Beverly Jackson, vice president, brand & product marketing at Zillow

Day 1

Here’s what we heard around town on Day 1.

“If I hear the word AI one more time, I think I’ll stamp it on my forehead,” said Monica Austin, chief marketing officer at Blizzard Entertainment, told Brand Innovators. “But it is important and it is an exciting topic so I am thrilled to be part of the conversation.”

“It really is the technology that underpins our entire design process,” said Denise Cherry, vice president marketing, Rivian from the Brand Innovators Beach Stage. “How can we start from nothing and figure out what challenge we want to solve vs incremental improvements.”

Justine Stauffer, senior director of creative effectiveness at Molson Coors Beverage Company advised marketers to study the work. Go look at brands you love on social media,” she said from the Brand Innovators Showcase Stage. “It is only going to make your team better.using the framework of muscle, allows us to push that message forward.”

“I like to think of the Zestimate as the original OG AI,” said Beverly Jackson, vice president, brand & product marketing at Zillow, from the Brand Innovators Beach Stage. “And when we think about that we’ve been doing this for 20 years, we’re not new to this, we’re true to this.”

“If you are a brand, don’t think about yourself so seriously,” said Marcelo Proneca Pascoa, vice president of marketing, Coors Family of Brands, Molson Coors Beverage Company, on a panel at the Brand Innovators Showcase Stage. “Yes, know your brand but within who you are, have fun with it, make some mistakes. You might get fired, but you might not.”

“It not just about how to integrate AI but almost to go back and work with AI as a given on creative storytelling and creative concepts and really redefine how we market today,” said Carina Ertl, chief marketing officer at Tourneau and Bucherer, told Brand Innovators. “There is no longer your classic segmentation and your classic funnel and how you think about media. You need your influencer strategy and the creator economy. There are so many shifts right now, we’ve seen shifts every year, so it is just about reinventing and redesigning how we work in the future forward.”

“We are in an era where how can you do more with less?” said Dara Treseder, chief marketing officer at Autodesk.

“While we are populating media real estate with art and copy and all the many ways it can manifest, I think the most inspiring part about this industry is the magnitude of the work that we do and its ability to transcend from being ‘advertising’ or being marketing communication to being cultural production,” Dr. Marcus Collins, clinical assistant professor of marketing, University of Michigan – Stephen M. Ross School of Business, told Brand Innovators. “And we see the impact that our work actually has beyond the commerce but in how it impacts, influences and shapes social living because of its cultural contribution.”

Day 0

Reddit introduced two early-stage products in testing powered by Reddit Community Intelligence: Reddit Insights, an AI-powered social listening tool and Conversation Summary Add-ons, a new ad feature that dynamically integrates positive content from Reddit users directly below an advertiser’s creative.

Andy Jassy, President and CEO of Amazon, has been named 2025 Media Person of the Year Award by the Cannes Lions. Past recipients include: Salar Kamangar of YouTube, Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Eric Schmidt of Google, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft.

Global entertainment agency Ralph is running a confession hotline called “CannesFessions” – a tip line where ad industry folks are invited to call in to confess “their funniest, wildest and most cringeworthy festival moments.” Call (+44) 01880 280085 to participate. Don’t worry, Ralph’s “Anonymiser Engine” claims that calls are untraceable.

Amazon is back at the Port this year with its largest activation to date, designed by Salt and Pinch for the third year in a row. This year the theme is blending quiet luxury with immersive storytelling, which came out of research by insights from Amazon Ads’ “Beyond the Generational Divide.”

The study challenges traditional demographic-based targeting, and focuses on brands that build loyalty by uniting audiences through shared passions. The experience starts with a screen-free garden and will feature Rosé and iced coffee fountains, a Prime Video slushie bar, AWS-inspired custom perfumes and Mechanical fortune teller for Amazon Devices. d’ODESZA will be playing on the Amazon stage.

Salesforce will be on the beach featuring will.i.am, Deepak Chopra, Scott Galloway and many more on their stages. They’ll also be serving ice cream and giving that “wind-swept, beach perfect look” in the SharkNinja photo booth.

