Every year, the same question comes up before Cannes Lions: is it worth it? The travel, the time away, the investment. And every year, people come back with the same answer – absolutely.
Not because Cannes is perfect… It’s crowded, intense, overscheduled, and occasionally overwhelming. But there are very few forums in our industry where so many smart, ambitious, creative people gather with a genuine openness to ideas, collaboration, and possibility. This is the value you feel the minute your foot touches French soil.
What makes Cannes different is not just the work showcased on stage – it’s what happens around it. The conversations that start over coffee and turn into partnerships. The introductions that lead to opportunities months later. The chance to sit with marketers from around the world facing similar pressures and hear, candidly, what’s working, what isn’t, and where they’re placing their next bet.
Then there is a value that’s harder to quantify but just as important: the shared experience of seeing great work together. When marketers and agency partners spend a week immersed in the best creative thinking in the world, it creates alignment around what exceptional actually looks and most critically, feels like. The standard rises. Expectations rise. Ambition rises. Those conversations don’t stay in Cannes; they come home and reshape briefs, partnerships, and provoke the level of work all great brands aspire to create.
And then there’s the work itself. Cannes has a way of cutting through the noise and reminding the industry what truly breaks through. Year after year, it’s made clear, the ideas that endure are rarely the safest or most ‘optimized’ for the short term. They are bold ideas with the courage to be distinctive, human, emotional, and creatively ambitious.
This matters for Canada because we have long punched above our weight creatively. Some of the most respected work in the world has come from here, in part because Canadian marketers and agencies have been willing to think differently. Cannes is an annual reminder that we need to continue to drive to deliver to that standard – not cautiously, but confidently.
Like so much great work in marketing, the real dividends are not quantifiable in a spreadsheet, but they exist and manifest after: in stronger partnerships, sharper thinking, bigger ideas, and in emboldened marketers returning home more energized about what’s possible than when they left. The dividend of Cannes is an annuity that keeps giving. It’s about challenging what’s possible. Cannes Lions 2026, here we come.
Andrea Hunt, President and CEO of the Association of Canadian Advertisers and member of the Canadian Cannes Lions Advisory Board, will be part of The Globe and Mail’s on-the-ground coverage at Cannes Lions this year, including daily wrap-ups, expert commentary and behind-the-scenes moments.
Follow along on Instagram and LinkedIn for real-time updates, interviews, and moments from the Croisette.
