A year after more creators than ever flocked to the Croisette for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, influencer marketing is set to take on an even bigger role at the annual festival.

Last week, Cannes announced its new “Lions Creators” program, a blend of creator-centric presentations, panels and roundtables that will offer opportunities for creators to mingle with chief marketing officers and other C-suite executives at the weeklong event. Though the presence of creators at Cannes has been “steadily growing for many years,” creators and influencer marketing agencies often still encounter ad execs who fail to grasp “what [creators] do and how powerful it can be for them,” said Thea Skelton, VP events at Cannes Lions, in an email. 

“When we introduce new initiatives to the festival it’s always about reflecting the needs of an industry sector,” Skelton said. “We know that the creator economy doesn’t currently have a space where they can come together and address these business challenges, so the festival can play a role in providing that space—bringing together the platforms, the brands, the creators and the agencies, and a wider cross-section of the industry to have the most pressing conversations around how we co-create, collaborate and unlock greater value and progress for the wider industry.” 

In a press release announcing the program, Cannes Lions CEO Simon Cook pointed to the rapid growth of the creator economy as a “crucial” factor influencing the festival’s new investment in creators. The release cited Goldman Sachs research that estimated the creator economy was a $250 billion industry in 2023 and projected to nearly double by 2027. 

Influencer marketing agencies such as Influential, Whalar and Influencer have been attending and activating at Cannes as far back as 2016. But many of these agencies are expanding their presence at the festival this year, too. Influential, for example, is doubling its beach footprint at Cannes after taking over the beach space previously held by X, formerly Twitter, in 2023. The agency saw “approximately a 20x ROI” from its Cannes activation last year, much of which came from new business, said Influential CEO Ryan Detert.

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Both Whalar and Influencer will continue their respective activations at this year’s festival: Whalar House and the Influencer Villa. For the past two years, Influencer has used its villa as a space for brand execs and creators to connect away from the hubbub of the Croisette, said CEO and Co-Founder Ben Jeffries. But this year, the agency is revamping its programming in response to feedback from CMOs to focus on smaller, more intimate discussions between creators and execs. This is meant to help facilitate new brand deals rather than simply offer a place for casual mingling, he said. 

That change also reflects the surging interest the agency has seen over the past year from brands wanting to incorporate creators into their broader creative strategies, from social media to out-of-home displays to ads on streaming services, Jeffries said. Brands have historically viewed creators as a media buy, but creators are now becoming increasingly intertwined in brands’ creative strategies, he said. 

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Whalar, which has been activating at Cannes since 2016, is planning to continue hosting panel discussions among creators, brands and social media platforms. Last year, Whalar invited creators such as Coco Mocoe, Nadir Nahdi, Katie Austin and Rod Thill to speak on panels alongside marketing execs at its Cannes pop-up. 

“To say that the level of interest and exposure of the creator economy at the festival is night and day different from 2016 to now would be an understatement,” said Whalar Co-Founder Neil Waller in an email. “There’s still a long way to go, but it’s undeniable that the creator economy will have a way stronger presence at Cannes this June than ever before.”

Some influencer agencies are attending Cannes for the first time this year. Social media and digital agency Viral Nation—which also has a talent arm representing over 800 creators—had opted out of the ad festival for several years because of influencer marketing’s marginal presence at Cannes, said Joe Gagliese, CEO and co-founder of Viral Nation. But this year, the agency is teaming with Cannes to curate the programming for its inaugural Lions Creators program and is inviting several creators on its talent roster to attend the festival, he said. 

“I ended up getting on a call with [Simon Cook] the CEO of Cannes, and we had this really great discussion about creators, and then they shared with me that they had envisioned for this year, bringing creators kind of to the forefront of the marketing industry—almost knighting it, in a way,” Gagliese said. “When I heard that, I was just like, ‘Oh my god, that is the coolest thing.’ Because you have to remember from my vantage point, I’ve been around the space from when creators struggled to make 50 bucks. So, to see Cannes wanting to make that step, I immediately reacted with ‘I’d love to do this with you.’” 

Though the Lions Creators programming is still in the works, Gagliese said the focus of the panels and roundtable discussions will be to give creators a platform to speak directly to C-suite executives and help creators “understand how they can both build their businesses [and] package and promote themselves in a way that's really appealing to brands.”

“We didn’t want it to be all about educating just the brands—we also wanted to create a lot of value for the creator [who’s] almost like an entrepreneur in the marketing space,” he added. 

Few industry events or conferences have offered creators such direct access to CMOs, CEOs or other executives as Cannes will this summer, Gagliese said. At VidCon—an event that many creators have chosen to attend over Cannes, as they typically occur during the same week—creators are largely interacting with “the folks who work with creators inside of the brand,” such as influencer marketing managers or social media teams, he said.

“A lot of the time the CMO is aware of the influencer marketing that the company's doing, but they haven't had the opportunity to get to know these creators,” he said. “I’m excited to see how [talking to creators] changes the opinions and progresses the thinking of some of these executives.”

Another factor that will likely drive more creators to the Croisette this year is that Cannes doesn’t overlap with VidCon for the first time in several years; VidCon will take place the week after the ad festival.

VidCon’s shifted dates aren’t a response to Cannes increasingly becoming a hotspot for creators, however. “The Anaheim event dates for VidCon are reserved years in advance and happen to not overlap with Cannes’ event dates this year,” a VidCon representative wrote in an email. 

But Influential’s Detert views VidCon’s later dates as “a big bellwether for why [Cannes] is now the place to be if you’re a creator,” he said. “If you’re a creator, you go to VidCon to see your fans. You go to Cannes to meet the brands.”

Like influencer marketing agencies, creators have been attending Cannes for several years—but most have only gone to the ad festival when invited by existing brand or agency partners or social media platforms, Gagliese said. Spotify last year invited Emma Chamberlain to Cannes to speak about her Spotify-exclusive podcast “Anything Goes,” and TikTok sponsored creators such as Rob Mayhew and Drea Okeke to create content at the 2023 festival.

But the Lions Creators program will open the door for more influencers to attend without a sponsorship, which could make the festival more accessible to micro-influencers or creators early in their careers, Gagliese said. 

“Every step that the marketing world takes into the influencer space unlocks tons of potential for the creators,” he said. “There are so many creators out there who have to undervalue themselves in order to make the income that they need in order to raise their families … There’s still a long way to go in making sure that creators can capture the true value of what they're doing, but I think this is a huge step.”