Up until a few weeks ago, the vast majority of the influencers who attended the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity had barely heard of the ad festival. 

But after speaking alongside CMOs and agency execs on panels and beachfront activations, and participating in the inaugural “Lions Creators” programming track, nearly all of them are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to return to the South of France next June.

“I thought, when I heard Cannes Lions was a corporate event, that it was going to be really boring,” said Madeline Argy, a creator who accompanied eos to the festival as part of an influencer trip, in the latest episode of her podcast “Pretty Lonesome.” “Guys, I think this is potentially the best-kept secret of the industry.” 

Several creators and influencer marketing executives who attended Cannes last week unanimously agreed this year’s festival offered creators a more comprehensive view of the ad industry, where creators largely still remain on the fringes despite their increasingly pivotal role in many brands’ marketing strategies. A number of influencers also leveraged their presence at Cannes to directly connect with the marketing teams of potential brand partners or capitalized on the rare opportunity to meet and seek out advice from fellow creators. 

Also read: More Cannes takeaways and insights

Creator Serena Kerrigan, one of the few influencers at Cannes who was familiar with the festival before a handful of weeks ago, prioritized networking with “the people behind the brands—the people that your agents are probably emailing with” during her first trip to Cannes, she told Ad Age. 

“At the end of the day, we all have great engagement. We all have a lot of followers,” she said. “What’s really going to make [a brand] think of me versus someone else is probably going to be the personal relationships. So, it’s really advantageous for creators to get to the festival and get in front of these brands.”

Kerrigan rekindled a relationship with Amazon after running into a brand representative who had previously invited her to an Amazon holiday party, she said. She also connected with Spotify after attending some of the Spotify Beach programming and realizing she’d be interested in collaborating with the streaming platform, she said.

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Though she isn’t “the type to network and schmooze,” influencer Victoria Paris also connected with ad agencies and companies such as Meta when members of their teams approached her at the end of two different panels she spoke on at Cannes, she said. An Instagram representative introduced themselves to Paris after she discussed a past partnership with Ray-Ban’s Meta smart glasses as part of a panel at ZCannes, a Gen Z-focused event organized by UTA Marketing’s Next Gen practice, and invited her to the company’s Los Angeles headquarters. 

Cannes wasn’t the first time Paris had collaborated directly with brand marketing teams rather than going through a talent manager or agency. She’s previously consulted with brands such as Nike and Lancôme—albeit over Zoom calls rather than in person, she said. For her, the opportunity to meet and talk to other creators and escape the isolating “vacuum of our own worlds and teams” that influencers like her often find themselves in was the most valuable part of Cannes, she said.

“We started talking about pay transparency; the deals we’re doing; the stuff we want to do; the stuff that's kind of discouraging,” said Paris, who also attended Cannes with eos and stayed in the villa the skincare brand rented out for her and five other creators. “I feel like being around other creators is when I feel the most inspired. It doesn’t necessarily have to be at a work event. But it was super nice to be in a house with some really sick f—king creators.” 

Rather than actively pitch herself to brands, Paris prefers having her content pop up organically on their social media feeds and motivate brands to want to reach out to her about a partnership, she said. “But, unfortunately, not all of these people are online, so I really loved being able to introduce yourself face-to-face with people you wouldn’t normally end up close with online.” 

Legitimizing the creator economy 

To Kerrigan, being invited to attend Cannes “legitimized” her career as a full-time creator and demonstrated she and other creators “have a really important voice and really important role” in the ad industry, she said. 

Indeed, creators had a more palpable presence at this year’s festival than ever before, from nearly every ad agency and social platform along the Croisette involving influencers in their programming to Cannes Lions transforming the Palais into the dedicated headquarters for its “Lions Creators” track, said Lenny Shteynberg, VP of strategic partnerships at creator marketing company Open Influence. Cannes Lions also unveiled a new $1,200 “Creator Pass” ahead of the festival this year that aimed not only at creators but also influencer marketing and talent agencies. 

“[Lions Creators] is an acknowledgement from the industry about the growing importance of the work creators do,” said Rahul Titus, global head of influence at Ogilvy. “I think it’s very rare that they get to see firsthand what a big role they’re playing across the industry … And, for the first time, you could really sense that confidence in [creators] being equal partners and coming to the table with solutions on how we make the space better for everybody.” 

