Communicate wrapped its first day of coverage at the 73rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on Monday. The recurring theme of the day, whether anyone said it explicitly or not, was that creativity is still a human business, and the best people in it are not letting go of that. As Outdoor Lions jury president Aaron Starkman said it plainly: “This is advertising for humans, made by humans, made for humans.”
AB InBev opened the festival with the Creative Marketer of the Year keynote — the company’s third time receiving the honour — with CMO Marcel Marcondes on stage. He closed with five principles that drove the journey: dream big but stay humble; solve real business and consumer problems; never underestimate consistency; go beyond ads and create experiences; and however much technology enables, this remains a human business.
Susan Credle, this year’s Lion of Saint Mark recipient, made the same point differently. Four decades of work — M&M’s characters, Allstate’s Mayhem, McDonald’s Happy Meal literacy campaigns — and her view is that brands are due a comeback, not because of technology but because trust is running low. “It’s an opportunity for brands to build a relationship that makes people feel comfortable,” she said. Three things she swears by: make work that is genuinely interesting, give people a way to take part in it, and build platforms and not one-off campaigns.
Entertainment Person of the Year Eddy Cue joined legendary film and TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer on stage for a conversation that covered a Steve Jobs lesson on storytelling — “it begins and ends with the story” — the making of the F1 film, and what it really takes to build a creative studio from scratch.
Stella Li, CEO of BYD for the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa, argued that Western marketers are underestimating what is coming. BYD’s global expansion is fast, culturally sharp, and forcing a rethink of what competitive advantage looks like in 2026.
Snapchat unveiled Reset Velocity™, research tracking the move of brand conversations away from public feeds and into private, trusted networks. Ronan Harris, President EMEA, told Communicate the findings put a number on a shift the industry had felt but never measured. His message to CMOs: get comfortable with building brands slowly rather than chasing the instant feedback of visible reach. Antoine Challita, Country Head of Snapchat UAE, put it simply — every brief should now ask not who will see this, but how will people participate with it. In the Gulf, he said, that shift is already happening.
Day Two will soon be underway. Stay tuned for more coverage by Communicate.
