Cannes Lions: Change, Constantly Unchanged

I’ve walked La Croisette for fifteen consecutive Junes, my Jesus sandals now as salt-stained as the shutters on the Hôtel du Cap. Each year the Festival shape-shifts: sometimes a temple to optimisation, sometimes a cosplay runway for hardware and hype. This year the circus dropped its productivity spreadsheets and handed the mic to creators—those irrepressible humans who make algorithms blush.

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The new ring-master: AI on a very human leash

AI was the plus-one at every yacht breakfast and every sweaty stage—bragging about time saved, demoing one-click ads, fielding “AI teammates.” Yet the undertow was caution: Who pays when the machine writes the copy? Panels circled ethics, bias and creative sovereignty, and only 12 % of submitted work even used AI—proof that the sharpest ideas still begin in a skull, not a server.

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Creators reclaim the spotlight

Cannes didn’t just talk about the creator economy; it rewired the awards for it. The newly named Social & Creator Lions sprouted five sub-categories (Creator Collaboration, Community Building, etc.), acknowledging those who build audiences one DM at a time. But a subtler pivot beneath the panels is needed:

Attention is the old coin; Intention is the new currency.

Not how long you look, but why you look, who you look with and what you do together afterwards. Brands that broadcast at strangers are being replaced by brands that nurture unfinished conversations with future friends—companions of consideration long before a purchase screen ever loads.

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Work that breathed

These ideas made me pocket my phone and inhale. No trophy talk—just the pulse and the link:

• AXA – “Three Words”
  A home-insurance contract quietly adds “and domestic violence,” converting paperwork into an escape hatch. One signature, countless exits.
  Case film → (contagious.com)

• Chicago Hearing Society – “Caption with Intention”
  Subtitles redesigned so silence isn’t empty: type swells for anger, trembles for fear and pauses so the Deaf community can feel the beat.
  Watch → (youtube.com)

• Vaseline – “Verified”
  Dermatologists in your feed, lab coats in your comments: a badge system debunking bogus skin hacks and endorsing the good ones—credibility as shareable as a meme.
  Inside the mechanics → (contagious.com)

• Indian Railways – “Lucky Yatra”
  When fewer people buy tickets, turn the ticket into a lottery. Every stub becomes a daily draw—converting avoidance into anticipation.
  Full story → (contagious.com)

• KitKat – “Phone Break”
  Outdoor posters capture a normal commute, then swap every glowing screen for a chocolate bar—a gentle nudge to taste the world again.
  See the posters → (famouscampaigns.com)

None of these ideas wowed because of model parameters. They wowed because someone saw a truth, breathed on it and let craft carry the tune. Brain and heartbeat.

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The chasm—and the bridge

Two dialects buzzed all week:

Efficiency-speak buzzed about faster renders, cheaper impressions, cleaner spreadsheets. Community-speak whispered about belonging, mental health, safe rooms. The gulf looks vast—but the bridge is intention. AI can light the path; creators decide where the road goes.

The gulf looks vast—until you realise the bridge is intention. AI can gather the wood; creators decide which stories crackle before the embers die. Even the evangelists conceded the need for human guardrails so yesterday’s bias isn’t hard-coded into tomorrow’s feed. Cannes didn’t close the chasm, but it coaxed both sides onto the same Croisette.

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What I told the Cannes Lions Academy graduates

I didn’t just run workshops this year—I distilled their lessons and my own experience into one raw, unfiltered riff.

The road isn’t a straight line.
You’ll be ghosted, rejected, hired for the wrong reasons, fired for the right ones. That’s not failure—that’s the curriculum.

Design, communication and creativity don’t follow—they lead.
Design isn’t decoration. Communication isn’t noise. Creativity isn’t fluff. This is power. We give form to feelings and language to movements.

This work is sacred.
Stay wild. Stay weird. Stay a little foolish.

You’re not here to fit in—you’re here to re-imagine everything. Go create the world you want to live in.

Beyond the panels where I spoke and the students I mentored, an inevitability settled in: from interns to CEOs, we’re all students again—sharpening fresh pencils for the next lesson.

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Curtain call

So, was Cannes 2025 the Festival of AI? Of creators? Of efficiency, empathy or entropy? I’d argue it was the Festival of potent possibility—a place where binary horsepower met beating-heart humanity and learned neither wins alone.

As I packed my fifteenth souvenir lanyard, the Mediterranean flickered pixel-blue. The sea didn’t care about award counts or CPMs, but it did whisper one truth: creativity, like water, only stays fresh when it moves.

Now—close the laptop, swap your screen for a chocolate bar, and make something the algorithms can’t predict.