Case Study: A generative AI photo activation that turned 300 franchise owners into Banff locals and sent them home with content worth sharing.
The Chopped Leaf is a Canadian fast-casual chain with over 110 locations across Canada, with expansion into the US market. They offer customizable, healthy salads, wraps, and bowls, focusing on fresh ingredients. The Chopped Leaf hosted its annual franchisee conference in Banff and wanted to offer an immersive activity that kept franchisee owners engaged. Annual franchise conferences carry a specific kind of pressure. They are part strategy session, part alignment exercise, and part morale builder. The Chopped Leaf event planning team knew it was important to capitalize on all three.
The Challenge
The ask was straightforward. Deliver an interactive activation that gave attendees something to engage with, something to take home, and something that reinforced the energy of the year ahead. A standard photo booth would not have served that brief. The location demanded more, and so did the audience.
Flash Co. was brought in to design a generative AI photo experience that used Banff and The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel itself as the creative canvas.
AI Photo Booth Activation
Flash Co. Photo Booth delivered a custom AI photo activation that transformed guests into stylized versions of themselves across iconic Banff-inspired scenes.
The Context: A Conference Designed Around Connection
Annual franchise conferences serve a critical purpose. They align operators around strategy, reinforce brand culture, and create space for peer connection. For this event, the organizing team wanted an activation that would:
Encourage organic interaction between franchise owners
Feel premium and relevant to the Banff setting
Offer a shared experience that extended beyond the conference room
Traditional photo booths were ruled out early. The brief called for something more immersive, with enough creative range to keep engagement high.
The Solution: A Branded Generative AI Photo Booth
The activation centred on a generative AI photo booth with two distinct output modes.
The first was AI-generated portraiture. Guests were transformed into Nordic skiers in the Banff backcountry, fireside campers under the northern lights, and formally dressed guests at the iconic Rundle Lounge Bar. Each scene was rendered with enough detail and visual quality to feel genuinely personal, not like a novelty filter, but like a photograph worth keeping.
The second mode used AI background swaps to place guests directly into recognizable Banff landmarks: Main Street on Banff Avenue, the exterior of the Banff Springs Hotel, and the base of Mount Rundle. For franchise owners who had travelled from across the country to be in Banff for the first time, these images gave them something specific to this moment and this place.
Both modes were fully brandable, operationally managed on-site by Flash Co. staff, and designed for throughput across a 300-person conference footprint.
Generative AI Scenes
Guests were transformed into:
Nordic skiers exploring the Banff backcountry
Fireside campers beneath the northern lights
A hyper-realistic AI-generated portrait of guests enjoying a black-tie evening at the Rundle Lounge Bar inside Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel
Each scene was styled to feel cinematic while remaining polished, ensuring the output aligned with a national brand and a professional conference environment.
AI Background Swaps
In addition to fully generative scenes, the activation offered AI background swaps placing guests:
On Main Street in Banff
In front of the Banff Springs Hotel
Against the dramatic backdrop of Mount Rundle
This mix of creative outputs gave guests control over their experience while keeping wait times low and throughput efficient.
Execution: Designed for Conference Flow
The booth ran across the conference programming on November 19th, integrating into the event flow without requiring additional management from The Chopped Leaf team. Guests moved through efficiently, with each portrait session generating immediate outputs. Branded physical prints and digital copies were available on-site for all attendees.
Flash Co. staff managed the experience end-to-end: guiding guests through scene selection, ensuring output quality, and maintaining consistent throughput without creating lineups or friction. The result was an activation that felt social and ambient rather than transactional.
The range of AI scenes gave attendees a genuine choice, which kept engagement high across different demographics within the franchise group. Some guests cycled through multiple scenes. Others shared directly from the booth. The activation had a lineup for the entire duration of service. In fact, we had to extend service time to give everyone a chance to enjoy the experience.
AI Photo Booths - Offering a unique experience
For conferences where alignment and connection matter, AI photo activations offer more than entertainment. When executed properly, they become a tool for engagement, memory-making, and internal brand culture.
Flash Co. Photo Booth’s generative AI photo booth helped The Chopped Leaf transform a conference touchpoint into a collaborative experience that supported both interaction and momentum for the year ahead.
Results: Engagement at Scale
The activation delivered measurable engagement across both physical and digital touchpoints:
300 Attendees
397 photos captured
274 on-site prints produced
336 photos shared digitally
A share rate of 84.6% against total captures is a strong result for a corporate conference environment, where sharing behaviour tends to be more measured than at consumer-facing events. The print volume (nearly one per attendee) reflects how well the outputs landed as keepsakes rather than throwaways.
Qualitative feedback pointed to something equally important: franchise owners described the activation as a genuine team-building experience and a source of momentum heading into the year ahead. In a conference format designed to align a national network, that kind of shared engagement is not incidental. It is the point.
Why AI Worked for at this Conference
The content was specific to the place. The Fairmont Banff Springs is not a generic conference venue. It carries real weight for guests who travelled to be there. By building the activation entirely around recognizable Banff scenes, including the hotel itself, Flash Co. gave attendees portraits tied to this specific event, not interchangeable with any other.
Both output modes served different guests. The AI portraiture appealed to those who wanted something imaginative and unexpected. The background swaps appealed to those who wanted something more grounded and shareable. Offering both extended participation across the full room.
Physical prints drove retention. Digital sharing is immediate, but prints travel differently. With 274 prints distributed, a significant portion of attendees left with something tangible. Physical prints are the kind of takeaway that employees display at their desk at the office or show off to their team.
The activation supported the conference goal, not just the moment. Team building at a franchisee conference is a strategic objective. The booth gave 300 attendees a shared experience and a talking point that extended well beyond the activation itself. The qualitative outcome which guests summarized as “a genuine enthusiasm for the year ahead,” was a direct result of the design.
Looking for a conference activation that delivers real value for your attendees?
Flash Co. builds experiences that engage, capture, and extend the life of your event.