Welcome to Cannes 2025, where legacy marketers are still clutching last year’s slide decks while Gen Z quietly handed their brand loyalty to a screaming cartoon owl, an unregulated digital currency, and whatever Red Bull is pretending to be now. Morning Consult showed up at ADWEEK House and basically lit every CMO’s brand book on fire — with data.

Let’s start with the thermonuclear event that got surprisingly little sunscreen: the 2025 Most Trusted Brands Report. Morning Consult took the Croisette stage and confirmed what any 23-year-old with a phone and commitment issues already knew — Gen Z trusts YouTube more than Tylenol, TikTok more than Tide, and Duolingo more than… well, everyone.

In short, if your brand doesn't feature an owl with a criminal record, a blockchain wallet, or wings, you're out. Meanwhile, Millennials are still hanging on to Google and PayPal like that friend who refuses to delete Facebook “just in case.” Boomers? They’re holding tight to the warm embrace of Kleenex, UPS, and Dawn dish soap like it's the Cold War.

YouTube didn't even make the Boomers' list. To Gen Z, it's the center of culture. To Boomers, it’s just where the grandkids go to watch people whisper into microphones and eat slime.

Let’s talk about the green-feathered elephant in the room: Duolingo, the language app turned TikTok absurdist theatre troupe. It scored a 32.6 trust rating with Gen Z — nearly double its score with adults overall.

Not because it teaches languages particularly well. Not because it’s got an amazing UX. No, it’s because the company handed its social strategy to a deranged owl with no filter and a working knowledge of chaos theory.

Duolingo’s TikTok isn’t content marketing — it’s brand surrealism. One day the owl is thirst-trapping in front of a high school. The next, he’s fake-dating Dua Lipa. This isn’t customer engagement. It’s performance art with subtitles.

Marketers at Cannes are still using phrases like “customer journey mapping.” Meanwhile, Gen Z is trusting brands that interrupt their feed with emotionally unstable mascots who threaten to ruin their lives if they miss a lesson.

Of course, legacy brands saw this trust list and immediately panicked — cue the "Relatability Initiative" slides. Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical giant known more for diabetes meds than viral videos, rolled into Cannes with a cinematic “manifesto film” meant to scream WE HAVE VALUES without actually, you know, talking to anyone under 30.

The ad looks like it was workshopped by ChatGPT and a Deloitte partner on their third Aperol. It tries to channel Patagonia energy while delivering pharma messaging with a soft lens and strings. But here’s the thing: Gen Z doesn’t want a “purpose-driven narrative.” They want a TikTok where the CEO of Advil moonwalks while someone screams “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss.”

And no, slapping an AI-generated owl on your product won’t save you. The trust economy now runs on memes, milliseconds, and mascot delusion. If you need a 90-second branded film to explain your values, you’ve already lost the vibe war.

If your brand is still obsessing over brand equity while Gen Z is out here pledging loyalty to a caffeine can and a crypto wallet, it might be time to admit the game has changed.

If past Cannes Lions festivals were about creativity, storytelling, and the soft-focus fantasy that advertising could still change the world, then this year’s edition felt more like an ad tech cage match staged in a beachfront coliseum—and sponsored by a DSP.

The Croisette was less rosé-soaked brainstorming and more gladiatorial theater, complete with passive-aggressive billboards, euphemistic press releases, and a slew of executives circling one another like rival warlords in Patagonia vests. At the center of the fray: The Trade Desk vs. Viant, flanked by opportunistic giants like Amazon and Roku, all competing to dominate the sprawling, often-misunderstood world of Connected TV (CTV) advertising.

While most companies settled for yacht panels and sun-drenched cocktail hours, Viant decided to fire the first cannon—with a pair of provocative billboards stacked like an ad tech subtweet outside the Majestic Hotel. One read, “Still trading on a desk?” The other followed with, “ViantAI. The future of digital advertising.” The location? Right across from the Palais, where The Trade Desk was hosting private meetings with media buyers and sweating through CTV growth projections.

Jon Schulz, Viant’s Chief Marketing Officer, called the move “cheeky.” The Cannes translation of that word is “strategic middle finger.” The tone may have been playful, but the intent was sharp as a champagne saber. Viant didn’t just buy ad space—it bought a confrontation, one that would dominate sidebar conversations from Sport Beach to the Spotify hilltop party.

