Cannes Has Become a Festival of Great Work and Great Denial

There were reasons to be happy at this year’s Cannes Lions. 

We were awarded a Titanium Lion for work we knew deserved it. It stood out from the moment I first saw it as an early idea in a meeting in São Paulo. It was the first ever Titanium win for Mars, and the first in my 28 years of building brands.

There were conversations that went delightfully off-script, like a panel with Deepak Chopra on the value of giving care outside of work to shape better leaders inside it.

And there was some brilliant work, powered by high-caliber creative talent. I returned to the Creative Effectiveness Lions jury this year—exactly 10 years after I first judged Creative Business Impact at Cannes. I was excited to see the change that a decade made in creative power grounded in truth, craft, and consequence. I met an extraordinary group of industry leaders, all willing to trade the sun and fun for a windowless room and a shared belief that great work still matters.

We’ve seen and awarded much excellent work. But we also much debated the connection between real life and the world of award submissions: Should a campaign impact be awarded when, just nine months after its Grand Prix win, the client CEO calls the brand “challenged” in their investor presentation? Should we celebrate a stunt’s creative impact when it failed to reverse the core brand’s underperformance reported in the client’s quarterly review? How long can we keep living in a parallel universe of clever stories we tell ourselves—rather than facing the outside world as it actually is?

Then, the dam broke.

Twelve Lions—one Grand Prix, three Golds, four Silvers, and four Bronzes—had to be rescinded, as the winning agency admitted to AI-doctoring its case studies. Another Grand Prix was scrutinized on the scale of local impact that its powerful case video promised. A case study for a Gold Lion was questioned for celebrating the work from four years before the submitting agency won the account. Sales results reported by another Bronze Lion win were strongly debated by local press. The swiftness of action from the Lions team was spot on, but it does little to ease the growing sense of the collective desperation. 

Beneath the awards glitter, there’s a deep, real fear of irrelevance hanging over the creative industries. I see it as a client who’s been around for many, many award seasons: a fear that in the face of accelerating technological change, we have lost not just control, but purpose. 

Instead of confronting that fear, we turn to the ever more sophisticated “fake magic”: exaggerated cases, inflated impact metrics, and self-congratulatory narratives so detached from reality they feel like bad fiction.

Cannes Lions—and the entire ecosystem of award shows—must change. Not incrementally. Fundamentally. We must dedicate these “meetings of minds” to real conversations. We need to stop treating these festivals as temples of applause and start using them as forums of reckoning. Places for hard questions, uncomfortable answers, and real creative debate. 

What is the role of originality when anyone can generate content? What does effectiveness mean when trust is eroding? What kind of creativity do we actually need now? These real conversations are there, happening quietly and privately in the background—shouldn’t we bring them to the forefront? 

Of course, it’s easier to criticize than to build. To throw stones than to venture an alternative. Through honest conversations in the aftermath of this year’s festival, I feel that the Lions team’s intent to change is real. They care and are ready to listen to the voices that share the urgency to act. I’m glad to be part of this conversation; festivals like Lions can offer a unique platform for tackling the issues that are symptomatic of the creative industries’ identity crisis.

The single reason for being of the creative industries is to help businesses and brands grow. It’s what will determine their long-term survival. Clearly, it’s tougher than ever to grow today, so shouldn’t that be the core of our discussion about creative power? If the creative industries don’t reform the way they see and talk about creativity, they will keep living a parody of the relevance they once commanded.