Cannes Contenders 2026: AI & Digital Craft

AI and new technologies seem to be at the centre of almost every creative conversation these days. But for me, great work is still great work, regardless of the tools used to make it.

What was exciting to see was how many creative people are embracing these new possibilities with thoughtfulness, taste and imagination, using them to enhance the creative process rather than define it.

With that spirit, I selected my contenders for Digital Craft the same way I always do: looking closely at the strength of the idea, the quality of the craft and execution and, of course, indulging my perennial soft spot for a little absurd humour.

Happy Socks The Great Sock Migration 

A great concept from Lovely Animals for Happy Socks that finally answers that age old mystery of what happens to our missing socks. The whimsical humour and mythology for the brand works perfectly in tandem to create something imaginative and memorable for this everyday mundane frustration.  

Finally answers that age old mystery of what happens to our missing socks.

Brilliantly crafted, the execution takes it cues from an epic nature documentary with the surreal twist that the brand's socks are migrating to Sweden to mate.

Dollar Shave Club We Put Money Where It Matters

A neat meta gag from Too Short For Modelling that uses AI to mock AI, skewering the grooming industry’s obsession with over-engineered innovation by pushing it to ridiculous extremes. A nice return as the Dollar Shave Club reclaims the cheeky, disruptive humour that first made this brand famous.

A nice return as the Dollar Shave Club reclaims the cheeky, disruptive humour that first made this brand famous.

CLHIA Benefits Fraud and Abuse Affects Everyone

Lovely Animals scores a second here with a satirical film that turns entitlements fraud into something everyone understands: someone hogging the water cooler. What starts as an over-pour spirals quickly into a full-blown water dependency issue, narrated by the long-suffering cooler itself. 

What starts as an over-pour spirals quickly into a full-blown water dependency issue.

Full disclosure, this one dates back to my Omnicom days.

France Télévisons Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Games 

Directed by Quentin Deronzier [and lead AI artists were Bruno Detante and Staphane Benini through Mathematic], this is a strong demo of a successful AI hybrid workflow used to create this poetic title sequence for the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. 

A strong demo of a successful AI hybrid workflow.

Fusing art, sport and AI, the film moves from pristine bas reliefs to skiers slicing through powder, with snow sculptures paying tribute to Italy’s great icons, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Botticelli, before carrying us all the way to the peaks of Milan and Cortina.

The Hug

Created by Roman Jonsson, Melina Nakaluk, Michael Robb

From Luma's Dream Project, The Hug is a moving story about a man who wants to hug his mother one last time. It plays on how technology can bring people back to life, which in this case doesn’t feel odd or creepy, but heartfelt and sincere.