More than a flex, the billboards were a signal that Viant’s no longer content playing second fiddle in the DSP wars. It wants to be perceived not as the understudy to The Trade Desk, but as a protagonist in the new era of AI-led campaign planning. Its not-so-subtle thesis: AI can’t just optimize media, it can reshape the structure of ad buying altogether.

Naturally, The Trade Desk responded—not with a billboard, but with a tone-perfect press release that reads like corporate scripture. “We’re growing faster than the industry, and faster than any scaled competitor,” it said, effectively swatting away the billboard provocations while slyly reinforcing their scale dominance.

Translation: Please stop asking about Kokai. We’re fine. Everything’s fine.

Viant, for its part, has cited a 32% year-over-year revenue increase and whispered tales of spend shifting its way—but no major agency or client defections have been publicly confirmed. This leaves us in the fog-of-war phase of the DSP battle: heavy rhetoric, sparse proof, and a lot of confident gesturing toward spreadsheets no one else can see.

But the real shadow in the room isn’t Viant—it’s Amazon. Quietly, ruthlessly, the e-commerce giant has been assembling a DSP war machine, culminating in a bombshell announcement with Roku this week: a deep integration that gives advertisers access to the largest authenticated CTV footprint in the U.S.

This partnership isn’t just about scale. It’s about verified identity, a battleground where The Trade Desk has long claimed moral high ground. Now Amazon is offering a DSP that knows not just what you watched, but what you bought five minutes later—across devices, platforms, and probably in your fridge.

To twist the knife, Amazon also unveiled a campaign tool so frictionless it sounds like parody: input a brand, a budget, and a campaign goal, and it spits out a media plan you can activate instantly. It’s like media buying for people who don’t believe in media buyers.

If there’s one constant at Cannes this year—other than sunburned CMOs and iced espresso—it’s that every company is suddenly powered by AI, even if their backend is still held together by interns, duct tape, and a 2018 Excel macro.

Viant’s push is called ViantAI and Schulz says 45% of spend now flows through CTV—a stat that mirrors The Trade Desk’s own growth narrative last year. Scope3, never one to miss a good acronym moment, launched its “Collaborative Sustainability Platform,” which sounds like a well-intentioned graduate thesis and may become the industry’s next ESG badge.

But peel back the Cannes gloss and what you’re really seeing is an AI proxy war: not a debate about whether AI should guide media strategy, but a battle over who owns the narrative of inevitability. Every deck, every panel, every yacht pitch contains the same trinity of promises: scale, signal, and outcomes—each word delivered with the hushed reverence of a TED Talk and the predictability of a fortune cookie.

The irony, of course, is that many of these so-called AI-powered platforms still require a 14-slide deck, three “alignment calls,” and a Chrome extension to export CSVs.

This wasn’t a DSP bake-off. It was a cold war fought in pastel polos and QR codes. Viant brought the provocation, The Trade Desk played it cool, and Amazon quietly built the Death Star. Everyone else scrambled to position their AI as divine revelation.

And while Cannes is still serving rosé, this year it comes with a side of strategic dread.

The question isn’t who wins Cannes. It’s who rewrites the playbook before the next billboard lands across the street.

Cannes, once the sun-drenched adult playground of the advertising industry, has always thrived on a fragile illusion: that five days of panels, beach activations, and rooftop cocktails could momentarily detach the ad world from its messier realities. That illusion shattered this year—not with a bang, but with a muttered, “Did you hear who didn’t come?”

If Cannes 2025 had a subtext, it wasn’t innovation. It was invisible tension. Not the kind you see in slide decks or hear in panel soundbites, but the kind whispered between badge-scans and bottle pops. Beneath the rosé-soaked sizzle was a slow burn of discomfort: geopolitical risk, economic restraint, immigration stress, and organizational burnout, all converging under the French sun like a hangover in slow motion.

This wasn’t a creative renaissance. This was Cannes with a conscience. Or at least a calculator.

You notice it first in the silences. The absence of people who, by all accounts, should be here: the international strategy lead who always hosts a dinner on night two. The quietly powerful creative who usually anchors three panels. The fast-rising product VP from São Paulo who suddenly “had a schedule conflict.”

