The biggest winners this past week at Cannes Lions were undoubtedly … the ice cream vendors.
During a scorching week in the south of France, an estimated 13,000-plus Cannes Lions attendees hustled up and down the Croisette in Cannes for meetings, panels, pitches and more meetings. The glacier carts and kiosks that dish out ice cream, soft serve and sorbets did brisk business all week. The sweet treats probably added to the general sense of optimism and excitement for the future that marketing, advertising, data and technology leaders who came to talk shop and compare notes at a time of massive transformation in virtually every business sectors.
The breadth of Cannes Lions is eye-opening for media and entertainment insiders who get to see and hear how technology and digital disruption is transforming other industries. And at the same time, the business of persuasion is more intertwined with media than ever before – thanks in no small part to the enormous influence of creators. It no longer just about having a slogan and a catchy commercial jingle. To stay relevant in a social media-wired world, major brands with big consumer profiles have to tell an ongoing story that keeps them in social feeds – and that’s where creators come into play, big-time.
The onslaught of AI, the growth of the attention economy and its impact on linear TV viewership has made Cannes Lions a forum for weighty topics in recent years. In the 12 months since the 2025 festival, there has been a palpable shift in attitudes and approaches to tackling disruption. CMOs came to the show with granular examples of how AI, social media, creators, vertical dramas and more have helped them grow and transform. In marketing-speak, the tagline for Cannes Lions 2026 would be something like: “It’s Time to Slay Your Fears, Because the AI-Powered Revolution is Here.”
Gabrielle Wesley, chief marketing officer for Mars Wrigley North America, expressed that spirit during her Variety In the C-Suite conversation held in the Canva Creative Cabana space on the beach.
“One hundred years ago there was just radio. Radio was what kept your attention and then there was the visual with TV, and now we have so many ways to connect with consumers. Consumers have gotten more savvy and more demanding about what they want. They don’t want to be talked to,” Wesley said. “They want to engage. And because they want to engage, it’s like any other relationship. You have to keep having conversations, you have to keep taking them on dates, you’ve got to keep showing them new things and showing them different parts of you. And so I take that very, very seriously to engage with consumers on a two-way relationship, not just message giving.”
Here are a few more takeaways after a 24/7 week at Cannes Lions:
The trend here couldn’t be clearer in recent months, and it was much on display at Cannes Lions.The biggest of big media — from Amazon to Fox and Tubi to Netflix — are aggressively courting creators for deals as marketers scramble to tap into the heat around personalities who ply their trade on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and the like.
The new wrinkle is that the big platforms want to draft off what makes top creators successful in their digital-native realms. In other words, Amazon and Fox don’t want to turn creators into TV stars with new shows exclusive to their platforms. Instead, they want to provide the support services to help creators make more money in their existing realms: YouTube et al, branded live events, endorsements and consumer product launches.
Rob Wade, CEO of Fox Entertainment, was inspired to launch Fox Creator Studios this year after seeing how much commerce Gordon Ramsay was able to generate through his strong social media footprint. Like Fox, Amazon sees potential here and launched its Amazon Creator Services unit last year.
“We saw the way that we could use our content to promote and help grow that business. So all of a sudden we had all these pieces falling together. It was content, but there were businesses around that content, and although it felt like there was still a lot of gap to bridge between the two worlds, it felt like the right time to me,” Wade told Variety.
Fox’s Tubi unveiled a deal with Amazon’s Fire TV during the festival that will make Tubi’s selection of creator content easily accessible and searchable on the platform.
“Foundationally, it’s about bringing customers the content they want and helping creators have another surface to get their content in front of customers,” said Charlotte Maines, VP of devices content and advertising for Amazon.
Tubi, Fox’s ad-supported streaming platform that reaches more than 100 million users, has become a haven for monetization for creators. It works because Tubi does not insist on exclusivity – quite the contrary.
“If you look at the way that distribution has grown as the internet came up, … it’s really about access and it’s really about no gating, no paywalls, and putting our users first,” said Rachel Berk, senior VP of platform partnerships for Tubi and Fox. “I fully anticipate things to get more creative, both on my the deal side, the platform side, and the create and the creator side, but I also expect them to get even more sophisticated, even more accessible, where we’re really being able to, your point about search and discover, we would really be being able to highlight and platform different kinds of voices and address the needs of our very diverse users.”
