Attending Cannes Lions Festival 2025 – A blog post from Suzy Giles

Attending the Cannes Lions festival (only my second time at the event) as a communications and PR professional I think brings a unique perspective on the whole week. It’s the largest celebration of the creative sector in the world and is dominated by the larger ad agencies and tech giants. This means we get to hear from some of the most influential voices in the industry ( Mustafa Suleyman, CEO, Microsoft AI and Tor Mhyren, Apple’s VP of Marketing Communications) but it can feel like PR is a side event to the advertising industry.

But this year I felt like we had a bigger place at the table, with themes such as trust, hope and integrity a large part of the conversation. I was attending in my capacity as Chair of the United Nations Development Programme’s Climate Communications Task force. Following on from our Cannes Lions nominated campaign: www.weatherkids.org, I was there to talk about changing the narrative in climate communications, from the doom and gloom to the more positive story of the opportunities the energy transition and our future holds. It’s a tricky narrative given the current political climate but one which I had reflected back to me at a number of talks and events. Summarising a week like Cannes Lions 2025 is not easy – but here are some of the key themes which resonated:

• Sustainability had a much bigger presence. From the Sustainability Hub which showcased great purposeful work, to specific sessions around how to integrate a sustainability model into the work we do. Jake Dubbins chaired a great session on climate information integrity before COP 30. This is a global initiative launched by the Brazilian Government, UNESCO and the UN to combat mis and disinformation in climate communications ahead of the significant COP 30 at the end of this year. This initiative comes with a global fund for not-for-profits to have access to, to actively research and expose disinformation around climate change. For more information visit: https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/information-integrity
• AI talk dominated – but with a more nuanced narrative than the previous year. The going concern is always – how will this impact jobs and creativity in this sector? According to Sam Altman, Open AI CEO: “95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists and creative professionals for, will easily and at almost no cost, be handled by AI”.

But there was a more positive conversation around the way that agencies are using AI – developing their own tools to enhance the client offering. Interestingly PwC recently admitted that they had reduced their prices for some services, acknowledging that AI had reduced their time and effort and therefore they were transparently passing this on to the customer. What creatives at Cannes are sticking to however is the fact that storytelling, human impact and emotion are still the cut through elements and these are not best served through AI. Whatever your viewpoint – the acceleration in the adoption of AI is widely considered to be so much faster than that of previous digital revolutions – and that we need to adapt to the fact that the world we work in will be very different – not just in 10 years – but in 3. Frightening stat to leave you with – the number one use of generative AI is for therapy/companionship! (Catherine Arrow has already warned us!)

• Humour and emotion in creativity work – and have a lasting impact. If you have ever seen the formidable Mark Ritson present – he of Mini MBA fame: https://minimba.com/ you’ll know what an entertaining experience it is. But he has a credible set of stats to back up his recommendations. He urged us not to abandon our emotionally charged ad campaigns in favour of a new approach after just a year. Emotionally impactful advertisements can bring x7.5 the incremental profit over a 3-year period, compared to a single year. He uses the example of Glenmorangie – who took 7 years of ad spend to buy Harrison Ford in a kilt – because they know that they can roll that ad out for the next 7 years with continued impact.

And one of the best examples of humour in action came from New Zealand – with the Make New Zealand the best place in the world to have Herpes campaign taking home the Cannes Lions for Good award. And the impact? 86% of participants reported feeling comfortable discussing herpes openly, and many described the campaign as life-changing. There are also plans to introduce the course in New Zealand high school curriculum.