CANNES, FRANCE – Cannes Lions has always been a place of convergence — a gathering of visionaries and cynics, technologists and purists, global CMOs and extraordinary creatives. But in 2025, that confluence took on a new urgency. On the sun-drenched shores where the Mediterranean breeze met the buzz of marketers, creators and tech titans, a shift was palpable.
It was not about who was on stage, but about how the industry chose to speak. Storytelling wasn’t just about who could shout the loudest. It was about who could listen the hardest. The festival this year invited us into conversations. And those conversations happened at the crucial meeting points — of creativity and conscience, ideas and identities, AI and judgement, fame and vulnerability.
Here are some fascinating intersections that I noticed in my 20th year of attending. I saw the friction, the fusion, and the fearless recalibration of the industry’s very core. Come, meet me at the carrefour.
DEI x Mindful storytelling
No dream is too wild when it’s rooted in truth, courage and purpose. A powerful thought that Sonita Alizadeh, the Afghan rapper and activist, underscored on receiving the Cannes LionHeart award. And she wasn’t the only one to speak volumes about what it means to be truly seen.
The conversation around diversity, equity, and inclusion was reborn with a different kind of energy — one rooted not in obligation, but in creative innovation and cultural immediacy. DEI was not a compartmentalised track — it flowed across sessions, awards, and strategy summits, making one thing very clear. This wasn’t just representation. This wasn’t a filter on the lens, this was the reason we held the camera.
This year, campaigns like “Nigrum Corpus,” “Caption with Intention,” “Real Tone,” and Dove’s continuing mission “Real Beauty” pushed past tokenism to provoke structural rethinking. It wasn’t simply about who gets to be in the story — it was about who gets to define the aesthetic, scientific, and emotional texture of the story itself.
Beyond race, neurodiversity emerged as a bold frontier. Creative teams showcased how neurodivergent thinkers bring distinct modes of problem-solving that expand what creativity even means. Such sessions didn’t just talk about inclusion, they modelled frameworks for embedding bias awareness and intersectionality into creative execution.
AI x Human judgement
Artificial Intelligence was predictably dominant, but unlike previous years, the tone was less about marvelling and more about springboarding. Panels moved past the novelty of generative tools and focused on a deeper question. How do we protect the creative instinct in an age of algorithmic scale?
Yet, it was not anti-AI, it was just pro-human. You are the driver, AI rides shotgun — this was one memorable phrase we all took away from the Apple session. Microsoft warned of entry barriers being lowered, garbage increasing, and judgement and curation being more vital than ever. Sir John Hegarty chose boldness and speedy decision-making over scale. Across the board, AI was framed not as a replacement, but an amplifier, with the responsibility resting very much in the hands of humans.
The concept of creative judgement emerged as the new gold standard. The challenge wasn’t whether AI could mimic or even outperform human craftsmanship. It was whether it could — or should — replace the moral and deeply subjective process of storytelling. And, of course, about how it can elevate — not erode — artistic integrity.
Cannes Lions became a place where creativity and technology matured into a new relationship as co-conspirators. The most compelling work sprang from the tension between automation and authorship. Campaigns leveraged AI not as a shortcut, but as a provocation, a sandbox where creative risk could be scaled. The standout examples were those that embedded it deeply into the narrative architecture.
Experts x Learners
A quiet but powerful current this year was a leveling of voice. The traditional hierarchy — where renowned experts commanded panels while junior creatives observed silently from the back — was turned inside out. Workshops and activations blurred the line between teacher and student.
Peer-to-peer mentorship, reverse training, and intergenerational collaborations created a new dynamic. CMOs shared the stage with junior art directors and TikTokers taught strategists to tell stories in under nine seconds. The “See It Be It” programme illustrated this ethos, pairing young women and non-binary creatives with seasoned industry mentors in a series of fireside chats and workshops.
