Cannes Lions Surrenders to Creators and AI
Source: Thesocialjuice
The advertising industry's flagship festival is explicitly ceding ground to two forces it can no longer control: individual creators who monetize directly without agency intermediaries, and generative AI that commodifies creative execution. This isn't a pivot—it's an admission that the old gatekeeping model (where awards, prestige, and client budgets flowed through traditional agencies) has broken. Cannes now survives as a conference for what's already won rather than a shaper of what comes next.