A New Crop of Dealmakers Will Flood Cannes Lions This Year

As marketers and creatives flock to the Croisette for this year’s Cannes Lions festival, they’ll notice new players primed to drive billions of investment dollars into the advertising industry.

Creators, for one, will have their own dedicated fringe festival. Retail media will be the talk of happy hours as advertisers turn to retailer data amid looming cookie deprecation, sources predict. And with the explosion of women’s sports audiences in recent years, marketers will be eager to hit the new Women’s Sports House for business opportunities.

ADWEEK spoke to a handful of experts about these three sectors set to make a significant impression at this year’s event.

Creator coronation

While a handful of content makers wandered the Croisette in 2023 with their mics and tripods, this year Cannes Lions is giving them their own spotlight in the form of a dedicated festival called Lions Creators.

“The consumer journey has been forever changed by social media, and creators are a significant part of this evolution,” said Joe Gagliese, co-founder and co-CEO of social marketing agency Viral Nation, which is sponsoring the inaugural event. “Having their voices and perspectives heard and celebrated at the tentpole advertising event of the year is a milestone moment for the creator economy and the larger marketing industry.”

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Cannes Lions CEO Simon Cook said Lions organizers noticed creators didn’t have a space to meet up and address business challenges in past years, so his team stepped in, with programming that will bring creators, brands, platforms and agencies together for learning and networking opportunities. 

It makes sense the ad industry is trying to help juice the creator economy, which Goldman Sachs estimates will be a $480 billion industry by 2027. But there’s a lot of work to be done to hit that benchmark.

“We uncovered a lack of understanding when it comes to the creator economy—agencies face challenges dealing with brands who don’t ‘get’ the creator world, while content creators feel that brands do not fully understand the extent of what they do and how powerful it can be for them,” Cook said.

Nonetheless, creators have become a crucial part of marketing strategy, said Gaëtan du Peloux, co-chief executive and chief creative officer at Paris-based creative agency Marcel.

“They play a significant role in the success of a 360 campaign,” he explained, “so the key to success lies in how [agencies] collaborate with them. Being able to spend a few days together in Cannes, enriching [our] culture with [theirs], is a win-win for sure.” 

Elsewhere, a full day of creator-centric content will take over the main festival’s Terrace Stage on June 20. Madeline Argy, creator of the Pretty Lonesome podcast; actors Yara Shahidi and Steven He, and Jay Shetty are some of the personalities slated to appear. Creators will also take to stages beyond the main festival, from MediaLink’s Beach to Amazon’s Port.

Retail media front and center

The ad industry has also been abuzz with retail media’s exponential growth, especially as advertisers turn to retailer data to fill an impending gap left by cookie deprecation. But retail media networks—many of which just started—are about to exit the honeymoon phase and now need to show that they can offer real value to grab consistent investment from advertisers.

A big part of that is supplying retail data to heavily scaled big media firms (that aren’t Google or Meta).

“Retail media will definitely be front and center at Cannes,” Andrew Lipsman, retail media analyst, told ADWEEK. “I expect there will be two big themes: retail and media company partnerships, and the rise of streaming TV in retail media.”

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Lipsman predicts a few new big partnership announcements along the Côte d’Azur, similar to deals announced earlier this year including Best Buy and CNET, Instacart and NBCU, and Walmart and Disney. 

While retail media juggernaut Amazon has long had a presence at the festival, it’s back with a major installation, dubbed A’Maison, around the corner from the Palais along the Port de Cannes. Sessions will cover topics such as generative AI in ads and the creator economy. 

Retail media network Walmart Connect is back for its third year at Cannes with more speakers onstage and a suite at the Majestic, its largest footprint to date. Target’s Roundel will also have a presence and dedicated space, with programming around commerce media, data clean rooms and collaboration.

But retail media companies will need to sell more than just a scaled data package, experts say. Retailers will need to show the unique value of their audience as they consume content across digital and TV.

“This isn’t just about a plug-and-play of content or a media buy,” said Beth Ann Kaminkow, global chief commerce officer at VML. “This is about an opportunity to amplify and share creativity and engagement through moving an audience with retail media into these channels.”

The market for sports marketing

Sports-themed events at Cannes are multiplying, athlete presence is expanding, and the Olympics are headed to France in July. All of these factors are driving sports’ increasing relevance at Cannes this year.

Sports are a booming business. Recent data from name, image and likeness (NIL) rights database Opendorse estimates the value of collegiate sponsorships at $1.1 billion in 2023, up from $917 million in the first year of such deals. According to Deloitte, women’s sports will generate revenue of nearly $1.3 billion in 2024, up almost 300% since 2021. Finally, S&P Global noted that U.S. sports media rights have climbed from $14.6 billion in 2015 to $29.5 billion today.

“Sport is a door-opener for dozens of other conversations that people want to have,” said Beth Sidhu, Stagwell’s chief brand and communications officer. “Sport is culture: [It] is fashion, technology, innovation … for some people, even their politics.”

Last year, Stagwell and its more than 70 agencies debuted the Stagwell Sport Beach event at Cannes and invited athletes to take part in panel discussions and play pickleball, basketball and flag football on the sand. 

“Brands’ marketers made new connections, booked Super Bowl commercials, booked new yearlong brand ambassadors,” Sidhu said. “Our athletes also got what they came for—a chance to make new connections that resulted in serious opportunities for them and their businesses.”

This year, Sport Beach has attracted nearly two dozen athletes and more than three dozen brand and media partners to the four-day event. That’s roughly the same size and roster as the 2023 installment, but the scope has changed, giving brands and athletes more activities and experiences to play around with. For example, North Face is sponsoring a climbing wall, while Carmelo Anthony will host an athlete-label wine and spirits festival.

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Lastly, the beach will feature three live sports podcasts like last year. In 2024, the lineup includes Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe interviewing JuJu Watkins for a Touch More; Sharpe and Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson teaming up for Nightcap; and the Kelce brothers continuing New Heights.

“Athletes are some of the most interesting, innovative, outside-the-box new creators … and marketers are looking for amazing creative partners,” Sidhu said.

Stagwell won’t be alone. Giant Spoon partner Laura Correnti is bringing the women’s sports-focused Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment agency to Cannes—in partnership with Axios—to host the inaugural Women’s Sports House from June 17-19. 

With featured attendees ranging from athletes (college basketball player Flau’jae Johnson, former U.S. soccer star Ashlyn Harris), executives (Time CEO Jessica Sibley, MassMutual CMO Jennifer Halloran) and journalists (ESPN and Amazon’s Cari Champion, ESPN’s Sarah Spain), the event focuses on three pillars: the opportunities that athletic greatness has created for women’s sports; technology and data’s role in women’s sports growth; and changing horizons for athletes and their careers in and away from the game.

“The whole intent of calling this, very deliberately, the Women’s Sports House is this is what you’re coming to talk about—full stop—for three days,” Correnti said. “So a lot of people are curious. They’re exploring, they want to understand the opportunity, and we want to make sure they walk away less curious and more ready to invest.”