September 2025
In June, I had the privilege of attending the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in Cannes, France through a University of Georgia study abroad program. The five-day festival was filled with speaker sessions, panel discussions, immersive brand activations and nightly award ceremonies celebrating some of the world’s best creative work.
Over the course of the festival, I listened to insights from CMOs of leading global brands, joined panels featuring TikTok influencers like Josh Richards, explored brand activations from Meta, Google and Pinterest and even heard from celebrities such as Reese Witherspoon.
As I listened and learned, Cannes reinforced one powerful lesson: Simplicity. This takeaway emerged through three key themes:
In a world of advertising clutter, brands that feel authentic to their audience create lasting resonance. At Cannes, the topic of authenticity came up in nearly every panel. The recurring question: How can we be authentic without trying too hard?
Across the board, the answer seemed to be the same: Meet your audience where they are. This means growing with your audience as they change, connecting in the spaces they value and learning from them along the way.
Reese Witherspoon emphasized these points in her panel. As the founder of Hello Sunshine, a media company dedicated to putting women at the center of storytelling, she’s learned how to connect with different audiences.
“Creating premium content and doing live experiences to connect with your audience is important,” Reese said. “It’s about building real, authentic relationships with people who don’t want to be spoken to with glossy language or market research.”
Although Hello Sunshine, was successful, Reese admitted the brand wasn’t reaching Gen Z girls the way she hoped. Instead of guessing how to connect with this audience, she created Sunnie, a brand designed to inspire the next generation of young women, built with an advisory board of teenage girls who could share what they wanted in their own words.
Through Sunnie, she learned that most Gen Z favors authentic content and down-to-earth moments over anything overly produced. For example, instead of scripting every line, they connect more with someone turning on a camera to share a quick thought in the moment.
As Sunnie’s Instagram bio puts it, the brand is rooted in co-creation and “real talk,” favoring authentic connection over glossy marketing.
At another session sponsored by The Female Quotient, female executives from brands such as Zenith and Kargo emphasized that unfiltered honesty builds strong connections. They also noted that adaptability is just as important for keeping those connections over time.
Josh Richards reiterated a similar idea from an influencer marketing perspective.
Once known only as a TikTok personality, he has since redefined his content approach. In his panel, Josh explained that as his audience lost interest in certain videos, he shifted to creating content that felt the most down to earth. Those authentic moments opened the door to podcasting and other entrepreneurial avenues.
The simplest, most fundamental purpose of a brand often connects strongly with audiences. At Cannes, I noticed that many of the winning campaigns and activations focused on the core of what their brand stands for.
For example, Pinterest had an activation at the festival that reflected their core values. As a platform built around inspiration and self-expression, every activity was personalized.
Visitors could create a dessert tailored to their personality using AI, design a purse in their own style or craft a hat that reflected them. It perfectly emphasized Pinterest’s purpose: To help people discover what inspires them and express their individuality.
That same theme was carried through in award-winning work.
The “Preserved Promos” campaign for Ziploc, which earned a Cannes Grand Prix, drew directly from the brand’s most basic use: preservation. If Ziploc can preserve food, why not also preserve food coupons? That simple idea stood out as one of the most effective campaigns at the festival.
Brands can make bold statements – and generate a lot of attention – with temporary changes to their most distinctive brand assets. A few shortlisted PR campaigns at Cannes showed exactly how powerful these brand shifts can be.
McDonald’s temporarily removed the iconic Happy Meal smile on its box during Mental Health Awareness Month in the United Kingdom. The shift sparked international coverage and drove conversations far beyond the campaign itself.
OREO took a similar approach during the promotion of the Minecraft movie. By changing their classic round cookie into a square, they generated significant buzz on social media.
Both campaigns proved that even small changes to iconic brand elements can create attention and spark global conversation.
Attending the Cannes International Festival of Creativity was as formative as it was inspiring. From thought-provoking conversations to creative work that sets new standards, it offered lessons I’ll carry throughout my career.
I learned that work is effective when brands are authentic in how they connect, grounded in their core values and willing to take bold creative risks with brand assets to make a statement. These three themes came through in every panel and campaign.
When brands embrace them together, they do more than capture attention — they create lasting impact.
