The ultimate places to see and be seen in the ad business are venues on or near the beaches of the Croisette at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. These are the settings where the industry’s biggest players show up in a splashy way, create buzz, outshine their competitors and, ultimately, cut some business deals in the process.

But are the seven figures that many of these companies are dropping on these festival spaces for a few days each June really worth the cost?

Well, that all depends on how you calculate it, and how much you spend. Cannes activations can cost anywhere from $108,000 for a brunch to $4 million for a blowout concert, according to nine executives interviewed for this story and a Cannes Lions sales deck.

Influencer marketing company Influential saw “approximately a 20x ROI”—much of that in the form of new business—from its first-ever beach activation at last year’s festival, CEO Ryan Detert told Ad Age. 

Those results drove Influential to double its beach footprint at Cannes this year, trading the beach space previously held by X (formerly Twitter) for Stagwell’s former Sport Beach, Influential announced today. Sport Beach will shift slightly down the shoreline to a larger stretch of beach, Stagwell announced in February.

In addition to new business—which sometimes is not immediate but can lead to an invitation to join an agency review many months later—executives said glitzy beaches and yacht parties can also pay off in PR. “There were 632 journalists in Cannes, and 15,400 articles and press releases during the festival week alone,” last year, according to the Cannes sales deck.

Splashy installations also give an impression of prosperity and success to prospective clients and talent. And sending employees to Cannes can pay dividends in terms of retention and goodwill.

Still, all of these measures are unspecific at best, particularly in a shaky economy that’s caused marketing budget cutbacks and layoffs. For agencies, the investment and how they’re tracking performance is especially questionable, said Greg Paull, co-founder and partner of consultancy R3.

“If any of their clients were to invest in such a high-profile experiential campaign, their agency partner would be overloading them with KPIs, metrics and outcomes,” Paull said. “Most of the Cannes activities lack that.”

A Cannes Lions spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

Inside the Cannes Lions pitch

Some executives said prices across the board for the festival rose between 20% and 25% due to inflation when the event returned in-person in 2022 following COVID-related lockdowns.

“Beach space went up, Cannes Lions sponsorships went up, restaurant rentals went up, Airbnbs went up,” said a former holding company executive who has overseen Cannes investments. “That was tough to swallow [in 2022]. Now, people aren’t balking at the prices; it’s just the price.”

A current holding company executive who has also overseen Cannes investment for many years said the festival has started expanding into more of the hotels and restaurants in the city, requiring companies to go through the festival to rent certain spaces in some of those venues.

The festival is also trying to upsell many of the companies that are already activating and spending money to enter awards and send their executives, with opportunities such as brand takeovers inside the Palais, the current holding company executive said. This person, whose company is renting space but is not opting to buy any other sponsorships, said he understands that Cannes is trying to make more revenue but that the increasing pressure to buy more is irking some companies.

Cannes is charging companies this year 550,000 euros (about $596,000) to rent the Croisette Cafe located next to festival hotspot the Carlton Hotel, according to a Cannes Lions sales deck, which noted that Netflix and Spotify have rented this space in the past. This “rental includes four build days, five activation days and two dismantle days; additional branding opportunities available at additional cost,” per the deck. There is an additional 8,000 euros (about $8,700) installation fee for external branding.

Options to rent space on The Palais des Festivals Rooftop start at 350,000 euros (about $379,000), according to the deck, which described the offer as such: “With great views and a total of 1,000 sqm of space - [a brand] can host multiple activations in one location. This blank slate can be used as a multi-purpose space, from private meetings to fun activations and content stages.”

In some cases, it is unclear what exactly the pricing on these rentals includes; for example: how many days brands will have to rent some of these spaces. The festival declined to clarify these prices.

The deck listed the following other paid opportunities: 

• 250,000 euros (about $271,000) for The Marta Room space, located in the Majestic Hotel 
• 195,000 euros to take over the Big Screen on the red carpet, which Cannes refers to as the largest digital asset available to purchase at the festival
• 100,000 euros (about $108,000) for one of its new single Villa Denise Banners along the Croisette or 180,000 euros (about $195,000) for a bundle of two
• Between 50,000 and 300,000 euros (about $54,000 to $325,000) for a Parvais activation space, which Cannes said is “a blank slate space where your creativity can run wild” and “will get great foot traffic throughout the Festival Week”
• 100,000 euros (about $108,000) to rent an Ortega activation space, located on the second floor of the Palais. If you want production assistance with that, it’s 250,000 euros (about $271,000)
• 100,000 euros (about $108,000) to host a Friday brunch 
• 100,000 euros (about $108,000) to host jury networking drinks
• 110,000 euros (about $119,000) for a Happy Hour takeover on the Terrace, which would include branded drinkware, a branded photo wall, rollout bars and use of a digital screen
• 150,000 euros (about $163,000) for partnership investment in ​​its Brand Marketers Academy, set up to help Young Lions succeed
• 100,000 euros (about $108,000) to sponsor the awards, which would include on-screen branding, an opportunity to host a drinks reception before the ceremony, branding on the red carpet, and the “Mayor’s Box”—a private viewing area for VIPs—and a certain amount of VIP seats

A marketing and consulting executive who has put on Cannes events for various companies said the big beach takeovers are seven figures just for the rental. The exec said you then have to factor in other costs, including some of the music acts featured there, such as Foo Fighters playing Spotify Beach last year. “The acts cost more than the space. You’re getting up into the $3 million to $4 million range,” this person said.

