Cannes Lions 2025 is set to start tomorrow, and Eventers is on the ground as press—ready to take it all in. From early morning panels to late-night beach talks, we’ll be diving deep into the sessions, the strategy, and the stories shaping the year ahead.
This year’s focus is clear: What are we building as an industry? What are the metrics that matter? And who’s driving the biggest shifts in marketing, media, and creativity?
Here are five themes we’ll be following closely:
The Creator CEO Era
The creator economy is growing up. No longer just influencers with brand deals, we’re now seeing creators step into roles as business operators, founders, and decision-makers.
One of the most anticipated sessions of the week, The New C-level: How Creator Entrepreneurism Is Reshaping Business, brings Colin and Samir together with Raina Penchansky (CEO of DBA/UTA). Expect honest takes on what’s changing: creators launching products, building media companies, and working with brands in ways that blur the lines between partnership and ownership.
TikTok’s takeover of the Carlton Hotel backs this up. With creator networking, trend-building workshops, and real-time collaboration, they’re positioning themselves not just as a platform—but as the backbone of the next wave of brand-building.
Gen Z as Cultural Architects
At the Mastercard Villa on Tuesday, Axios is hosting a live conversation on how brands are building loyalty with Gen Z. With voices like Samir Chaudry, Laurie Lam (e.l.f. Beauty), Lindsay Peoples (The Cut), and Pinterest CEO Bill Ready, the focus is on what it takes to connect with a generation that expects more than content—they want purpose, personalisation, and participation.
The session will explore loyalty strategies, AI-driven personalisation, creator collaboration, and the changing expectations Gen Z brings to every interaction.
Another must-see is Neurodivergent Minds from Havas, exploring the creative edge of neurodiversity. With over half of Gen Z identifying as neurodivergent, this session argues that brands can’t afford to treat inclusion as a side topic. Featuring Lola Young, Yannick Bolloré, and Renee Connolly, it’s set to present a benchmark on embedding neurodiverse thinking into strategy, innovation, and team culture.
Creativity as Business Capability
Apple opens the festival with Human After All, their look behind the work that earned them the 2025 Creative Marketer of the Year award. This isn’t just a highlight reel. It’s a case study in how emotional, distinctive storytelling can drive long-term commercial value.
That same focus on effectiveness runs throughout the Creative Impact content stream. The CMOs in the Spotlight sessions bring together leaders from Mars, Amazon, Novartis, Philips, McDonald’s, and Kimberly-Clark—including speakers like Josefien Olij, Morgan Flatley, and Patricia Corsi. Across these sessions, a consistent message emerges: marketing is becoming a systems function, spanning brand, performance, experience, and internal storytelling.
Key topics include:
- What are the most important marketing investment areas right now?
- How do CMOs communicate the value of creativity within their organisations?
- What skills and structures will define the next generation of marketing leadership?
AI as Operational Infrastructure
AI won’t dominate the stage this year—but it will shape almost every conversation. In sessions like TikTok’s Combined Intelligence, AI is presented as infrastructure: powering workflows, enabling testing, surfacing insights. Not as the big idea—but as the system that helps teams move faster and smarter.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan will also reflect on two decades of platform evolution in What 20 Years of YouTube Reveals About Creativity’s Future. Expect reflections on how AI fits into content distribution and creation without overshadowing the human touch.
Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman joins Colleen DeCourcy for AI and the Future of Creativity, a keynote focused on the long-term implications of agentic AI. The conversation will touch on how AI companions might reshape the relationship between brands and audiences, and what that means for creative work, brand identity, and decision-making. Expect a deeper dive into the friction—and potential—between automation and originality.
Late-Night Lessons in Brand Building
One of the more unexpected entries in the week’s agenda is The Late-Night Hustle, featuring Jimmy Fallon, Savannah Guthrie, and Bozoma Saint John. While it might sound like a media panel, the conversation will focus on how Fallon’s blend of entertainment and marketing has created a new kind of branded platform—part show, part business engine.
The conversation will explore how brands can show up in cultural spaces without losing relevance, and what happens when creative control shifts to talent rather than teams.
Final Take
There’s no single headline at Cannes Lions 2025. But across the sessions, a few common threads stand out: clearer thinking, better systems, and a more grounded view of where creativity meets business.
For anyone navigating the next chapter of marketing, the conversations unfolding in Cannes will offer plenty to take home, reflect on, and build from.
Eventers will be following it all closely.