From creativity to the C-suite: comms themes that emerged from Cannes
AI found rare optimism at Cannes, the CCO continued its evolution to enterprise strategist, Chinese brands are exporting culture, and earned trust is the only currency that survives an age of insularity.
Live discussions at and around Cannes Lions 2026 pointed to a meaningful shift, not just for PR people but for the festival itself.
Not surprisingly, AI was the dominant theme. Earned First asked CARMA to track coverage across the festival week. It found AI occupied 41%, ahead of entertainment (27%), creators (25%) and fashion (6%). In contrast to the issues around AI evident in mainstream coverage, AI occupied a bubble at Cannes. Conversations were positive, practitioner-led and focused on things like production workflows, creative scale and CMO accountability. As CARMA notes, Cannes is one of few places where the AI discourse remains almost entirely upbeat.
Yet while AI was everywhere, what was more striking was the festival's changing identity. CMOs were the most talked-about people, appearing in 58% of coverage. But CEO and founder-level titles featured in 52%, a narrowing gap that suggests a change in Cannes Lions' reason for existence. The 'festival of creativity' is becoming a boardroom conversation about growth, technology and business transformation. Entertainment is also more important than ever for brands. Variety's presence was testament to this, and also to an event that is becoming more outward-looking and diverse in terms of participants. CARMA sees the festival being read more as a "cultural moment" than another industry gathering.
Within all of this, the PR industry's presence has evolved significantly since the time I last attended more than a decade ago. Comms leaders did not go as big on the topic of AI as one might have expected, except at a roundtable that Earned First hosted with Penta Group. But there was a real sense that the sector is at last making the leap from managing messages to taking responsibility for business outcomes, or at the very least helping to architect them. Whether weighing up the changing nature of communications leadership roles, the vacuum in space storytelling or the reputational volatility of prediction markets, a recurring theme was that earned trust is the most durable currency in a world that is becoming both more fragmented and insular.
