We never really imagined we’d attend the Cannes Lions festival once, let alone twice.
Ahead of last year’s competition, we agreed that we were going to have to make some sacrifices if we truly wanted to give it our all and go for gold. While easier said than done, we spent nearly three of our six days in Cannes holed up in a hotel room designing, practicing our presentation, or trying our best to get eight hours of sleep. Because we missed out on so much, when we were awarded gold and invited to return this year, we intended to experience the festival to its fullest.
Design, despite being an established category at Cannes Lions, receives less focus than other disciplines at the festival. In practice, though, this made our decision-making easy. We flipped through the lists of presentations and events, making a point of attending the ones that specifically focused on branding and design. As we learned last year, most of the talks remain available online for a little while after the festival, which helped ease our anxiety over what to attend and what to pass up.
One of the highlights of our week last year was attending COLLINS House, an event held at a stunning villa tucked away in the hills. Brian Collins’ intent for this space is to offer a reprieve from the chaos of the Croisette. In returning this year, we were not only taken aback by their continued commitment to this ideal, but also by the ways the event had grown and expanded over the year. If you’re able to carve out a day to attend, we highly recommend it.
The basement of the Palais was another major component of this year’s trip. Like the year prior, we were mesmerized by all the concepts and case boards filling the basement level. Most days, you could find us there, camped out in the design section, obsessing and geeking out over the projects on display. The Craft (with a capital C) was seriously impeccable, and we couldn’t help but jot down a few notes for our own upcoming projects.
So, if last year was all about winning, this year was all about connecting. Before heading out to Cannes, we posted on LinkedIn that we would be attending, ready to meet and mingle. We connected with several fellow Canadians heading to the festival, as well as some international folks, slotting in time to meet up for coffee, drinks, or dinner. Reflecting on it now, these interactions led to some of our favourite moments of the week. With so much constantly happening, these conversations offered a welcome chance for everyone to step back and reflect on their takeaways from talks or insights they’d gleaned. There’s an intense focus on businesses and brands at Cannes, but those smaller moments remind you that it’s the people on the ground doing the work who make the entire festival worth attending. Once we’re back in the real world, we hope to make more space in our calendars for conversations like these to continue connecting and fueling collaborations.
Whenever we met up with other Canadians, the conversation invariably turned to the Canada Party, hosted by the Globe and Mail.
The event acts as a lovely point of reconnection where everyone celebrates the wins Canada has achieved so far and shares hushed predictions about major upcoming Agency awards. We’d be remiss not to mention that a day later, our employer, Rethink, brought home both Independent Agency and Independent Network of the Year.
Throughout all of this, we’d been in constant contact with this year’s Canadian Young Lions Design team.
So when Friday rolled around, we were in the audience, cheering everyone on as the shortlists and winners were announced.
It’s surreal, to say the least, to realize how quickly a year has gone by and what has happened as a result of our gold win the year prior.
Aspects of the festival had shifted and evolved; conversations had changed, growing tired of certain subjects and excited by others. That said, much of the festival remained exactly how we remembered it. Sitting in the crowd and cheering on this year’s gold medal winners in Design, all we could feel was pure gratitude; for the year, for the moment, and for everything that came, and will continue to come, as a result of our win.
– Reporting Jesse Shaw and Zoë Boudreau, Rethink. Jesse and Zoë earned Gold in both the 2025 Canadian Young Lions Competition (Design) and the 2025 Global Young Lions Competition at Cannes Lions.
