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Cannes Lions Festival insights — making a lasting impact is all about creativity

Ema Linaker
9 min readJul 13, 2023

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Cannes Lions 2023

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, considered the largest gathering of the advertising and creative communications industry, and home to the world’s most prestigious advertising awards took place for the 70th time last month. This year’s entries were of excellent quality and demonstrated that creativity and technology are more intertwined than ever before, but creativity is what ultimately won this year’s festival.

Here is a summary of the top topics and trends highlighted in the official Cannes Lions Festival wrap-up report, as well as takeaways from winning campaigns and brands that can help guide your marketing planning for the second half of 2023 and into the new year.

Experiment with AI

It is no surprise that the use of generative AI in marketing was the number one topic discussed at the festival. According to the official Cannes Lions wrap-up report AI was referenced in the synopsis of 8.3% of winning entries, up from 4% in 2022, and was referred to across the stage sessions as a tool that can enhance creativity. In addition, nearly 2,000 Cannes Lions award entries cited AI in their synopses, more than three times the number cited in 2022.

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Ema Linaker
Ema Linaker

Written by Ema Linaker

Executive Director, Former @Google EMEA, @NuanceEnt and @AVGFree

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