The festival didn’t just showcase where the industry is headed — it let the next generation drive. Brands and agencies leaned into real-time experimentation — building, testing, discarding, and evolving their creative models across five days of cross-pollination. The generational divide was deconstructed — the insights were clear. Younger creatives bring not just digital fluency, but a rejection of performative communication. Older leaders contribute not just experience, but perspective honed from navigating past cultural cycles. Ideas that married the two became some of the most resonant campaigns of the year.
Some gems emerged as key takeaways. We are all teachers — we are all students. Young talent don’t want a seat at the table — they want to redesign the table. Shared values, communities, passions, and behaviours are stronger than generational labels and birth dates. It isn’t a torch being passed — it is a fire being shared.
Celebrity x Authenticity
Celebrity presence could often end up being just a crowd-pulling tactic. But in 2025, fame was recalibrated as influence-with-intention. This was the year that celebrity became a lens into the cultural psyche rather than just a branding tool. It didn’t overshadow the message, it illuminated it.
Serena Williams, Reese Witherspoon, Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, and Ryan Reynolds all had real and present stories to tell. They spoke of tackling commodification, amplifying true connections, bringing people together through sport in divisive times, creating opportunities for women, sharing narratives that reflect real values, lived experiences and honest intentions.
Athletes, actors and creators didn’t simply endorse campaigns — they co-authored them as movement-makers. Their presence in sessions explored the tension between public image and private value, between virality and vulnerability. This shift wasn’t about being relatable, but about embracing flaws, contradictions and realities as creative capital.
The spokespeople on stage proved that in a saturated media landscape, audiences no longer reward polish — they reward sincerity. Celebrities who brought their full, complex selves to the table transformed the stage from a platform into a portal.
Commerce x Creativity
The debate between sizzling ideas and red-hot sales has long defined agency culture. Cannes Lions 2025 finally put the myth of their opposition to rest.
Some of the most celebrated work this year blurred commercial and artistic boundaries effortlessly. Hyundai with its “Night Fishing” campaign used cinematic language to sell not a product, but a worldview. Duolingo’s “The Death of Duo” turned its brand voice into a performance piece. “Preserved Promos” for Ziploc, “Lucky Yatra” for India Railways, and “Recipe for Growth” for iFood are other fabulous case studies.
The real shift wasn’t tactical — it was philosophical. Marketers began to understand that selling and storytelling are not separate activities. When done well, commerce is not an interruption to creativity. It is its delivery system.
Brands still want to market themselves. But they also want to resonate. The quote from the Amazon session sums up an ideal partnership as being able to both tell the truth and sell sh*t. The net takeout: commerce and creativity need no longer fight if they can co-create.
Sustainability x Innovation
Sustainability was no longer a siloed track for purpose-led brands — it became the subtext of every conversation. The finding: climate action doesn’t dilute creativity. It deepens it.
The question, therefore, was not should we build more sustainably, but how. Sessions highlighted new frameworks for low-carbon digital production, sustainable media planning, and regenerative design.
The standout projects were not those that shouted their eco-values, but those that integrated them seamlessly. Creativity became an ecological practice, with the best campaigns doing more with less.
Innovation in this context wasn’t about speed. It was about systems thinking — about ideas that endure and not just go viral. “The Amazon Greenventory” and “Tree Correspondents” examples spring to mind for its high-impact creativity and eco-responsibility — blending AI, environmentalism and design into a future-forward campaign.
In an industry so often driven by data and trends, Cannes Lions 2025 made space for something rare: human connections at unexpected crossroads.
of Tigress Tigress.
These intersections weren’t theoretical — they were lived. They were discussed on yachts, argued on panels, toasted at sunset and scribbled on notepads. The next chapter of storytelling isn’t linear. It’s crosshatched, tangled and thrillingly complex.
The challenge isn’t to pick a lane. It is to meet — honestly and bravely — at the intersection.
About the writer
Meera Sharath Chandra is Founder, CEO & CCO of Tigress Tigress. A frequent winner, speaker and jury member at all leading global award festivals, she has been on the Cannes Lions jury multiple times. She is the eponymous author of The Me Era — a book on the new consumer-brand dynamic.