Meta will have at Hotel Barrière Le Majestic Beach showing off Ray-Ban Meta glasses with product demos, hands-on workshops and conversations aimed on how creators can use AI. Variety has teamed up with Canva Creative Cabana on the beach across from the Hotel Martinez for some high level sessions.

Influential will be back on the beach, this year as part of Publicis Groupe since the acquisition last year.

Pinterest is coming back with its Manifestival, an immersive IRL Pinterest experience, at The Carlton Beach Club. The event will feature a stylescope, a patisserie, a fisherman aesthetic tattoo parlor and DIY Tin Wallet crafting. Stagwell’s Sport Beach will be have sports icons including Mo Farah, Billie Jean King, Megan Rapino, Lauren Betts, Nancy Kerrigan, Candace Parker, Oscar Piastri and many more.

Snap will be at the JW Marriott and La Malmaison again with a focus on the Snapchat Generation – “Gen Z and Millennials who prioritize authentic connections and creative self-expression” – and will include: Sponsored Snaps, Promoted Places and AI-driven AR experiences. 

TikTok is hosting creators at the The Carlton Hotel. LinkedIn is also hosting content at The Carlton as part of the Lions’ new B2B program.

The FreeWheel and NBCUniversal Rendez-Vous on Wednesday night will feature a performance with Ludacris. RTL Beach has yet-to-be-revealed talent performing on Tuesday night.

Brand Innovators will of course return with content on two stages featuring more than 75 CMOs of Fortune 500 companies, as well as some excellent evening events with talent including Wyclef Jean on Tuesday night at Rado Beach. And don’t miss Digital Fight Club, in which agencies go head-to-head from 5:30-7:30 Tuesday and 6-8 Wednesday night.

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“It is very rare in a career that you get to take the helm of a brand that has had such an impact on society,” says Seeley. “PayPal has become woven into our daily lives. Very rarely do you get to steward and shepherd a brand that has this impact.”

PayPal just went through a major rebrand as the company looks to shift perception from just being an online payment tool for eBay to one you can use in stores at the point-of-purchase, as well as on ecommerce sites. The brand’s largest US ad campaign ever kicked off in September 2024 and continues to run with new iterations. The effort stars Will Ferrell in different shopping situations singing “You Can Pay Your Own Way,” to the tune of Fleetwood Mac’s “You Can Go Your Own Way.”

“We are a massively highly penetrated brand, it was important to work with someone who has broad appeal at scale who people trust,” says Seeley. “You know if you go see a Will movie, you know it is going to deliver, you are going to laugh. He is a great ambassador for us because he has such wide appeal whether it is in the UK or Germany or the US.” 

As Venmo expands from just being the app to send money to family and friends by offering Venmo checkout and a Venmo debit card with rewards, the company tapped Aimee Lou Wood and Patrick Schwarzenegger – new stars from this season of the HBO show The White Lotus – to star in the ad. 

Prior to joining PayPal, Seeley held senior marketing roles at Cash App, Afterpay and Airbnb.

Brand Innovators caught up with Seeley from his office in the San Francisco Bay area to discuss these new campaigns, showing up in cultural moments and what creativity looks like in 2025. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You are the CMO of two very well-known payment brands. How are you thinking about growing these brands?

We have PayPal and Venmo, two brands with two different footprints. PayPal is one of the most trusted and widely distributed payment brands in the world. We operate in 200 markets. We are the OG of digital shopping. The shepherding there is to how do we evolve PayPal and bring that pioneering spirit we have had from the get go, how do we introduce the next generation of payment tools. That means being deeply ingrained in our consumer whether they are in Germany or Australia or Italy or the UK and understanding the behaviors that are going on with commerce at a local level. But also looking at how crypto is having an impact on our category as innovation takes hold and investing in the brand to drive conversion in checkout.

Venmo has been a phenomenal success and built a huge customer base with users daily, weekly or monthly, coming to the app for sending money or asking for money from a friend or a small business. Increasingly we see people want to use their Venmo balance for more than just paying a babysitter or splitting a pizza. The thing we are shepherding now is how Venmo becomes known as a major player in commerce rather than just a peer-to-peer business. The work we just put out is to position Venmo to give the tools they need to use Venmo.