Titus pointed out that many of the campaigns awarded a Grand Prix at Cannes this year either featured or centered entirely around creators. For example, outdoor advertising company JCDecaux and David Madrid took home the Creative B2B Grand Prix for their “Meet Marina Prieto” campaign, which turned an ordinary 100-year-old grandma into an online celebrity, and Weiden+Kennedy’s “DoorDash All the Ads” campaign, which included an influencer push to promote the massive giveaway, nabbed the Titanium Grand Prix. 

And, with more creators turning content creation into a full-time career, it’s natural for a larger number of them to have a “thirst for knowledge” of the advertising industry they’ve become part of, said Neil Waller, co-CEO and co-founder of creator company Whalar Group. 

“When we started, less than 10% of the creators we worked with were full-time. Last year, 95% of the creators we worked with were full-time, 70% had a manager or agent and 20% had at least one employee,” he said. “So, I think what started off really as an exercise in explaining to the industry at Cannes what the creator economy was and how they could work with creators is now kind of this dual path where creators are going and wanting to learn more about the rest of the advertising and entertainment industry as they become a more integral part of it.” 

The future of creators at Cannes 

Cannes was mentioned in more than 57,000 social media posts throughout the ad festival, according to data from social media management platform Sprout Social. And nearly 3,800 of those Cannes-related posts (or just over 6% of all social posts made about the festival) made some mention of influencers or creators, per Sprout Social—likely due in part to high-profile influencers such as Alix Earle, Harry Jowsey and Jackie Aina documenting their Cannes experience across dozens of photos and videos. 

The slew of social content surrounding this year’s festival could drive an even larger number of creators to want to attend Cannes next June, Waller said. But those creators should avoid rushing in blindly and instead develop a strategy for navigating the festival in a way that aligns with their goals, whether it’s networking with potential brand partners or positioning themselves as thought leaders by appearing on panels, Kerrigan said. 

“Print out your schedule ahead of time, make dinner reservations and don’t worry too much about befriending other creators,” she said. “You’re there to get to know the people who are paying you. You need to take full advantage of Cannes, and that really comes down to you building your own schedule and figuring out what you want. You should really come with a purpose.”

Though creators can go the traditional route and simply purchase a creator pass to attend next year’s festival, they can also directly ask brands, agencies or social platforms to include them in their programming at next year’s festival instead, said Shaina Zafar, an executive at UTA Next Gen. 

“You can think of yourself almost as a brand ambassador, in the sense that you can be the person to host a dinner event, as a creator,” she said. “You can be the person to actually give tips and tricks on social media or talk about audience insights or case studies of what’s worked really well for you on a panel. There's a lot of amazing insight that these creators can bring for brands, and I think framing yourself as a thought leader and not just a content creator is the way to think about Cannes and your place there.”

Collaborating with a brand, agency or social platform is “the best thing” that creators hoping to attend Cannes next year can do, said Jamie Ray, co-founder of influencer marketing agency Buttermilk. For creators going to Cannes for the first time without a partner to guide them, “it’s very easy for the festival to swallow you up, and I think you could spend five days there and ultimately achieve nothing if you’re not aware of what’s going on around you.” 

Both Ray and Waller also recommend creators who do purchase a creator pass and plan to participate in the Lions Creators program also venture beyond the Palais and see how creators are showing up beyond the creator economy track. Creators that limit themselves to the Palais could miss out on opportunities to connect with brands or agencies not involved in the Lions Creators program or learn about elements of the broader ad industry, they said. Titus, for example, saw several creators in the audience of a panel centered around CMOs rather than creators, he said. 

Creators “build [their careers] through networking—through the people you meet and the inspiration that comes with it,” Waller said. “And Cannes is an incredible meeting spot in the industry. So, my advice to creators would simply be, ‘Don’t overthink it. Just go.’ It is an expensive event, and it’s a difficult event to navigate, but I think I have yet to have a creator tell me, ‘Oh, I didn’t enjoy Cannes. I didn’t find it interesting, and it wasn’t helpful.’”