Verified: Creators takeover Cannes Lions

CANNES, FRANCE — Creator Adrian Per attended his first Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity with TikTok for Business in 2024, the year the festival launched its creator program. Coming from a filmmaking background, he said that attending felt like an “I made it” moment — but he found the industry vibe more competitive than celebratory. 

“I didn’t feel welcome, to be honest,” he said. “The space was still so focused on traditional media … I was everything from cut in line, interrupted when I spoke, to feeling like a second-class attendee, maybe even third-class.” 

He described a disconnect between the high-level decision makers like CMOs and CEOs eager to partner and speak with him about the future of their work with creators, and the overall industry questioning creators’ expertise and resenting them for attracting advertising dollars. 

When he returned last summer with Meta and Adobe, he said he felt a “vibe switch.” Now, in the South of France for his third Cannes, Per said “there is more FOMO from my creator friends who aren't going to Cannes than there was for Coachella.” 

If "Coachella is the influencer Olympics, Cannes Lions is the networking Olympics for creators,” Per said. 

The international advertising festival Cannes Lions has quickly become a marquee event for the creator economy, known within the industry as the top destination for creators and executives to build relationships and make deals with top decision makers. This year, the event has physically upgraded its creator space in a sign of how dominant creators have become to marketing. 

“The opportunity to have real access, real touch points with real decision makers in the room with you is invaluable,” said Ty Flynn, a UTA creator agent who represents clients like Keith Lee, Markiplier and David Dobrik. He describes the festival as the primary moment when C-suite level executives from both brands and platforms gather to discuss the state of the business and the creator economy. 

This year the agency represents more than 70 creators at the festival and for the first time has opened a “Creator Lounge” in their UTA Beach space for creators to recharge and make content on the Croisette, the main street along the beach where brands set up stages and posh meeting spaces. 

Flynn said some of UTA’s clients — beyond those going with platforms or brands — will choose to attend on their own because of the value of being there. He pointed to a client who met an executive in the food and beverage space at last year’s festival, leading to a Super Bowl spot with the brand.

Per said the experience can cost up to $20,000 to $25,000 but is so valuable that he planned his last trip before having any brands approach him about attending, viewing it as a career investment. 

Brands are also adapting quickly to capitalize on the festival’s creator programming and impact. 

“This is the first year where they've really scaled that creator presence out to be the beach, and it's a lot more significant than it's ever been, so we've moved from how we show up as an enterprise level brand to how we show up as a brand for creators on the ground,” said Jared Carneson, Adobe’s head of social media who oversees creator efforts. This summer, the company is the official headline partner for LIONS Creators, the festival’s official creator program, and Carneson said they are scaling up their investment to match the event’s growing focus on creators and broader tech presence.

He said Adobe’s creator strategy has rapidly developed in the last few years from a focus on creators like filmmakers and designers who are influential online documenting their process, to “anyone who is making any kind of content for any audience, whether it is yapping about sport or nail art or talking about the film that they’ve just made and are debuting at Sundance.” It’s a recognition of how creators have taken an “undeniable … center stage within entertainment,” he said. 

Despite the exclusivity of Cannes and high cost of attendance, Carneson predicted that accessibility will grow for creators.

As Per prepared for his third Cannes, he urged advertisers and brands on the ground to be open minded to creators, noting that despite the massive strides the event has taken towards creators there’s still work to be done. 

“It might sound unorthodox, we understand that what you've been doing for decades has not been this, and we're not saying we know how to do your job better than you, but we do know how to connect organically with an audience during this current age better than you,” Per said. 

Dylan Wells: How important is social media to athletes today? How much do you feel like you have to focus on content in addition to your craft and actual game?

Hunter Woodhall: It completely depends on the sport in which you compete. I think for some of these larger sports where there's massive contracts with the teams, that's totally up to the athlete and where their excitement lies for posting content or their privacy. But in a more niche, track and field included — and women's track and field, and para track and field, especially — it is imperative that you have that presence online, and you kind of have to take over telling your own story, getting people to care what you're doing, and getting people involved in the sport, and kind of educating people on that. So for us, it's literally everything. 

It's given us every opportunity within the sport. It has allowed us to focus more on the sport, because we can support ourselves financially and everything through what we do on social. And the business side, it's also helped us create really special relationships with a community of people and fans, and I think introduce a lot of new people to a sport that we really love so much.

Read more from my interview with Hunter here

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is all in on B2B for their week of programming at the Carlton Cannes hotel, with a creator space for collabs and content production that the platform framed as a “continued investment in creators and the growing role trusted voices play in influencing business decisions.” Speakers include Keke Palmer and Steven Bartlett, Colin and Samir are hosting a daily briefing show, and on Monday the platform held an invite-only happy hour that brought together top LinkedIn creators and brand and agency leaders. 

Meta: Creators including Jackie Aina, Jaleesa Jaikaran, Alanna Doherty, Davis Burleson and Beca Michie are speaking at Meta Beach throughout the week, which also features art installations built by creators and pastries made by Cedric Grolet that are as beautiful IRL as on Instagram (I sampled more than I’d like to admit at Monday’s opening night party and the mango was amazing). 

Spotify: Spotify played host to creators like Jay Shetty on their speaker lineup for conversations about the podcast landscape, and their concert last night featuring Mike D, Central Cee and RAYE drew a crowd of creators to party on Spotify Beach.

TikTok: TikTok brought 16 creators to Cannes to share behind-the-scenes of the week, including the platform’s takeover of the garden at the Carlton. Their lineup: Chari Hawkins, Durafest2, Emmanuel Duverneau, Connor Wood, Jeremiah Brown, Golloria George, Henry Smith, Katie Fang, Yasmine Sahid, Marc Sebastian, Micky Gordon, Morgan Jay, Eric Sedeño, Romeo and Tineke “Tini” Younger. The platform announced AI enabled Symphony Agent to help advertisers build TikTok native campaigns. They also launched the ability to build custom creator networks within the content suite. 

Zoom: Zoom announced a new paid six month “Zoombassadors” creator ambassador program, which the company framed as an acknowledgement of how creators operate like small business owners.

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