Cannes Lions 2025: Achieving Relevance, Rigor and Results

This was my third year attending the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on behalf of Lenovo. I’ve come to expect and cherish the inspiration to be found there.

But this year, the takeaways went beyond great creative work. What really stood out to me was how much the industry is grappling with change — from how we measure success, to how we integrate technology like AI, to how we engage with audiences through new channels like the creator economy.

Cannes is no longer solely a festival of creativity. It’s a platform where business strategy, media, technology, and creative storytelling collide.

Navigating that complexity requires a different mindset, rooted in curiosity, continual learning, and an openness to new ways of thinking. This is where I live and breathe! So, I’m happy to share some of my reflections from my busy days at the festival.

Inside the Palais

One of my Cannes rituals is to sit in on at least two live jury defenses in the Palais.

This year, I attended sessions for the Titanium and Glass categories, two of the most prestigious and purpose-driven awards.

If you’re a marketer and you’ve never seen a live jury defense of a campaign, I highly recommend it. It’s not about glitz or showmanship. It’s about persuasion, craft, and accountability. The teams, both agency and brand, have just 15 minutes to present their work and answer tough, pointed questions from a jury of industry experts. For example, during one defense, a juror bluntly asked, “How do you believe a documentary helped sell your product?” These aren’t softball questions. They’re designed to challenge assumptions and test the thinking behind the work.

The most powerful moment we witnessed was the Dove campaign from Unilever competing for (and winning) the Glass: the Lion for Change. The team opened with a film that had never been shown publicly before, a short documentary that had once freed the campaign from approvals limbo. It was composed of footage of interviews with the board members' daughters, talking openly about their own body insecurities — eight-year-olds and fourteen-year-olds saying things like, “I wish my tummy were flatter,” or “I wish my ears didn’t stick out as much.”

That film kickstarted the entire Real Beauty campaign that’s become so iconic today. Watching the creative director and account lead defend their work in front of a live jury, while the entire room, including seasoned marketers, were in tears and gave them a standing ovation, was extraordinary.

For me, these jury rooms are a reminder of why rigor in marketing matters. It’s not just about creating something that looks good or feels right. It’s about asking the hard questions: Did this drive change? Did it meet the brief? Did it move people? It’s an exercise in accountability that makes all of us better at what we do.

Behind closed doors

AI was, as expected, the dominant topic of conversation at meetings and meals and panels throughout the entire festival.

But what struck me as different this year was the level of practicality in the debate. The questions CMOs are asking now are tactical and immediate: How do I upskill my team? How do I establish governance? How do I integrate AI tools into both our internal operations and external marketing? How do I get results and trace the ROI back to AI?

And honestly, one of the most fascinating and unexpected conversations of the week centered around Gen Z. There’s growing evidence that there is a segment of Gen Z employees actively pushing back against using AI at work. They’re skeptical. They have reasonable arguments grounded in solid points that the industry still needs to address.

That sparked a lot of reflection in the CMO roundtables and meetings I attended. What does it mean for the future of work? How do we lead through a generational divide? It’s a topic we don’t have full answers to yet, but it’s one we must work towards, especially as this generation becomes a larger part of the workforce.

When you layer that onto larger agency shifts around retirements, mergers, and more, it’s clear we’re in the middle of both technological and structural change across marketing and media. It’s going to get harder to achieve results if you don’t engage with these difficult questions.

The key takeaway for me here: you can’t opt out of transformation. Whether it’s AI adoption, agency partnerships, or internal capability building, the landscape is moving fast. Staying informed and staying curious are non-negotiable for marketers in 2025.

The beaches and beyond

If you want to understand where the attention, money and energy were going this year, all you had to do was walk the Croisette.

The scale of this year’s activations from agencies and tech giants like Meta, Google, and Spotify was staggering. These definitely weren’t brand awareness plays! Everyone is already aware of them. They were more like full-scale business development platforms aimed at winning the hearts and minds of advertisers, agencies, partners and the media.

But something else that caught my attention this year was the scale and presence of creators throughout the entire festival, not only on the beaches. It felt like the influencer footprint was at least 10 times bigger than last year when the Creator Pass first debuted, and they were more involved than last year. A member of my team who wasn’t able to attend with us watched a lot of the action online; she reported to me that she went from seeing maybe two creators pop up in her social feeds last year, to something like 15 this year.

From my perspective on the ground, many of these creators were mega-influencers, like celebrities. They arrived with entourages, lighting crews — full support teams. It was an opportunity to strike brand deals and business arrangements. Obviously, Cannes is also a content goldmine, and the creator economy can, in many ways, democratize access to the Cannes Lions. Millions of people around the world who will never attend in person can now experience a slice of it through social media.

These types of engagements are becoming essential parts of how brands connect with both B2B and B2C audiences. Some of the influencers Lenovo worked with at CES were also at Cannes, for example, including at our Motorola x Pantone dinner, which hosted nearly 20 creators amid other media and industry guests.

As marketers, these kinds of shifts push us to think differently about reach, engagement, and how we tell our brand stories. The multiplicity of platforms and channels is an exciting challenge for every brand, and it must be approached with thoughtfulness and strategic insights  so brands choose which platforms, content types and messages are relevant and resonant with their audiences.

Heading home

For more of my insights from Cannes, here’s what I wrote after the journey home once I’d had some time to digest.

Coming home from a massive event like that, I don’t always have immediate answers. But I do find I always come back with sharper questions. How do we stay rigorous in our creative work? How do we lead teams through technological and generational change? How do we adapt to new audience behaviors without losing sight of what makes great marketing truly resonate?

For me, the answer to achieving, relevance, rigor and results always is this: stay curious, get engaged, and center your ideas on humanity. From that foundation, you can build anything.