7 Cannes Lions 2025 Insights That Will Shape Your Marketing Strategy

Cannes Lions 2025 was a masterclass in where marketing is headed. Our team spent the week in sessions, panels, and one-on-one conversations with brand leaders, platform executives, and industry innovators. Here's what we learned that will actually impact your business this year and beyond.

1. AI Has Moved From Shiny Object to Business Essential

The conversation around AI has completely shifted. Last year, everyone was asking "Should we be using AI?" This year, the question was "How fast can we scale what's already working?"

Key Insights From the Ground

• AI usage is being integrated into staff performance goals at major agencies.

• Brands are moving from AI experimentation to operational implementation across content production and analytics.

• The focus has shifted to measuring AI's impact on human creativity and operational efficiency.

Your Next Move: Identify up to three specific manual processes your team handles repeatedly: for example, campaign reporting, audience research, or content creation. Implement AI tools for these tasks within the next 60 days. Set measurable goals for time savings and track results monthly.

Tactical Tip: Begin with AI-powered creative testing tools that can generate multiple ad variations from one concept. Set up A/B tests comparing AI-generated versions against your current creative process to measure performance differences.

2. Retail Media Is Getting Harder (But More Rewarding)

Platform support is disappearing while performance expectations are rising. This shift is creating both challenges and opportunities for brands willing to build internal capabilities or partner strategically.

Key Insights From the Ground

• Amazon, Walmart, and Albertsons are accelerating their shift toward self-serve platforms.

• Retailers are reducing hands-on campaign management support while seeking agency partners who can handle technical execution.

• The gap between self-service tools and managed service needs is creating new opportunities for specialized partners.

Your Next Move: Conduct a retail media audit within 30 days. List every platform you're currently using, who manages each campaign, and what level of support you receive. Identify which platforms will require new management approaches.

Tactical Tip: Focus on mastering one or a few retail media platforms before expanding to others. Develop in-house expertise or partner with specialists who can handle campaign setup, optimization, and reporting without relying on platform support.

3. Search Is Being Rebuilt From the Ground Up

Traditional SEO is evolving into something entirely new. With AI-powered search experiences rolling out across Google, Bing, and emerging platforms, the rules for digital visibility are changing fast.

Key Insights From the Ground

• Marketing leaders discussed early success with content optimization for AI-powered search experiences.

• Major brands shared how they're restructuring content strategies to align with conversational search patterns.

• Industry experts highlighted the growing importance of "conversation optimization" alongside traditional SEO tactics.

Your Next Move: Audit your current content structure within 45 days. Review your FAQ section, product descriptions, and blog content. Rewrite key pages to provide direct, authoritative answers to customer questions in a conversational format.

Tactical Tip: Create content that directly answers questions your sales team hears repeatedly. Structure answers with clear headings, bullet points, and definitive statements that AI systems can easily extract and cite.

4. Creative Needs To Work Harder and Faster

The traditional campaign model is breaking down. Brands need systems that can generate versions, test faster, and adapt to performance signals in real time across an expanding range of channels and formats.

Key Insights From the Ground

• Brands are demanding faster creative iteration cycles and more content variation across channels.

• The creative production process is shifting from fixed campaigns to flexible, modular systems.

• Performance data is driving faster creative decisions, requiring more adaptive content strategies.

Your Next Move: Build a modular creative system over the next 90 days. Create separate libraries for backgrounds, product images, headlines, and calls-to-action that can be combined in different ways. Test this approach on one campaign before scaling.

Tactical Tip: Establish weekly creative testing cycles instead of monthly ones. Set up systems to measure which creative elements perform best, then use those insights to inform your next round of variations.

5. Data Collaboration Is the New Competitive Advantage

The era of data hoarding is coming to an end. Smart brands are discovering that strategic data sharing unlocks better audience insights, improved measurement, and stronger performance than going it alone.  

Key Insights From the Ground

• Leading CPG brands shared success stories from strategic data collaboration programs with complementary brands.

• Retail partners discussed increasing openness to data-sharing arrangements that provide mutual value.

• Industry leaders emphasized that cross-platform measurement improves fastest when brands embrace collaborative data approaches.

Your Next Move: Identify one complementary (non-competing) brand that shares your target audience. Propose a small co-marketing test campaign within 60 days to measure the impact of shared audience insights.

Tactical Tip: Start with first-party data sharing with key platforms and measurement partners. Establish clear data governance policies and measure the impact on campaign performance before expanding collaboration efforts.

6. The Agency Landscape Is Polarizing

Brands are increasingly choosing between large holding companies for scale and independent agencies for strategy and innovation. The middle ground is disappearing.

Key Insights From the Ground

• Brand executives shared evolving expectations around strategic versus tactical agency partnerships.

• Independent agencies with specialized expertise in emerging areas are increasingly winning strategic mandates.

• Marketing leaders emphasized transparency and clear value demonstration as key factors in selecting an agency.

Your Next Move: Evaluate each agency partnership based on the unique value they bring to your business. Consider how different partners can complement each other rather than compete and be clear about what you need from each relationship.

Tactical Tip: Look for agency partners who can demonstrate strategic thinking through specific examples and case studies. The best partnerships combine deep expertise in specialized areas with transparent communication and clear performance metrics.

7. Connected TV and Audio Are Maturing Fast

These channels have moved into mainstream consideration. While measurement challenges persist, the performance data is becoming compelling enough to drive significant budget shifts.

Key Insights From the Ground

• Connected TV and audio advertising are moving beyond early adoption phases.

• Measurement capabilities are improving but still present challenges for attribution and cross-platform tracking.

• Budget allocation is shifting toward these channels as performance data becomes more reliable.

Your Next Move: Allocate 10%-15% of your current TV budget to CTV testing over the next quarter. Set up proper attribution tracking before launching campaigns to measure performance against traditional TV metrics.

Tactical Tip: Create CTV-specific creative assets rather than repurposing TV commercials. Test shorter formats (15-30 seconds), include direct response elements, and optimize for individual viewing on mobile devices and tablets rather than for shared viewing on larger screens.

The Way Forward

Marketing is evolving quickly, but the fundamentals remain the same: Understand your customers, deliver value, and measure results. The difference now is that the tools and tactics for success are changing at an unprecedented pace.

The brands adapting best aren't necessarily the biggest spenders. They're the ones who test thoughtfully, build the right capabilities, and choose partners who understand both strategy and execution.

These Cannes insights highlight clear opportunities for competitive advantage in AI implementation, retail media mastery, search engine optimization, and creative agility. The question isn't whether these trends will impact your business, it's how quickly you'll adapt to leverage them.

Ready to explore how these apply to your specific situation? We'd welcome the conversation.