Codes of Culture | Issue75
AI takes center stage in Cannes
Welcome back to this mid-week’s Codes of Culture. After a week in Paris for VivaTech, we're in full swing with Cannes Lions, and AI is undeniably stealing the spotlight.
In this week’s roundup: Barbie gets an AI brain, e.l.f.’s launches a colour-analysing Pinterest experience, high-street brands experiment with dynamic AI pricing, L’Oréal doubles down on NVIDIA-powered beauty personalisation and more. See below stories shaping the week in innovation, fashion, beauty, and design.
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📖 10 things on our radar:
Cannes Lions: where wit meets cultural clarity
The first winners of this year’s Cannes Lions signal a shift toward clever disruption and cultural clarity. Budweiser’s “One Second Ads” turned milliseconds of music into viral fun, while Vaseline’s “Verified” campaign debunked beauty myths with joyful precision. PENNY’s “Price Packs” printed inflation straight onto packaging, transforming transparency into design protest. Outdoor Grand Prix winners—KitKat’s anti-phone imagery and the Paris 2024 Olympics—embraced public space as canvas. And in Pharma, Viagra’s subtle storytelling proved intimacy can be artful, not awkward. Even herpes got reframed with humor in New Zealand’s Grand Prix for Good. Across categories, the message is clear: this year’s creativity doesn’t just communicate, it connects, challenges, and makes us feel.e.l.f. launches “color e.l.f.nalysis” immersive tool with curated Pinterest boards
e.l.f. Cosmetics has introduced color e.l.f.nalysis, a free digital experience powered by Pinterest that delivers personalised colour season analysis via selfie upload, identifying hue, value, and chroma to reveal your ideal palette (spring, summer, autumn, or winter). The tool complements this insight with a shoppable, curated Pinterest board tailored to each user’s season, and is backed by Pinterest trend data showing a 22x surge in “colour season analysis” interest and over 1.6 billion beauty-related searches in the past year. Debuting at Pinterest's Cannes-hosted Manifestival, color e.l.f.nalysis represents a seamless, data-driven fusion of experiential beauty tech and content commerce.Debenhams group pilots AI-driven dynamic pricing
Debenhams Group (which includes Boohoo, PrettyLittleThing and others) is partnering with Peak (now part of UiPath) to introduce real-time, AI-based pricing across thousands of items. The tech adjusts prices instantly based on trends, demand levels and competitor activity, streamlining inventory and offering sharper, targeted discounts .Desigual goes transparent on AI-generated visuals
Desigual posted AI-created imagery on Instagram and in a rare move, explicitly acknowledged it in the caption. While AI use in fashion visuals is increasingly common, most brands stay quiet or ambiguous about it. This small act of transparency could set a new precedent, positioning Desigual as not just digitally agile but culturally attuned to growing demands for creative honesty.Alta raises $11M to build personal AI stylist
Alta, a startup backed by influencers like Karlie Kloss and Tony Xu, closed an $11 million seed round led by Menlo Ventures. Its platform uses AI avatars and virtual try-ons to offer personalized outfit recommendations, signalling a surge in agentic fashion tools aimed at individual style empowerment.Perfect Corp integrates NVIDIA tech to elevate beauty and fashion AI
Perfect Corp has partnered with NVIDIA to supercharge its suite of AR and AI beauty tools with real-time performance gains. The platform delivers ultra-fast skin diagnostics, photorealistic makeup and hair simulations, and seamless fashion try-ons across YouCam and brand APIs. This upgrade marks a shift in digital retail, where immersive AI becomes a core conversion tool, not a novelty.British Vogue launches “Vogue Values” initiative
British Vogue announces a year‑long “Vogue Values” editorial and social campaign focused on using fashion as a force for cultural change. In partnership with eBay and Nike, the project centers on sustainability, women’s health, equitable creative access and representation, featuring collaborations with Smart Works and Give Your Best, anchored by a “Fashion is for Everyone” message, fronted by Jourdan Dunn .Mattel and OpenAI forge a strategic alliance to redefine the future of play
Mattel has teamed up with OpenAI to bring generative AI into its iconic brands, such as Barbie, with the first AI-powered toy scheduled to arrive later this year. The partnership emphasises age-appropriate play, privacy and safety, leveraging OpenAI’s generative models to add personality, adaptability and interactive storytelling to physical toys. In addition to revamped products, Mattel will adopt ChatGPT Enterprise as a creative and operational tool, streamlining internal workflows, accelerating product development and unlocking more dynamic ideation across teams.Wanna rolls out virtual try‑on for high‑heeled shoes
Wanna has expanded its AR-powered virtual try‑on suite to include high heels, a first in digital footwear fitting. Shoppers can now virtually see pumps, heeled sandals, ankle boots and tall boots from multiple angles and evaluate heel height (7–9 cm), shape, craftsmanship and colour before buying, originally a key concern among luxury consumers. The technology overcomes previous foot‑alignment and perspective challenges, enabling a realistic, interactive experience on both web and mobile.Meta is bringing ads to WhatsApp, starting with the app’s Updates tab—the section used for ephemeral status updates and public channels. While personal messages and calls remain ad-free and encrypted, this marks a strategic pivot for WhatsApp, long championed as a safe, private space. Now, with more than 3 billion users globally, Meta is tapping into WhatsApp as a fresh revenue stream, using personalised (but non-chat-based) data to drive targeted advertising.
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