culture, storytelling, craft, effectiveness, influence, fame.
On the surface, they look like separate worlds. They are not. They are now the same conversation.
01 · The Trend That Actually Matters
For the last two years, most marketers have been asking the same question in different ways.
Which AI tools should we test? Fair question.
But I think that phase is ending.
The more interesting question now is whether marketing organisations can actually adapt around AI.
Not run a few experiments. Not launch a pilot. Not put “AI-powered” on a slide.
Actually change how work gets made, measured, approved and scaled.
That is why Paris and Cannes matter together.
Paris will talk about what gets built.
Cannes will talk about what people still care about.
And that tension is exactly where the CMO role is heading.
Because if you only follow the Paris conversation, marketing becomes too mechanical.
Systems, agents, workflows, dashboards, optimisation.
Useful, but soulless if left alone.
If you only follow the Cannes conversation, marketing can become too romantic.
Big ideas, culture, craft, emotion. Beautiful, but increasingly hard to scale without the machine.
The next CMO has to hold both truths at the same time.
Build the stack. Protect the soul.
That sounds simple. It is not.
Most organisations are still split in two.
The tech conversation sits with transformation teams.
The creative conversation sits with brand teams.
The performance conversation sits with media.
The data conversation sits somewhere else entirely.
AI is exposing how fragmented that model really is.
02 · The AI Shift to Watch
I think Cannes this year will feel different.
Less “look what AI can do.”
More “did AI actually make the work better?”
That is a much harder question.
The first phase of AI in marketing rewarded novelty. The strange image. The quick film. The synthetic influencer. The prompt experiment. The boardroom demo that made everyone briefly feel ahead of the curve.
We have all seen enough of that now.
The next phase will be less forgiving.
AI will have to prove it can improve the work, not just accelerate it.
Better ideas. Better localisation. Better testing. Better timing. Better creative systems. Better commercial outcomes.
Speed alone will not be enough.
That is where I think the real debate will sit.
Because the industry has spent a lot of energy asking whether AI can replace creativity.
I think that is the wrong argument.
The better question is whether AI can remove the waste around creativity, so humans have more space for judgment, taste and cultural instinct.
That is where the Human Premium comes in.
As AI floods the market with more assets, more variants and more content, the value of genuinely human things goes up.
A point of view. A cultural read. A creative leap. A founder story. A brand world people actually want to spend time in.
The machine can make more.
But more is not the same as meaning.
And Cannes, at its best, has always been about meaning.
03 · If I Were in the CMO Chair
My bet is that the most useful takeaway from the next ten days will not be a tool, a trend report or a stage quote.
It will be a reset in how CMOs think about AI.
The question is no longer:
“Are we adopting AI?”
Most companies are.
The real question is:
“Are we adapting the marketing function around it?”
That means three things.
First, the AI conversation has to move out of the innovation corner and into the operating model.
If AI is only being used by a few curious people in the team, it will remain a productivity hack.
The real value comes when it changes the way briefs are written, content is produced, campaigns are optimised, insights are gathered and decisions are made.
Second, creativity has to become a system without becoming synthetic.
This is the delicate part.
Brands need better creative engines, but they cannot afford to lose the things that make them recognisable, trusted and human.
The winners will not be the brands producing the most AI content.
They will be the brands using AI to make their own voice travel further without becoming generic.
Third, proof will matter more than performance theatre.
The AI demo era has been fun.
But we are moving into the evidence era.
What changed? Did costs drop? Did speed improve? Did quality hold? Did the brand become more visible? Did customers respond? Did the business move?
That is the bar now.
Paris will give us the infrastructure story.
Cannes will give us the human story.
The CMO job is to connect both.
Because the future of marketing will not be won by the most automated brand.
And it will not be won by the most nostalgic one either.
It will be won by the brands that can build like machines and still feel unmistakably human.
That, for me, is the ten-day reset.
Until next week, keep building, keep questioning.
Mohit Lodha Founder, Takumi AI