'AI is transforming into a strategic partner' - Havas' Yannick Bolloré

Heading into the summer frenzy that is the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, the leaders of the world's largest advertising agency networks take on Creative Salon's questions around the biggest industry trend of the moment, the impact of AI.

The next in the series hears from Havas chairman and CEO, Yannick Bolloré.

Creative Salon: How has AI already accelerated impact in your business? Any standout examples? Where are you seeing the biggest gains - speed, scale or quality?

Yannick Bolloré: Generative AI has been a transformative force across multiple layers of the business, accelerating our ability to deliver high-quality work at scale for our clients. We’ve moved from exploration to practical, hands-on integration across key operations. Our AI-powered Converged operating system allows us to connect services more effectively than ever before, increasing knowledge sharing and providing universal access to tools that allow our talents to work together to find better solutions to organizational and client challenges.

At Havas, we believe 'Better Science Creates Better Magic'. We’ve watched this truth unfold through notable gains in creative ideation, driven by our teams’ ability to iterate on ideas faster and leverage deeper intelligence to confirm their assumptions and amplify their vision. The audience creation process has also been further automated, resulting in more personalized targets, reductions in activation time and increases in lead conversion. Additionally, our content production business, POP, has seen significant gains in speed, enabling teams to automate and streamline asset creation across formats, even localisation processes have become noticeably faster.

CS: As AI takes on more of the heavy lifting, where do you see it starting to lead — beyond just support? Media planning? Strategy? Creative?

YB: AI is transforming from a tool into a strategic partner. We’re now using AI to surface insights, forecast cultural shifts, and optimize media strategies. Through Converged, we connect content, data, and decision-making in one intelligent system. This empowers our teams to lead with proactive insight and precision, while human expertise continues to drive empathy, creativity, and vision.

AI gives our creatives a broader canvas, unlocking richer ideas rooted in data, and accelerating the path from concept to execution. For strategists, it synthesizes market signals and cultural trends, enabling them to lead with foresight rather than react to change. And for our media teams, it predicts high-performing combinations of audience, message, and channel, allowing them to optimize plans as behaviors evolve.

CS: In an AI-driven landscape, where core capabilities are increasingly commoditized, what will truly differentiate one agency from another?

YB: As generative AI rapidly evolves, capabilities like speed, efficiency, and baseline creativity are becoming standard across the industry. Automation is leveling the playing field. The things that will set agencies apart are those that AI cannot replicate: vision, empathy, originality, and a depth of human expertise.

The agencies that will lead are those that blend cutting-edge AI with consistent investment in their people. Cultural fluency, emotional intelligence, and the ability to translate data into meaning will make the difference. It’s not only about who has the best tech, but who has the clearest vision and the most human understanding of what drives culture and business growth.

CS: What new roles or functions has AI prompted in your organisation? What future roles do you anticipate emerging?

YB: AI is reshaping roles across the organisation, not by creating isolated departments, but by embedding intelligence into every function. While new specialist roles are emerging, the real transformation lies in making AI literacy a core capability for all. Traditional roles have already evolved, with copywriters co-creating, planners interpreting machine-generated insights, and media teams optimizing in real time. Our goal is to foster a culture where everyone, at every level, understands how to harness AI to elevate their craft, including me!

Yannick Bollore will speak at Lumière Theatre in Le Palais on Monday, 16 June, during Cannes Lions, featuring in a discussion named 'Neurodivergent Minds: They Don’t Need Advertising – Advertising Needs Them.'

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