Only it wasn’t a conflict. It was immigration.

In a post-pandemic, pre-election, pre-you-name-it world, many non-U.S. citizens working at U.S.-based agencies and platforms quietly opted out. Not because they couldn’t expense the trip—but because they weren’t confident they’d be let back in afterward.

Manish Daftari of Vialto Law, an immigration attorney advising multiple agency execs, confirmed what many were whispering: “Green card holders and visa professionals are being scrutinized more aggressively this year. If you’re traveling abroad—even for work—you may need a re-entry permit or face delays. It’s no longer theoretical.”

For a festival that prides itself on globalism, creativity, and boundless opportunity, this was the year where the border showed up like an uninvited guest. Cannes remains international in tone, but American in consequence. And TSA doesn’t care about your Croisette badge or your Cannes Lions jury invite.

The result? Quiet absences. Entire teams missing. International CMOs sending deputies instead of boarding planes. Some execs, off-record, admitted they’d rather “wait this one out” than risk ending up in visa purgatory over a yacht panel and a lukewarm seafood tower.

Once upon a time, Cannes was about wandering between events and stumbling into conversations that sparked ideas—or at least free cocktails. Now? It’s a sprint in loafers.

The vibe has shifted from luxury to logistics. From leisurely networking to tactical overbooking. As one strategist put it, “If you don’t have 17 meetings by noon, are you even working?”

It’s not just anecdotal. Delegation sizes are tightening like corporate expense reports. Ogury dropped from 37 to 31 people this year, citing “focused presence.” MiQ is holding the line at 45. Razorfish sent 8 and made sure to emphasize how “deliberate and intentional” that number was, which Cannes-speak loosely translates to: “We’re still here, just trying not to look like we’re enjoying it.”

The new Cannes currency isn’t the yacht invite. It’s the jam-packed Google Calendar, the “Strategic Partnerships” title on your lanyard, and the laminated “DEI Panelist” badge that guarantees five introductions an hour. The serendipity has been replaced by stack ranking.

It’s Cannes, but re-skinned for corporate defensibility. Everyone’s networking, but with the desperation of a company that just had to justify flying three people business class to Nice while cutting the fourth from payroll.

One exec from a holding company media agency admitted they weren’t allowed to expense meals unless tied to a deal in progress. “We’re eating strategy sandwiches for lunch,” they quipped. “I haven’t seen food in two days that wasn’t metaphorical.”

Here’s where the existential whiplash really kicks in.

Brands are still throwing six-figure parties. The beach clubs are booked out. Spotify has DJs in the hills. There’s no shortage of private dinners where someone is definitely spending someone else’s Q3 content budget on oysters. And yet—just weeks ago, some of these same companies were laying off entire departments.

The disconnect is not just noticeable. It’s starting to feel like the main character.

As one U.S.-based ad exec confessed, “I was asked to put together a business case to go to Cannes Lions… and halfway through I realized it was easier to just not go. I couldn’t stomach trying to justify it while I still have two open positions I can’t fill.”

This isn’t guilt-tripping—it’s budgeting anxiety with a conscience. Cannes used to be the performance bonus in lanyard form. Now, it feels like a company retreat that’s one CFO review away from being canceled mid-flight.

Panels that once felt exploratory now carry the grim weight of quarterly KPIs. “Creativity and efficiency must coexist” is the mantra. But the mood is more P&L than R&D. Jamie Barnard, CEO of Compliant, said it plainly: “It’s definitely gotten more aggressive.”

Even the conversations are changing. Last year, AI was a curiosity. Now, it’s a staff-replacement pipeline. Last year, ESG was a campaign. This year, it’s a redline in procurement. The subtext at Cannes is no longer, “Where is the industry headed?” It’s, “Who’s still going to be standing at the next earnings call?”

“Cannes used to be an escape. Now it’s just a $900,000 beach booth built on a layoff spreadsheet.”

Because this year, the real ROI wasn’t in the panels or the rosé. It was in how well you pretended not to notice the tension curling underneath every branded cabana and sustainability panel.

And that might be Cannes 2025’s most honest creative execution yet.