Mattel staged an activation for Barbie — the toy icon who is now 67 years young — at this year’s Coachella music festival in Indio, California. Roberto Stanichi, Mattel’s chief global brand officer, said data compiled by the company shows Barbie was the music festival’s most talked-about brand. “You would say, like, ‘What is Barbie doing in Coachella?” he said at the Variety in the C-Suite in collaboration with Canva beachfront speaker series. At Coachella, “the Gen Z audience there was so incredibly impacted by the fact that you had this Barbie presence,” Stanichi said.
The line for the Barbie activation at the festival at one point was three and a half hours long. “So you would think about, Why does this resonate so much with that audience and it was surprising,” Stanichi said. Undoubtedly helping punch Barbie into the Gen Z zeitgeist was Greta Gerwig’s 2023 “Barbie” blockbuster, which took in $1.45 billion globally at the box office. (He didn’t have an update on plans for a sequel.)
The Coachella experience was just the latest reinvention for Barbie (with more to come, obviously). Stanichi noted that the face of the doll has actually changed almost every 10 years. Managing such a well-known property is a balance of “staying true to the authenticity” of Barbie and knowing that “there’s a line that sometimes we are not willing to cross, but you have to bend it a little bit to drive true innovation.”
Consumer-products giant Unilever recently teamed with Netflix’s “Bridgerton” for a set of limited-edition Dove products tied to the show. According to Netflix advertising chief Amy Reinhard, speaking on a panel at the Variety in the C-Suite in collaboration with Canva, the partnership resulted in a nearly 60% lift in new shoppers for Dove. Leandro Barreto, CMO of Unilever, said this particular initiative delivered a much bigger payoff for the Dove brand than, say, product placement in a TV show. “When you think about culture, it’s very difficult to not think about Netflix because it’s really the epicenter of culture. It’s not only about content, it’s creating worlds, right?” he said. “And it becomes almost inevitable to be part of that cultural movement.”
There’s a narrative that generative AI is a soul-sucking, job-killing machine. But Ruba Borno of Amazon Web Services (AWS) offered a different way to think about the technology. Speaking on a special Cannes Lions edition of Variety’s “Strictly Business” podcast presented by AWS & Deloitte, she pointed to advancements in sports technology over the years — noting that when tennis players started using titanium rackets instead of wooden ones, their level of performance soared. “You don’t sit there and say that the tennis racket is now the tennis player,” she said. “It’s not replacing the human. It superpowered the human who was using it and then they were able to compete. And then the interesting thing is, if you’re not using those new tools, you really actually can’t compete anymore… It sets a new standard.”
The creator economy boom has allowed the most fan-connected celebrities to build enormous brands (their own and on behalf of others), businesses — and the fanbases that feed all those ventures. And it’s all built on the foundation of their fame. Oprah Winfrey, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Paris Hilton, Shaquille O’Neal, Mel Robbins, Ludacris, NBA stars Kevin Durant and Draymond Green, designers Stella McCartney and Rachel Zoe and more were there to talk shop to the world’s most influential marketing, advertising and media executives. In other words, fish where the fish are.
“What a wonderful time to be an entertainer, to be in the entertainment business, because ideas are your currency,” Chopra Jonas told a Cannes Lions crowd at the Palais des festivals on June 24.
A busy week of pitching and listening and enlightening conversations came to a joyous conclusion on Thursday night with the Pride celebration party held at the Canva Creative Cabana on the beach. Top Paris DJ Dorion kept the dance floor packed with an eclectic mix of hip-shaking favorites spanning generations. And then, the Teletubbies showed up. It was a rainbow spectacle that warmed the hearts of sweaty, exhausted Cannes Lions-goers who grooved with abandon thanks to the cooling effect provided by extra-strength misting fans.
On Wednesday night, Alan Cumming was at the helm as DJ as NBCUniversal hosted a late-night bash to celebrate its late night franchises. Cumming got toes tapping with a string of danceable favorites, and then NBC doubled down with the charm offensive by bringing Seth Meyers and Colin Jost for a wave and some light chit chat.
“We are going to be the hosts of Bravo’s ‘Winter House,’ “ Meyers quipped in a nod to the buzz round the latest season of Bravo’s “Summer House.” The crowd at the party buzzed around one of that show’s key players, Lindsay Hubbard, who was in attendance.
On Tuesday, Ludacris had hands in the air on the beautiful outdoor deck of the Hotel du Cap, down the road from Cannes in Antibes, as the guest performer at UTA and DoorDash Ads’ Executive Soiree bash. Amazon Ads offered up English indie pop stars The xx at its spacious Amazon Port facility. And as usual, the Spotify Beach installation rocked with two nights of marquee names that included Raye and Mumford & Sons.