Our Takeaways from Cannes Lions

The message from Cannes Lions this year was clear: The creator economy has arrived.

Creators were no longer on the fringes of the festival like they were in past years. Instead, they were the main event.

Social platforms, marketing firms, streaming companies and the world’s largest talent agencies leaned heavily into creators for their panels, parties and everything in between.

At the same time, it’s not the creator economy or nothing. Brands will continue to spend across a range of advertising channels, from billboards and connected TV to in-store placements, even as they increase their influencer marketing budgets. AI is also quickly becoming another media channel.

The difference now is that creators are increasingly showing up on those billboards, TV ads and in retail stores. Creator content is also helping brands shape their AI strategies to ensure that they show up in LLM results.

Here are three of our biggest takeaways:

Cannes Lions may be the perfect place to launch or revamp a creator marketplace. After all, the festival is often pitched as an in-person matchmaker for brands and creators.

Last week, Meta expanded its creator marketplace to include Facebook creators and Snap announced a new AI creator network to connect brands and creators. TikTok introduced custom creator networks, which allow advertisers to build a curated pool of creators, employees, partners or brand advocates to send briefs to or turn their content into ads. And just days before the festival began, LinkedIn launched its first creator marketplace.

But the creators who regularly use these in-house tools likely aren’t the same ones who were on stages at Cannes. Creator marketplaces tend to work best for smaller creators who aren’t household names and don’t have agents or managers negotiating deals for them. 

Starbucks’ approach is a case in point. The company is the first to pilot TikTok’s new program, using it to help turn its own baristas into paid creators. It’s unclear how much participants are being paid to post.

Creator marketplaces aren’t new. YouTube has had a version of one since 2016 and TikTok launched its first marketplace in 2019.

But the new push for these tools comes as paid creator ads have become a bigger part of social platforms’ businesses. During its first quarter earnings report, Meta said that partnership ads, which allow brands to boost creator content as paid ads, had a $10 billion revenue run rate, roughly double from one year earlier.

That’s why many of the new marketplaces also have more direct ways for brands to extend their partnerships as paid ads. That includes Meta, which also merged its marketplace with its partnerships ads hub last week.

We didn’t need to go to the South of France to know the rivalry between these two companies is fierce, but the event highlighted just how much. 

Jay Shetty was one of the most visible creators on the Croisette boulevard this year, speaking on panels and attending parties. He recently signed an unusual deal to distribute his podcast exclusively through Netflix and Spotify, which means he’ll stop publishing full-length episodes on YouTube starting in July. Netflix has struck several similar deals this year, including with Barstool Sports and The Ringer. 

Will Netflix keep up the deal spree in the second half of the year? We asked the company’s CMO Marian Lee.

“We’re open to anything and everything,” she told us in an interview for our podcast, publishing on Thursday. “It’s definitely an important space for us.”

We also asked Kim Larson, YouTube’s global head of creators, how worried the platform is about creators taking their shows off the platform. She said YouTube’s goal is to be a creator’s main home, including by helping connect them with brands for sponsorships, during a live recording of Scalable. Read: Don’t expect YouTube to be cutting big checks to creators any time soon.

The good news for YouTube is that not everyone wants an exclusive deal. Podcaster Mel Robbins told Axios on stage that she wouldn’t consider one because she wants her content to be widely accessible and free. 

Meanwhile, Roman Wasenmüller, global head of podcast at Spotify, told us that the company’s goal is to provide “maximum flexibility” with these deals and that creators “need to decide for themselves” whether an exclusive deal is right for them.

We couldn’t agree more.

This was our first time attending Cannes Lions since founding Scalable. We held our own brand partnership meetings in addition to conducting on-the-record interviews and speaking on panels. 

Here’s what we learned:

• Creators should come to brands with specific ideas. Many of the best brand-creator collaborations we heard about started with the creator pitching an original concept. Leah Walker, head of creator and influencer marketing at Adobe, echoed this on stage with Jasmine, calling it a green flag when creators come prepared with a unique idea. 

• Don’t fake it. Creators should promote products they actually use, and companies should look for creators who already know and love their brand. Nic Taylor, senior vice president of Lego Group and head of its in-house creative agency, said a major red flag is when a creator asks if they have to “touch” the product. Fortunately, Taylor clarified that this doesn’t happen often. (Who doesn’t want to play with Legos?!)

• Integration is hard. Creators increasingly have different parts of their business, from live events and social media to podcasts. In theory, that provides more opportunities to broker longer-term partnerships that span multiple properties. But creators often work with different partners for each line of business, making those deals harder to put together. Securing budget can also be complex because the money often comes from different teams within a brand.

Our favorite—and least favorite—things we saw this year. Plus, our top celeb spotting!

Most under-the-radar activation: Linktree’s impeccably decorated apartment. The green-themed space featured private meeting rooms, real baguettes as wall decor and plenty of AC.

Best vibe: FQ Beach from The Female Quotient. The party was going strong all week despite the extreme heat. That was true even as the festival wound down late Thursday afternoon, as evidenced by Jasmine’s packed panel. Thankfully, there was plenty of Supergoop sunscreen and ice-cold frosé on hand. 