Can you talk about how you are showing up in cultural moments?

Showing up in cultural moments is central to any good media plan these days and that is not just in media buys but in how we orchestrate the work we do with merchant partners, as well as paid media investments as well. The work we have done with Venmo – casting Aimee Lee Wood and Patrick Schwarzenegger – we couldn’t be more integrated in what is the zeitgeist of right now. 

The Venmo ad is “The White Lotus” ending that everyone dreamed of. As a marketer, you have to understand and to live within culture. It has to be authentic. Patrick and Aimee are great friends, and use Venmo with people who are in their lives, so it works. We turned the whole thing around in 8-9 weeks which was pretty epic for a campaign of that scale. We work fast and surround ourselves with people who can work fast as well. If you want to be a brand that contributes to how culture is evolving, you have to act quickly. Our instincts as marketers took over and then you go execute.

What does creativity look like in 2025?

Creative needs to drive business outcomes. If I wanted to create art, I would have become an artist. We do what we do, we use creativity to get the outcomes we want to see. We work with people who can express the narrative we want to share whether that is television production or short form or influencer in the creator economy. Creativity is a broad church. Our job as marketers is to share the creativity against the ambition we have for growing these.

How do you see your role as CMO?

The role of CMO is a pretty board these days. Either it is conversation about agentic commerce or looking at creative or looking at MMM models. My job is to bring the right capabilities into the organization, set clarity of what matters and orchestrate those capabilities to get those outcomes. Marketing is a significant driver or overall business performance to hold myself and my team accountability through the levers.

Everything we do is about bringing new views to the consumer. Critical for us is our ability to innovate on our existing product and share the news with our existing consumer and to get the brand in front of new consumers we want to bring on to our platform.

You mentioned the creator economy. How do you decide which influencers to work with?

You have got to work with people who love your brand. The first job is to find people who really get what it is that you are doing and have an affinity with you and your brand. It is about being smart with the message you are trying to convey. For instance, we are trying to push a commerce message with PayPal, so it makes sense to work with someone who is doing shopping.

Can you talk about how working at brands like Afterpay and Airbnb help shape your perspective in this role?

I have been very fortunate to work with some amazing brands. You learn something from everywhere you have been either that is definition and commitment to the craft. When I was at Airbnb, I learned through the work that I did at Afterpay, which was so related in our building relationships with the merchants we work with, which I use here. 

The common thread in my career is operating in two different marketplaces. Airbnb is a host and guest environment and PayPal is a consumer and merchants environment. It is about the recognition of how you spin the wheel. If I am a merchant, I need to understand the value of the product and if I am a consumer, I need to understand the value of the service. It is a case of building out value propositions for each constituent of our flywheel and making sure you are honest with how you are providing your value proposition. It all has to be how you want the brand to come across. Deeply understanding the value you can offer to both sides of the marketplace, and executing with consistency.

What big trends do CMOs need to know about right now?

There is an evolution going on in marketing right now. What is interesting as we talk about the advent of AI and how we are focused on AI in creativity, for so long we focused on the tech of AI and saw it as the plumbing of the industry. Now we are looking at essentially the ramifications of how creative gets made and created and shipped out into the world. We are using AI across the entire function of marketing and beyond whether it is for deep dives research, untapping insights and opportunity, automation of some more development and production purposes. There is not an element of how we use AI to improve outcomes.

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The space is designed by Salt and Pinch for the third year in a row. This year the theme is blending quiet luxury with immersive storytelling, which came out of research by insights from Amazon Ads’ “Beyond the Generational Divide,” which is launching Monday, June 16, on the Cannes Lions mainstage.

The study challenges traditional demographic-based targeting, and focuses on brands that build loyalty by uniting audiences through shared passions. The experience starts with a screen-free garden and will feature Rosé and iced coffee fountains, a Prime Video slushie bar, AWS-inspired custom perfumes and Mechanical fortune teller for Amazon Devices.

Brand Innovators caught up with Michael Brown, creative director at Pinch, and Don Strom, co-founder and managing partner of Salt, to discuss just what goes into the making of the Cannes Port Activation.