Regardless, there are benefits to not only activating at Cannes, but doing it extravagantly.

“If you look at it from a classic marketing funnel, it’s brand building, relationship building and then closing deals,” the marketing and consulting executive said. “Cannes is good for all three of those things. There is a high number and concentration of decision makers; you want to be socializing with them. If you’re not there, it’s not the worst thing in the world, but you’re missing the opportunity.”

Building a reputation

For Influential, doubling its beach space at Cannes just one year after the company’s inaugural beachfront activation was a no-brainer, Detert said. 

The company is splitting the cost of the beach space with two partners this year—Brand Innovators, which partnered with Influential on its beach activation last year, and Urban One, a Black-owned media company—making the cost of the larger beachfront activation roughly the same as that of its beach space last year, Detert said. After seeing the strong return on investment its 2023 Cannes activation delivered, Influential “saw that doing a double beach would mean even more money, [and] we wanted to get bigger,” he said. 

Influential viewed last year’s beach activation as an opportunity to position itself as a leading agency in the influencer industry as the presence of creators and influencer marketing at Cannes continues to grow, Detert said. “There are larger partnerships you might get in terms of AOR-type partners that invest after seeing that you are the biggest and best, or that you embody a certain type of thought leadership or have a leadership spot in the space,” he said. 

Last year, Influential’s Cannes programming included discussions with chief marketing officers from Coca-Cola, Hyundai, e.l.f. Beauty, Mastercard and Ulta Beauty, among several others, and several influencers, including Paris Hilton, comedian Adam Waheed and fashion designer Ugo Mozie. The company hasn’t revealed its speaker lineup for this year’s festival, but has announced that three-time Grammy Award-winning rapper Ludcaris will speak with Urban One CEO Alfred Liggins before giving an exclusive live performance.

Influential had “a whole team on the ground taking people out to dinners” at Cannes last year looking to establish new business partnerships or fortify existing ones, Detert said. “The follow-ups that come afterward are the best part” of Influential’s Cannes activation, he added, and a number of those conversations directly led to new business. 

When it comes to securing new business at Cannes, “basically, everyone’s an Etch A Sketch. After they leave, they just forget everything,” Detert said. “So, it’s about finding ways to have those indelible moments,” such as a massive beachfront activation, “and then remind them of it and say ‘Alright guys, it’s time to figure out ways that we can be on that stage next year … showcasing the great work we did together.’”

AI, influencers and other Cannes Lions 2023 takeaways

Beating the competition

Stagwell’s massive Sport Beach at Cannes last year seemed to be a success for both the holding company of agencies including Anomaly and 72andSunny and the 38 athletes featured, including former NBA player Carmelo Anthony and former WNBA star Sue Bird.

For the athletes, the activation helped them get in front of potential sponsors. For Stagwell, it was the first time the holding company bought space on the Croisette, putting it up against other ad giants including Spotify, WPP, Interpublic Group of Cos., Pinterest and Meta that occupied beaches. The activation, which offered a fresh take on the usual cocktail circuit, drew massive foot traffic and media attention.

Stagwell declined to comment on its ROI on the beach, which is said to have drawn over one-third of all Cannes attendees. However, it is believed that the activation brought at least one new client to Stagwell’s 72andSunny agency: Wilson Sporting Goods.

“Everyone was talking about that [the Sport Beach] so, from that metric alone, it was successful,” the former holding company executive said.

The executive said Stagwell’s Sport Beach upped the game for Cannes activations, predicting that some holding companies will try to go bigger in 2024 to better compete with it. A lot of the marketers at Cannes have creative responsibilities with one agency and their media buying business with another, and they’re judging those partners against each other based on their Cannes experiences, this person said.

The current holding company executive scoffed at this notion, before adding: “Do I want a rival holding company [monopolizing] my client at Cannes? No.”

Also: Inside Stagwell’s Sport Beach at Cannes Lions 2023

“There is competition between all of the tech platforms and all of the agencies in terms of who gets the coolest speakers, who has the best parties, who has the most interesting entertainment at night, whose dinners were more successful,” said Megan Cunningham, CEO and founder of Magnet, a brand storytelling studio that has partnered with organizations including Microsoft Ads on Cannes programming.

Cunningham said there are “only so many CMOs” at Cannes. “All the agencies, tech platforms are competing for their time,” she said. “It becomes a real race in many ways to get people to attend your event. A lot of times, the CMOs that I’ve talked to are attending three or four dinners in the same night. It’s just crazy.”

Only 6% of marketers said they planned to attend Cannes last year, down from 19% in previous years, according to a Digiday survey done ahead of the 2023 festival.

