It was Pepper’s first Cannes experience, as I, Rishabh, and Kishan wandered around Cannes - weaving through sunlit alleyways, beachside cafés, and art-soaked pavilions that buzzed with ambition.
Cannes has a cinematic magic to it; every billboard whispering a story, every conversation hinting at the next big idea. The glamour, the grit, and the golden glow of creativity wrapped around the Riviera like a well-written script. We are technologists by nature, and arriving in Cannes gave us a larger-than-life view of everything happening in the fast-paced world of advertising. We explored sessions where we saw titans from the tech and agency worlds, Shantanu Narayen, Chair and CEO of Adobe, and Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe, built shared conviction on how, while technology may involve rapidity, it must be in service of creativity, not in place of it. The larger learning that stemmed from this was that success is found at the intersection of platforms and services, where platforms provide seamless infrastructure, and services contribute human insight, creative talent, and, most importantly, the ability to turn transformative ideas into action.
It’s also important to understand that out of the 15,000 people who attend Cannes, more than 60% of the crowd is creatives, who look at Cannes as an holy pilgrimage and there is an innate desire of seeing yourself coming up at the Cannes stage for getting your work, the recognition it deserves. Being at these sessions and with such a diverse creative audience, was also a reminder that creatives need a trusted safe space to do their best work - and AI l’s role is not to destroy that inherent voice, but actually amplify it.
It was also evident that big tech had a larger sphere of influence over Cannes and also being the new age media from the traditional WSJ or NYT. Each of these platforms had their own event programmes where they invited some of the world’s best - Serena Williams, Ryan Reynolds and the McLaren leadership team! The next tier of media companies are not content companies but industrial behemoths like Chase Media Solutions (consumer banking) and United Airlines. Technology has become invisible but essential. You’ll barely see the tech in winning campaigns, but it’s there - driving insights, targeting, production, and personalisation. The best ideas here didn’t scream ‘innovation’- they used technology quietly and effectively.
With a lot of mergers, layoffs and changing leadership, the agency land clearly looks in flux. The model is under pressure and is grasping for dominance over the AI bull, unsure whether the ropes would chain it or allow themselves to be carried away in its rage.
I spoke to global CMOs of companies like SAP, McDonalds, Kimberly Clark, and Bain Partners - all to realise that AI is still a ‘productivity driver’ and not a ‘business amplifier.’ AI is everywhere in conversation- but not yet in consistent execution. There’s a clear gap between the hype and daily adoption. Most leaders are still testing workflows, figuring out integration, and treating AI more like a sandbox than a system.Everyone is under pressure in terms of what an uncertain budget planning for 2026 looks like, and how their organisations would shape up to be. Nothing is going to be the same - for brands, for their agency partners and for expectations from marketing.
Tool overload is real, but the orchestration is missing. Everyone’s using 6–10 tools across the content and creative stack. There’s no unified way to connect all the moving parts of a marketing operation. The orchestration layer - the system that unifies strategy, content, tech, and results - is the white space.
No one cares whether you sell software, services, or ideas. They care about outcomes. The Cannes crowd doesn’t get excited by what you are. They lean in when they see what you deliver. In an outcome-first world, business models matter less than business results.
Being in Cannes hits you with a truth as clear as the Mediterranean sky: AI is set to revolutionize the how of creativity - the operations, the workflows, the production pipelines. But amid all the prompts, models, and machines, one thing remains unmistakably human: the why.
Because no matter how advanced the tech gets, a brand’s purpose a- its reason for existing, its emotional core; can’t be generated. It must be felt, lived, and believed.
And that’s what will set iconic brands apart in the AI age. Not how fast they move, but why they move at all.