Left to right: Don Strom, co-founder and managing partner of Salt; Michael Brown, creative director at Pinch

What is the inspiration behind the Amazon Port this year?

To create a space that encourages connection through shared passions, we drew inspiration from France’s iconic fashion houses and the coastal energy of Cannes. The result positions Amazon as a true cultural force, merging historical architectural cues with contemporary design elements that also reflect Amazon’s recent rebrand.

Importantly, we focused on crafting meaningful experiences that go beyond the typical high-gloss activation. This meant building an environment where guests can relax, engage, and exchange ideas naturally, without the formality of traditional meeting setups. The goal was to leave a lasting impression through authenticity, not spectacle.

How does the design play into the brand’s platform?

It all stems from a fascinating piece of research by Amazon called “Beyond the Generational Divide.” The core insight is that people connect more deeply through shared values and passions than by age demographics. Over-segmentation by age can isolate audiences rather than engage them meaningfully.

Our design brings this idea to life through what we’ve called the “Plaza of Passions”—a space where Amazon’s properties like AWS, Prime Video, and Twitch show how they reach audiences by tapping into common interests, rather than focusing on demographic details.

It’s an interesting and strategic shift away from traditional age-based marketing, and one that gave us a rich, creative direction to explore.

How long did it take you to plan this design and what was the process like?

We typically start at the beginning of the year, spending roughly seven months in strategy, ideation, design, production and install. The interesting twist on this year’s rendition, was that the A’maison concept was so well received in the previous year, that we ended up using that as a starting point for this year. While that streamlines some parts of the process, we still have to explore questions like, how does the House of Amazon evolve for this year? How do we keep it fresh and unexpected for guests? How can it adapt to demonstrate some of the ideas that came out of the Beyond the Generational Divide research? 

Adapting and improving the A’Maison layout allowed us to respond to some of the learnings we’d had from the previous year, like guest flow and queuing, generous social spaces, tracking shade and airflow to create more comfortable microclimates. These are things most guests aren’t actively aware of, but it improves their experience. Importantly, it also gave us space to dive into creating a rich and cohesive set of experiences around the properties that will be a real first at Cannes Lions.

How long does it take to build out?

The whole process spans about seven months of pre-production—that’s everything from conceiving and creative development to meticulous planning, research and execution. Then, it all comes to life in just ten intense days onsite, where a team of 40 agency specialists and over 100+ crew members from various backgrounds work around the clock to bring the experience to life. It’s a massive collective effort that feels a bit like building a film set, a luxury boutique and an art installation, all rolled into one. 

Any fun facts on the build out, like how many bottles of rose are in the fountains? How many custom perfumes? How many plants did you have to carry in, etc.? 

Plenty! The experience came to life with 1,628 individual furniture and decor pieces, each carefully selected and custom-made. We brought 156 potted plants to create a lush, green atmosphere, not to mention 250 litres of Rosé that flowed through the now iconic Rosé fountain. Surrounding the Pantiero, we built a massive deck, transforming the space into a seamless blend of Riviera elegance and immersive brand storytelling. Let’s just say, it wasn’t your everyday installation!  

What do you hope visitors take away from this?I hope they feel connected, refreshed and inspired – and most importantly, informed about Amazon’s wide range of offerings. Our goal with this project was to create genuine human connections that go beyond traditional demographic boundaries. At Salt and Pinch, we believe (and we see, time and time again) that meaningful IRL experiences can transcend generational divides and build authentic brand relationships in ways that conventional marketing strategies simply can’t ever achieve. So this was a fantastic opportunity for us to help the brand connect with audiences on a deeper, more memorable level.

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The Cannes Lions, the Oscars of the ad business, kick off next week. While thousands of people are coming to town for thousands of reasons, the core reason for the festival in the first place is to celebrate the best creative in the business.

“We know that world-class creativity can come from anywhere. For business leaders seeking growth opportunities, the global benchmark provides a unique insight into creativity’s power as a catalyst for meaningful transformation and growth,” said Simon Cook, CEO of Lions, in a statement shared with Brand Innovators.

“With submissions from across 96 markets – and significant regional growth from LATAM – we look forward to seeing the breadth of groundbreaking ideas from across the world. We’re excited to see the winning body of work that emerges over the next week as our Juries set the benchmark that will define the future direction for our industry.”

