Creativity, commerce, and AI in mid-2026 marketing mix

The Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2026 wrapped up last week – the largest marketing and creative event in the world, where brands, agencies, platforms, technologists, and creators gather on the French Riviera to debate ideas, launch work, and hand out the year’s most-coveted awards. For one intense week the industry compresses a year’s worth of trends, experiments, and arguments into panels, brand activations, and parties. It’s where creative craft meets commercial ambition, and where new standards for marketing are often born. Here are a few highlights and practical takeaways I pulled from this year’s festival.

AI moved from theory to practice

AI dominated conversations across stages and corridors. Where previous years treated generative models as curiosities, this year’s sessions showed them embedded in everyday marketing processes: concept generation, rapid creative prototyping, automated localisation, and measurement.

Experts talked about workflows that used AI to accelerate iteration – producing multiple creative variants for A/B testing, automating metadata and tagging for faster distribution, and generating personalised creative at scale.

At the Marketing Leadership Summit during Cannes Lions, Melody Lee from Mercedes Benz USA joined Nicole Guess of Perion for a thoughtful conversation about creativity and storytelling in the age of AI. Their discussion zeroed in on a tension many brands feel: AI can accelerate production and personalize messages at scale, but it cannot replace the human creativity that makes brand communications in luxury resonant.

Shoppable digital formats are now a creative imperative in eCommerce

Shoppable and commerce-first formats kept accelerating. Creative concepts were increasingly judged on whether they could translate directly into purchase moments – short-form videos with built-in checkout, augmented reality try-ons linked to instant purchase, and interactive livestream commerce were all on display.

TikTok Shop dominates when it comes to viral discovery and impulse purchases. The 2025 Sprout Social Index found TikTok is Gen Z’s go to for product discovery – 49% of that group look there first – and 55% interact with brand content on the platform at least once a day.

The implication is clear: creative briefings must now include distribution and conversion mechanics from day one.

Brand management and sustained loyalty remain central

Despite the noise around new tech, brand management and customer retention remain foundational. Conversations moved beyond campaign-level purpose signalling toward systems that retain customers: customer loyalty, subscription models, and experience-led retention programmes that generate measurable repeat behaviour.

Executives stressed that brand equity only compounds when experiences and operations align – marketing teams must demonstrate how brand moves translate into lifetime value and behavioural change, not just short-term awareness spikes.

Leandro Barreto, Global CMO for Unilever Beauty & Wellbeing, and Harry Kargman, Founder & CEO of Kargo, discussed a simple but powerful idea at the Marketing Leadership Summit at the Cannes Lions Festival 2026: meaningful growth comes from building brands that stay true to their values while inspiring creative ideas that travel, endure, and take on a life of their own beyond the brand that sparked them.

The creator economy – enthusiasm meets scrutiny

Creator partnerships were everywhere on the agenda – the festival counted over 500 creators-participants, but not without a dose of realism. The creator economy now includes polished talent and mass-participation formats; brands are experimenting with everything from long-term ambassadorships to micro-creator cohorts.

Opposite to this current hype, a quieter theme emerged beneath the usual buzz: several senior marketing leaders told me they’re pulling back from creator and influencer partnerships because recent campaigns haven’t delivered expected results.

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According to Kantar, the world’s leading marketing data and analytics business, fewer than one in 15 pieces of creator content delivers both audience engagement and ROI.

In a private exchange with a C-level marketing executive from a long-established global brand, I heard frank feedback: their recent collaborations with creators delivered mixed results. Several projects missed expectations, and effectiveness with social media bloggers has declined. This isn’t framed as blame for creators alone – the executive pointed to changing audience behaviours, platform algorithm shifts, measurement gaps, and an over-reliance on one-off activations.

In short: creators remain part of marketing strategies for many brands, but the approach – and the metrics – need rethinking.

A final observation

Cannes still matters. It is one of the few places where global creative and commercial ecosystems convene, showcasing experiments that point to tomorrow’s standards. But this year felt like a turning point: the conversation shifted from novelty to utility. Technology is now judged by how it improves outcomes and preserves brand value. And while the festival buzz can feel broad and accessible, deeper, specialist conversations – where operational marketers and hands-on creatives exchange practical, technical insight – are often tucked away in private sessions. That makes it essential for teams to surface learnings afterwards and translate them into measurable change.