By David Cohen, Industry Expert, Editor, and Writer
Creators attending the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity have come a long way, from hoping to find a spot on the beach for their towel to commanding prime beachfront property.
And they did not travel to the south of France just to share selfies from the Boulevard de la Croisette, although they likely found time to do that during their stay.
Rather, an estimated 250-plus creators—including A-listers like Colin & Samir, Alex Cooper, David Dobrik, Keith Lee, and Emily Sundberg—were there to meet with top marketing executives, negotiate long-term partnerships, and climb the various stages across the event for key speaking opportunities.
“When I was first going to Cannes, if you saw Martin Sorrell walking down the street, that was the big-name celebrity,” United Talent Agency Senior Vice President Margot Hauer-King said during the event. “Now? Alix Earle.”
Adobe became the first-ever headline partner of the Lions Creators track, which included its own beach space complete with a dedicated stage, content studio, editing suite, and meeting areas, along with exclusive events, talks, and workshops.
“I think it’s bigger than ever, and it’s making it difficult to be as productive as I was in 2024,” Open Influence Senior Director, Partnerships Tommy Johnson said. “Lines. Everywhere. You expect it at Cannes, but it’s been wild.”
He added, “I am really surprised to be hearing about authenticity so much again. This felt like a really big trend in the 2017-through-2020ish era, and I think it’s making a comeback with the rise of artificial intelligence and AI-generated content. People are talking a lot about wanting to use AI to help with productivity, but they are still longing for that human touch. I have seen some heated debates here.”
Johnson and OI Senior Vice President of Platform and Brand Partnerships Kimberly Beauchaine were all over this year’s event, appearing on a total of three panels.
From Guesswork to Growth
Johnson was joined on the stage by Mercedes-Benz USA Chief Marketing Officer Melody Lee, e.l.f. Beauty Chief Integrated Marketing Officer Patrick O’Keefe, and SeeMe Index Co-Founder and CEO Asha Shivaji for From Guesswork to Growth: Building Inclusive and Effective Creator Campaigns.
The focus of the session was exploring why many creator campaigns fail to factor in inclusion, despite research showing that inclusive brands grow at a pace 1.8 times quicker than average brands.
They discussed why most creator campaigns fail to resonate, how to change that, what inclusion really entails besides surface-level demographics, and how brands can gain a competitive advantage through creator identity.
The Future of Influence
It was Beauchaine’s time to shine on The Future of Influence: Where Talent, Tech, and Culture Collide, joined by Amanda Acevedo, Director of Talent Management at G&B, and Aayati Dash Kar, Global Youth Lead of the World Woman Foundation and Global Ambassador of the Heidiseum Heritage Foundation. Oana Oprea, Head of Digital Planning and Brand Strategist at Jam Session Agency, was the moderator.
They talked about how the future of influence, creativity, and brand storytelling is evolving in a rapidly changing digital world, causing audiences to redefine authenticity, community, and cultural relevance across marketing and media.
Questions explored during the session included:
- What do audiences expect from brands that previous generations did not?
- How are creators evolving from influencers into cultural leaders?
- How do brands balance speed, authenticity, and cultural relevance?
- What makes a creator-brand partnership feel genuine today?
- How are talent management and creator development changing in today’s digital landscape?
Creating With Confidence in Complex Categories
Francis Stones, Global Head of Brand Safety and Responsible Media at TikTok, moderated Creating With Confidence in Complex Categories, which featured Beauchaine, BetterHelp Chief Growth Officer Sara Brooks, and Haleon Global Category Head for Over-the-Counter Kathryn Swallow.
They discussed the challenges behind creator marketing campaigns for products and services in highly regulated industries, and how some brands in those categories are thriving through a combination of smart strategy, policy fluency, and creative execution.
What’s New From the Platforms?
TikTok is helping brands tap AI to create campaigns with speed and at scale by introducing Symphony Agent across ifs platform.
In Symphony Creative Studio, advertisers can use an AI-powered chat experience and prompts to quickly create high-performing ads.
Existing creator content can be discovered and scaled in Content Suite, with Symphony Agent surfacing relevant videos that align with the brand’s goals.
And in TikTok One, Symphony Agent streamlines creator discovery and campaign execution, helping brands generate creator briefs, choose and invite creators at scale, and locate creators who speak local languages for specific markets.
TikTok also introduced Custom Creator Networks, which enable advertisers to develop a curated list of creators, brand advocates, employees, and partners and convert their brand-relevant videos into high-performing TikTok ads.
AI was top-of-mind for Meta, as well, as the parent company of instagram and Facebook unveiled a new end-to-end creative solution offering brands a dedicated space for creative strategy and optimization.
The new solution learns about the brand’s identity and tone by analyzing existing ads and uses that information to help generate creative.
New generative AI updates to Meta’s Ads Manager include enhanced text-generation tools, language translations, and a built-in creator approval workflow.
Later this year, Meta will combine Creator Marketplace and Partnership Ads Hub, forming Meta Creator Marketing Hub and giving marketers a single destination to discover creators, locate relevant content, and activate that content in the form of partnership ads.
Pinterest always brings a different vibe, and its presence at Cannes Lions 2026 fit the bill.
Upon arriving at Pinterest Manifestival, attendees received Pinterest-branded phone stickers with the message, “Less URL, More IRL,” reminding them to focus on real life.
Pinterest Manifestival also featured a tattoo parlor, a patisserie, a visual search studio, a style lab, and, in partnership with French postal service La Poste Française, an Offline Social Club for unplugging from the grid and connecting in real life.
Finally, Reddit debuted several new tools powered by its Reddit Community Intelligence engine, which mines over 25 billion posts and comments across the platform into business insights and solutions.
Its new free-form ads format helps brands craft engaging creative based on long-form posts by Reddit users.
AI helps brands identify high-potential communities and audience personas on the platform and suggests tailored headline and image variations to increase relevance.
Redditor Highlights enables brands to embed actual conversations from the platform into ads.
And brands and creators were able to digest all the new offerings, as well as a quick meal, at the Reddit Community Deli.
Takeaways
Cannes Lions has traditionally been an event where creative accomplishments are recognized, and where the next steps begin to take shape.
Creator marketing has successfully made the push from the fringes of Cannes to the center stage, and creators have evolved beyond simply crafting one-off posts for brands, becoming partners with those brands, and diving deeper into areas like production and merchandising.
So, what’s next? Brands and creators must continue to adapt to the new reality, with the latter needing to add business skills to their arsenal, as they are unquestionably becoming businesses.
As for future editions of Cannes, Johnson noted, “I have seen so many panels that are focused on creators, or where creators have been a main focus, even if the panel is not meant to be discussing the creator economy. It’s inevitable.” Expect that trend to continue as people gather on the beach in the south of France next June.