Every night new categories will be honored on the Croisette and we will be covering the winners. Stay tuned to find out what makes a winning creative campaign.

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The “Great Ideas Travel” campaign is anchored through a television spot that uses relatable human experiences to highlight how business travel sparks new ideas and connections for businesses that could never happen through a screen or a piece of paper. The spot depicts a man and a woman inspecting a line of t-shirts on a group of mannequins to clear them for production. As the woman inspects the bottom hem of one of the shirts, she is struck with an idea: “What if we started making pants?” (The mannequins, in fact, aren’t wearing any.) A voiceover offers the payoff, “Being there makes all the difference.”

“We’ve partnered with Amex GBT since 2023, and it’s a proud moment to see the campaign and the new global brand identity out in the open,” said Bill Scott, CEO Droga5 London, in a statement. “We’re telling the Amex GBT story in a new way. ‘Great Ideas Travel’ brings humanity and a rallying cry to the travel industry – we all know it’s hard to beat being together in person.”

The campaign will run across TV, social media, digital and out-of-home, as well as at Amex GBT’s owned channels and event activations.

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Though the campaign is timed to launch for the traditional margarita summer season, the brand noted that the drink has become a year-round enjoyment for many consumers. With the explosion in popularity, there are more choices for which spirits to put in the drink; there are 30% more tequilas on the shelf than three years ago, according to the country. 

The campaign shows that those choices are not the ones that matter, as Cointreau is the key ingredient to make a margarita “MargaRight.”

“At Cointreau, we do believe that making the perfect Margarita should be simple,” said Nicolas Beckers, President and CEO at Rémy Cointreau Americas, in a statement. “With Aubrey Plaza and Any Tequila, we’re bringing that message to life in a way that’s both memorable and unmistakably MargaRight—reminding everyone that Cointreau is, and always has been, the essential ingredient in the Margarita.”
Plaza has appeared in Cointreau’s advertisements for several years, including in 2023, when she appeared in a campaign with Toby Ceccini, inventor of the Cosmopolitan drink, to highlight Cointreau as an ingredient.

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The campaign is aimed at both consumers and financial advisors, with the dual purpose of highlighting awareness for the company’s wealth management offerings and its dedicated financial professionals.

The effort, the first from agency 72andSunny New York for the brand, uses humor to make its point, acknowledging that financial anxiety can distract people from enjoying everyday life. 

Anxieties about one’s financial future can weigh heavily on an individual, particularly during uncertain times. MassMutual’s new campaign addresses those anxieties head on by depicting how those worries can distract from other parts of life, both for regular people and the financial professionals who advise them. 

In one spot, for instance, a woman sits at her home office looking distracted. Her cats ask her about her concerns, which she reveals are financial in nature. The cats offer advice, telling her she needs to get more organized so they can move out of their small cat condo. In another spot, a man finishes reading a bedtime story to his son when a stuffed animal pops up to resume their nightly chat about financial worries. When the man says he no longer needs the advice because he is working with MassMutual, the stuffed animal expresses relief, noting that he is not qualified to offer such advice. 

A third spot targets financial professionals, depicting a man in an art gallery where the paintings and sculptures come to life and speak to him about how they would like to plan for their financial futures. As the questions become more complex, he encounters his client, the gallery owner, who claims the event could not have happened without his help, providing reassurance that his advice has been sound. 

“Financial topics can be stressful, complex, and highly personal, and the humor deployed throughout ‘The Feeling Is MassMutual’ breaks through those emotional barriers to make the message more approachable,” said Kristin Lane, head of customer activation & engagement at MassMutual, in a statement provided to Brand Innovators. “It takes a wealth of creative skill to help make having a financial professional feel as essential as having a medical professional, and that’s exactly what our first campaign with 72andSunny delivers.”

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The Valencia Orange is as much a part of Blue Moon’s identity as it is a garnish, said Courtney Benedict, vice president of marketing for Above Premium Beer at Molson Coors Beverage Company. The partnership is a way to keep the brand top of mind, even when an orange or a beer is nowhere in sight. 

