Cannes Lions 2026: Day 4 Wrap-Up – Storytelling + Creativity

Day four of the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity culminated in an event that has become an annual Cannes staple: a breakthrough session from Sir John Hegarty. The session, titled ‘Stop Working in Advertising.’ To Engage You Need to Entertain, emphasized the importance of creativity in today’s advertising landscape.


Two of our Cannes Lions ambassadors share their perspectives on this session and more.

The Prince of Creativity Commands the Palais

Karen Howe, President, The Township Group, Creative Director, and Canadian Cannes Lions Advisory Board member

Two Swings and a Miss

My take on two sessions I loved and one I wish I attended.

Swing: A David vs Goliath Session

The Thursday morning session, Inside Indies – What’s Next for the Agency Landscape? spoke to me because Globe Content Studio is constructed like a small content-marketing agency within a larger corporate environment. Attendees were separated into five groups, and spent about 45 minutes discussing how indie agencies can effectively compete. 

Two representatives from each team took a few minutes at the end to present findings to everyone. Some key observations:

• You have greater license to say ‘no’ to pitch requests. You can choose who you want to work with.

• You can afford to take on smaller projects as proof points that can lead to bigger opportunities.

• With indies, clients “get what they buy.” The people pitching are typically the ones who do the work, but at big agencies, the “VIPs are there at the start, and then they’re gone.”

• There are fewer long-standing policies in place, which makes you more nimble, though it was noted that this can cause inconsistency.

• The fact that most attendees were women was noted. One group said that women like to have the option to say no to clients, and the industry tends to nudge them out as they age. The long hours at big agencies also tend not to work for them over time. “After 10 pm it’s just a bunch of blokes sitting around drinking.”

Swing: This presentation Could be Contagious

The surprise (for me) of the festival arrived in the form of a presentation by Alex Jenkins, editorial director of Contagious. At first blush, How to Win in a Volatile World seemed pretty broad, but I like to talk about finding opportunity in chaos so I figured I’d check it out. The thing that stuck with me was a slide he prepared that he left on the screen so briefly, I didn’t have time to photograph it. It was a picture of Cannes signage, with the ‘festival of creativity’ slogan, but the word ‘creativity’ was X-ed out and replaced with ‘cost-cutting’ scrawled crudely above it. 

“Cannes isn’t called the festival of cost-cutting” was his quip, to a room full of cheers and clapping. Marketers these days, he added, tend to have three goals: cheap, fast, and good. AI, he explained, has put too much emphasis on cheap and fast, and it’s time to redefine and refocus on what good means. (Spoiler alert: creativity and value.)

Miss: Sir John Hegarty

At the start of a lunch to celebrate Canada’s 2026 Young Lions, I was asked a few times whether I caught a morning session with Sir John Hegarty. “Who?” (My knowledge of ‘legends’ tends to skew closer to the journalism side than the marketing side.) According to online reports, he began his talk at the Palais by asking: “Are we all f*cked?” He then suggested ‘Stop Working in Advertising’ as an alternative session title. 

I would probably have enjoyed this. There appeared to be two main messages, both of which are true. One, the goal of advertising is to entertain, which requires creativity and storytelling. Two, advertising was created to drive the economy. A classic premise is often worth repeating.

Reporting Sean Stanleigh, Director of Globe Content Studio, The Globe and Mail