CMOs have talked about scaling back on travel in a post-COVID world and that includes thinking twice about attending events like Cannes. That makes the competition for face time with marketing decision-makers even more fierce.

Still, Paull said agencies should be careful not to show off too much because there is a chance that clients might leave thinking they’re paying too much for the relationship given how much money their shops can drop on Cannes.

“Agencies are in a Catch-22 situation with Cannes,” he said. “They need to show their clients they are a serious player but risk going too far and looking extravagant and profligate. Finding the sweet spot is a constant challenge.”

Wheeling and dealing

Reddit, the social platform that has been trying to build up its advertising business, rented a “double-decker space” at Cannes 2023 for the second consecutive year. The company “smashed its on-site meeting goal by 130% and saw an increase in the quality of meetings and seniority presence,” the Cannes Lions sales deck said in a section on case studies.

According to the deck, Reddit will be back in 2024.

Reddit declined to comment on its plans for Cannes Lions this year, and a spokesperson said the 130% stat is “inaccurate” without disclosing more information.

Companies activating at Cannes must first draw attendees to their spaces with celebrities and parties and then, hopefully, have time to corner a top potential client and score a business deal.

Avery Akkineni, CMO of VaynerX, VaynerMedia’s parent company, said one of VaynerX’s “biggest new [client] relationships of 2024,” which she declined to identify, came out of Cannes. She said the festival is “our biggest marketing investment of the year without question,” but the cost is worth it. VaynerX has bought a yacht at Cannes for the past several years. Last year, the VaynerX yacht featured celebrities including Paris Hilton, Tiffany Haddish and Will.i.am.

Cannes is a good place to expand relationships with existing clients, typically “either into [new] services or regions,” Akkineni said.

It’s also a good place to do relationship-building, she said, noting that Cannes is also the one time clients get undivided time with Gary Vaynerchuk, chairman of VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia, and a media personality in his own right. She said one of the best events VaynerX hosts on the yacht is a cocktail party with no programming, a “chill come over, have some drinks.”

More often than not, though, the deals that come out of Cannes are more of a long play, the former holding company executive said.

“It’s very rare that it’s an immediate deal done,” the executive said. “You’re going and making connections. You might get an invitation to an RFI six months later. That stuff is a lot more indirect. It’s harder to track. The agencies that are savvier do track it. [They’ll say] ‘Here’s who we met and work those relationships’ … You think about it in terms of the tangible and intangible ROI."

Other ways to track performance

VaynerX tries to track every bit of performance from Cannes, Akkineni said.

“It is not a vacation and you are working the whole time that you’re there,” she said. “We’re hosting clients, we’re working with our media partners. I can certainly appreciate that people see executives on a yacht, drinking Rosé and they’re like, ‘Is this really work?’ We have tracked time and time again that it is a really effective place for us to deepen relationships with our clients, showcase our work [and] meet new prospective clients.”

Every VaynerX employee who goes to Cannes “has a specific responsibility, a specific track that they’re owning and specific KPIs,” Akkineni said. “For example, a leader on our creative team might be identifying the next generation of amazing creative directors that we should be recruiting. If you are a managing director for a specific region, it might be like, ‘Great, bring executives from your region onto our boat so they can learn about what we’re doing and open doors for future partnerships.’”

The former holding company executive said Cannes is a retention tactic both for clients and employees, too. “For talent, that’s simple, treat this as a job perk,” the person said.

“Cannes is by far the best market for talent,” said Craig Atkinson, CEO of digital marketing agency Code3. “The big joke is always ‘We could have had this meeting in New York.’ But we couldn’t, actually. We didn’t. We won’t. We need to be out of the stream, out of our native context to meet people off our normal reservation and boundaries. For agencies, this means time spent with a brand CEO we’d never meet outside the context of a formal review, a senior-level tech product person we’d likely have no way to find, and talent who is at their most approachable and receptive.”

More affordable ways to show up

“I have some indie agency clients who laugh when I bring up Cannes, mainly because of the sheer expense to activate and participate,” said a PR executive who represents various independent agencies.

Still, there are ways to tackle Cannes without breaking the bank.

Partnerships can be a good way to cut costs.

Magnet partnered with experiential agency Sparks to host a C-suite dinner at the CC:DC Villa in Cannes last year that focused on the progress of diversity, and invited top executives including former Netflix CMO Bozoma “Boz” Saint John.

Cunningham said the event “was really successful” for both companies and they were able to split the cost. “It was a complementary way that we could come together and reach our audience in a way that we probably wouldn’t have been able to do on our own,” she said.

Akkineni said VaynerX partners with media companies to offset the cost, such as co-hosting certain events. Akkineni said companies can also look to host or sponsor other events that are already happening.

“We have a lot of interest from media vendors to activate on our boat, which is wonderful and it also helps us reduce that cost,” she said. “We are pretty selective about the partners that we would want to be on our boat because, ultimately, it is a reflection of Vayner … And, as for being super economical, our executives are flying economy.”

But, in the end, “we’re big believers in going big in the places that matter,” Akkineni said.