Cannes Briefing: A guide to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2025

Who’s going: Shrinking marketing budgets, slower client decision-making and economic headwinds are forcing agencies to rethink how they afford to show up at Cannes without bowing out of what’s easily the industry’s biggest event. — Kimeko McCoy

What we’re going to talk about: AI buzzwords and jargon, like digital twinning and anomaly detection, have saturated Cannes Lions and other industry conferences for the last two or three years. Now, the focus is on how AI can improve marketing business ROI, whether that be creative automation, audience targeting or scale. — Kimeko McCoy

How it’s changed: This is a festival of creativity. It’s really not a tech and media festival in its origins, but those people were there. The back half of the week, people were in the Palais and lining up to watch the creative awards being handed out over the weekend. — Jim Cooper

And these, from our archives, are as dependable as ending the night at the Gutter Bar:

• What people say versus what they mean at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity
• How to navigate Cannes Lions as a sober attendee
• Industry vets’ dos and don’ts of Cannes
• Where to see, be seen, and unwind on the French Riviera

Stay tuned

Digiday’s video studio in partnership with Blockboard will go live on Monday. We’ll also be recording the Digiday Podcast along the Croisette every day next week.

Overheard

“Cannes ends right at the start of the third quarter and we’re expecting the third quarter to be a little bumpy.” — Digiday editor-in-chief Jim Cooper, on how he’s bracing for conversations with CMOs.