Watching from afar: what VivaTech 2026 told marketers

In brief

• VivaTech 2026’s theme was “Impact, not illusion”: the AI hype phase is over and the era of measurable impact has begun.
• Brands need to monitor how they are described in AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity; GEO is becoming its own agenda item next to the media plan.
• AI speeds up average work; taste, intuition and brand memory must be protected by human judgment.

This year I followed VivaTech not from Paris but from my screen. The nice thing about watching from a distance is that the noise of the crowd gets filtered out and only the clearest messages remain.

The line that stayed with me this year, and which also became VivaTech’s official theme, was this:

“Impact, not illusion.”

For anyone working in marketing and brand, this is more than a nice event slogan. For the past three years, almost every presentation has said “AI will change the future of marketing.” VivaTech 2026 made me feel that the warranty on that sentence has expired. The question is now simpler and sharper: “What has changed for you? How have impact and efficiency improved, and which experience got better?”

One of the most notable signals for marketing this year was the opening of a dedicated space for CMOs within VivaTech. The CMO Summit, organised with Adobe and The New York Times, shows how much the marketing leader’s agenda has expanded. It’s no longer just about telling better stories; product, data, technology, culture, customer experience and growth all sit at the same table. The CMO’s job is to run that table.

That’s why headlines like “Become an AI-native CMO in six months or become redundant” may sound dramatic, but they aren’t entirely baseless. The message is clear: AI is no longer an add-on tool used by the marketing team; it is starting to become a new operating system that determines how the organisation works.

But there’s a small trap here. Switching on a few tools and telling the team “give them a try” is not AI transformation; it’s just an experiment. That, I think, is exactly what VivaTech means by “illusion.” Running a pilot is easy. Measuring it, connecting it to workflows, protecting brand safety and scaling it are much harder.

An AI study by KPMG France and Les EnthousIAstes shows marketing leading other functions in AI adoption. But look at the use cases and the picture is familiar: summarising, translation, content production, content adaptation. In most places, AI is focused on production speed rather than strategic questions. That isn’t bad, but it isn’t enough either. Producing content faster doesn’t on its own create a stronger brand; sometimes it makes brands look more alike.

So one of this year’s important distinctions is this: “We use AI” no longer says anything by itself, because everyone does. What matters is which AI you use, for which job, with which data, under which brand rules and against which success metric.

VivaTech’s Top 100 Rising European Startups selection shows the same trend. The general-purpose AI narrative is giving way to solutions specialised by use case: content, voice, conversation, productivity, automation, e-commerce visuals, customer experience, intelligent workflows in regulated sectors… The message for brands is practical: a speed gap will open between teams relying on a single general assistant and teams that choose the right tool for each brief, channel and customer journey.

The second topic I care about is visibility. For years we asked, “How do we show up on Google?” SEO, content strategy, search visibility, performance investment… Now a new question is being added: how do AI engines describe your brand?

When a consumer asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or another assistant about your category, in what context does your brand appear? Is it described accurately? How are you compared with your competitors? Are your strengths visible, or does the model represent you with outdated or generic information?

That’s why Bluefish standing out at the LVMH Innovation Awards matters. It would be wrong to draw big conclusions from a single start-up award, but it’s valuable as a sign of direction. Visibility in the search box is expanding into visibility in the model’s answer. The name hasn’t settled yet; terms like GEO, AI search visibility and LLM visibility are all in circulation. But it’s very clear that this will become a separate agenda item at the budget table, alongside the media plan.

The third topic is the role of creative production. The examples at VivaTech in AI-assisted video, audio, imagery and e-commerce content show that creative production is no longer just campaign output; it is infrastructure for commercial growth. In a world where a product image can decide a purchase in e-commerce, creative production is moving from “cost centre” to one of the levers of performance.

This doesn’t diminish the value of creative. On the contrary, it makes good creative judgment even more valuable. AI speeds up average work, but it doesn’t automatically produce good taste, sound intuition, cultural sensitivity or brand memory. It accelerates the person with a good idea just as much as the person with a bad one. That’s where some of the risk lies.

So the real debate isn’t “Will AI replace people?” I think the better question is: where do we need machine speed, and where is human judgment the very value of the brand?

What will happen to brands that don’t draw this line clearly is predictable. More content, faster adaptation, more variations… But after a while everyone’s language, visual world and promise will converge. Gaining speed while losing distinctiveness may be the quietest risk in marketing.

My takeaway from VivaTech 2026 on behalf of marketers is this: the hype phase is over, and the accountability phase has begun.

From here on, brands will need to take three things more seriously. First, move AI use out of pilots and tie it to a clear roadmap, ownership and success metrics. Second, monitor how the brand is represented inside AI engines. Third, make one distinction up front in creative and media workflows: where do we want efficiency, and where do we need to protect the brand’s human difference?

None of these is as shiny as a product launch. But perhaps that’s exactly the point. What VivaTech told me this year is that the winners won’t be those with the flashiest demo, but those who prove impact most consistently.

The rest is a bit of an illusion.