Most talked about person: Oprah! She dominated the festival. (What else would you expect?)

Best swag: Canva. We wish we had time to stop by its beachfront takeover and grab one of those striped beach bags.

Best food: CAA House at Caffé Roma. Food was scarce almost everywhere all week, except at CAA’s activation where there was a free, full-day menu available to guests. Honorable mention goes to the delicious scrambled eggs we ate at Whalar Group’s CMO breakfast and the caviar at Spotify’s kickoff soirée.

Strongest AC: LinkedIn. We escaped the heat not once, but twice in LinkedIn’s air-conditioned studio inside the Carlton hotel.

Funniest creator take: Amanda McCants. It’s hard to pick just one favorite from her many one-liners in this video, but this was up there: “There’s nothing more South of France than Pinterest Beach.”

Favorite star sighting:

Jasmine: I am terrible at recognizing famous people. The only celebrity I am certain I saw is Kevin Durant and that’s only because Kenny Gold, chief creator officer at Edelman, pointed him out to me at a restaurant.

Kaya: Jake Schroeder, a creator best known for singing original ballads about everything from sauvignon blanc to the Egyptian pyramids. My sister sent me one of his videos when he had just a few thousand followers. Now he has about 300,000 on Instagram and was invited by Spotify to attend Cannes. Needless to say, I had to grab a selfie.   

The Carlton lobby: Securing a table required a minimum spend of 100 euros per hour per person (!). People who tried to take meetings in the lobby without a table were often ushered out.

The heat: It really was that unbearable. We’d be curious to know how much rose was consumed this year compared to last year. It was too hot to have more than a sip! 

Podcaster Steven Bartlett, who was on stage at the festival, may have approved, given his recent comments about how a few glasses of wine “ruined three days of his life.” We heard multiple people mention those comments on the ground.

We discussed Bartlett’s remarks and the negative impacts of over-optimization culture in a recent podcast episode. 

Ride-sharing apps: Ubers were in high demand all week. We sometimes had to pay double for a Black car after UberX showed 20 minutes for a pick up. Pro tip for next year: Bolt often had cheaper rides and more availability.

🇫🇷Merci, Cannes! See you next year…

VidCon, which wrapped up over the weekend, is moving the timing of its Anaheim conference to July 8-10 next year. Previously, the OG creator conference overlapped with Cannes Lions. Moving the date felt inevitable: The two conferences are now owned by the same parent company, Informa, and more creators and industry executives are choosing Cannes over VidCon. 

It’s a smart move, but we’re curious why VidCon didn’t push the date even further out. Many people stay in Europe to vacation after Cannes, and those who immediately fly back to the US may not be prepared—or inclined—to attend another major conference just two weeks later.

Comcast will split its company into two publicly-traded companies through a spinoff of its media and entertainment assets, NBCUniversal and Sky. It now makes sense why NBCUniversal had such a big presence at Cannes, including appearances from Seth Meyers and Colin Jost.

Miroma Group, a marketing and content company, acquired a majority stake in Ad Results Media (ARM) from investment firm Shamrock Capital, which will still keep a minority stake. ARM is a creator, audio and performance media agency that works with brands such as FanDuel and Molson Coors.

Beehiiv partnered with Cloudflare to give newsletter writers more information and control over how AI models use their work. 

PersonaShield, a new company founded by former Apple executive Phillip Shoemaker, launched last week to help creators and public figures control how their image and likeness are used online. The platform flags unauthorized uses of their image, such as deepfakes, and handles takedown requests on their behalf. 

A Message from Open Influence

AI search now decides which brands get discovered, and roughly 85% of brand mentions in AI answers come from third-party creator content, not corporate websites. Open Influence, the creator marketing leader, breaks down how brands win this new visibility race in their latest trend report.

Read it here.

Lauryn Bosstick, a creator and founder of beauty brand Skinny Confidential, signed with WME. 

Jmancurly, a gaming creator and streamer, is launching his first toy line, which is expected to hit retail stores next year.

Julie Henderson is joining Pinterest as chief communications officer on July 13. Previously, Henderson was chief communications officer at Snap. Russ Caditz-Peck will now lead communications for Snap.

Gersh’s digital department announced four new hires, including agents and coordinators. The hires include Amron Lopez, Dane Cohen, Amanda Harris and Alondra Pangilinan. Chinazam Nnorom and Kashia Hormuth were also promoted to coordinator roles. 

Skyler Spooner and Britt Rivera were hired as vice presidents of talent at Fixated, a creator management firm. Spooner was previously an agent at UTA and CAA, while Rivera was a senior talent agent at Evolved. 

Oki Ito joined Substack as its first head of partnerships in Japan. Most recently he was TikTok’s head of partnerships and programs for APAC. Substack has been hiring country leads in different markets lately, including France and Italy. 

Mark Shedletsky is now president of Invisible Narratives, an entertainment studio focused on creator-led IP.

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