“We want fans to enjoy those bright, citrusy Blue Moon moments wherever they are this summer – even if there is no orange garnish in sight,” said Benedict. “This collab is about playfully reimagining the signature garnish experience and bringing that iconic Valencia orange flavor beyond the glass.”

The brands will jointly promote the Blue Mood x eos Valencia Orange Lip Balm through their owned social media, email and e-commerce social media channels, as well as by partnering with influencers to showcase it in action. They will also be sampling the lip balm at various events in New York City, Atlanta and Nashville. The product will be available as a limited-edition summer drop through the brands’ websites for $4.99 while supplies last. 

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Gisela is a forward-thinking, results-driven executive with a proven track record of driving revenue growth, building high-performing teams, and delivering award-winning marketing and sponsorship programs. She has held executive roles at both global networks and independent agencies, managing multi-disciplinary teams and full P&L oversight for regional and global clients. 

With deep experience across B2B, B2B2C, and D2C marketing, Gisela brings an agile, insight-driven leadership style rooted in both creative innovation and data-based decision-making. Her passion for emerging technology, AI, and cultural relevance makes her a powerful addition as Brand Innovators evolves its programming to meet the needs of modern marketers. 

“Gisela sits at the intersection of brand, agency, and strategy,” said Marc Sternberg, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Brand Innovators. “She understands what matters most to CMOs and senior brand marketers, and how to build platforms and content that meet those needs while creating community along the way.”  “Gisela brings 20 years of experience and relationships in the marketing and media industries to the table, making her the ideal person to lead our Content & Community Team,” added Brandon Gutman, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Brand Innovators.

In her new role, Gisela will oversee content strategy, thought leadership, programming, and community growth across Brand Innovators’ 250+ annual summits, forums, and activations across the US, UK, and Europe. 

“Brand Innovators is a truly unique platform rooted in meaningful connection and driven by action,” said Gisela. “I’m honored to join Marc, Brandon and this incredibly talented team and help shape what comes next for our members, partners, and the broader marketing community.” 

Gisela assumes her role on June 16, and will be present at the Brand Innovators Leadership in Brand Marketing Summit during Cannes Lions 2025. For the full program and to register, please visit our site.

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“The growth and scale of Cannes Lions across the City of Cannes reflects the evolving ecosystem, and it is very purposefully curated so that everyone there can leverage it for their specific needs,” Cook told Brand Innovators. 

This year, the organizers are expecting more than 170 official partners to be activating in Cannes, a slight increase over last year. They expect the number of delegates to be 13,000, about level with last year, but broader.

“For example, last year we had more than 350 brands in Cannes and that number will increase again in 2025. We know that there’s very little silo between creativity and business because the two are inexplicably linked, and that’s why we’re seeing a greater integration of this at the Festival,” he explained.

Brand Innovators caught up with Cook to hear more about what the Lions will look like this year including increased global inclusion, more creators and safe zones.

What big themes do you expect to dominate the Lions this year? 

When it comes to the Festival we base everything we do around the fact that Creativity is a growth driver – for business, people and society. So the focus for 2025 is very much about building on that and putting even more focus on the breadth of business driving initiatives and opportunities. This runs through our awards, content program, initiatives and learning programs – essentially every touchpoint of Lions.

Areas that I think will be big topics of conversation at this year’s Festival include Lions Creators – the bespoke learning experience for the creator economy and the diverse mix of players in that space, which will return to the Festival for a second year giving the full ecosystem of creators a place to convene and learn how to work together to define the future model. As part of this we’ve evolved the existing Social & Influencer Lions. In 2025 it becomes the Social & Creator Lions to recognise Creators’ increasingly important role in the landscape and reflect what’s happening in the industry – Research Nester recently estimated that the creator economy market size is estimated to surpass $600bn by the end of 2036.

On the Awards side it’s worth mentioning B2B here. If we take a step back and think about the broader global macro-economic environment and add that to some of the shifts that we’re tracking, we can see that B2B continues to be on the rise. The Brand Finance’s Top 150 B2B Brands index for 2024 shows that the top 100 B2B brands grew their equity by 10%, totaling a quarter of a trillion dollars compared to 2023, and we also can’t ignore that B2B brands account for nearly half of the Global 500, which includes both B2B and B2C. When we introduced this specialist Lion in 2022 it was about raising the creative bar in this area and elevating the discipline. For 2025, the categories are designed to reflect the full breadth of this exciting and evolving space.

Retail Media is another area where we’ve seen a rise. In our recent WARC Media global ad spend forecast, global retail media is forecast to be the fastest growing channel across 2024-2026 with spend predicted to overtake linear TV by 2026. To acknowledge this we’ve introduced a dedicated sub category for it in both the Media Lions and Creative Commerce Lions. This sub-category will recognise work that strategically harnesses retailer-owned channels to engage consumers at crucial decision-making moments, using targeted insights to enhance brand relevance and drive measurable business outcomes.

How did you decide on Apple being creative marketer of the year?

The Creative Marketer of the Year is an honorary Award which we give annually. As champions for creativity, what’s important to us is that we continue to equip participants with the tools, data, and evidence they need to connect creative marketing with the boardroom growth agenda. So this Award is about recognising and spotlighting a marketer that has amassed a body of iconic, Lion-winning work over a sustained period of time and that is being bold, brave and pushing boundaries – creatively and commercially Apple has fostered a culture that prioritises creativity and innovation, and that shows up in its deep understanding of meaningful marketing. As part of its culture, it’s clear that Apple’s leadership encourages the kind of thinking necessary to create marketing content that connects with people in a uniquely emotional way. It’s all testament to a brand that has an unwavering commitment to creativity that is rooted throughout the business.

I see you expanded your global representation at the festival this year, how many countries are being represented and why this push to expand globally?

We’re expanding this commitment so that we can ensure that the Festival represents society rather than reflecting the industry. It’s about setting a standard that Cannes Lions is not only a celebration of creativity but also a destination for everyone in the business of creativity. Everyone is aware of the business case, our priority is addressing the moral case for Equity, Representation and Accessibility (ERA) – fostering a more equitable and inclusive industry for all.

We’re continuing our ERA Programme this year which is designed to foster a global representation of talent within the creative industry by giving underrepresented recipients the opportunity to experience Cannes Lions, engage with the global industry and celebrate groundbreaking creativity. For the 2025 programme, LIONS has allocated €2m worth of complimentary Festival passes, with a focus on the Global South, to individuals and communities from 28 countries. We look forward to welcoming everyone to Cannes in June.

We’re also bringing new Country Pavilions to Cannes Lions this year to drive a greater global representation of countries. We know that creativity is an overpowered economic growth lever and we believe that countries, governments, policy makers, associations and brands all have an opportunity to supercharge their respective creative economy by showcasing their capabilities, learning from each other and driving new relationships and best practices at Cannes Lions in front of some of the most influential minds in the industry.

It’s also important in our Awards too – the truly global nature of them is incredibly significant. We receive entries from more than 90 markets annually, and this year our Jury includes representatives from 79 markets, including first-time participation from Ivory Coast and Kazakhstan. Our rigorous judging process and the calibre and range of expertise of the people on the Jury helps highlight creativity’s power as a catalyst for meaningful business transformation. 

I saw there are new Safe Zones this year? Can you talk about how these spaces will support attendees?

As part of our ongoing commitment we will have designated Safe Zones across the Festival, each staffed by trained safeguarding professionals. Our Safe Zones will provide confidential spaces available to anyone who feels uncomfortable, in need of support, or would like to seek the advice of a safeguarding professional. They are going to be open 22 hours a day (8:30am-6:30am) and the locations for the safe zones can be found on the official Cannes Lions festival app. Additionally, the City of Cannes has numerous ‘Alert Buttons’ throughout the City — these are discreet, easily accessible tools that connect directly to local police and emergency services for immediate assistance. We will include precise locations in the official Cannes Lions Festival app and also in the inclusivity guide.

We’re also really pleased to continue our partnership with the Empower Café. It’s a place to connect but it’s also a welcoming, inclusive hub where wellbeing and psychological safety come first. The team that are based there are briefed in safeguarding and equipped to escalate issues appropriately.

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