Key trends from Cannes jurors and commentators

From left to right: Chloe Markowicz, Editor at Contagious, Jane Lin-Baden, CEO Asia-Pacific at Publicis Groupe, and Dan Clays, Chief Executive EMEA at Omnicom.

Jane Lin-Baden, CEO Asia-Pacific, Publicis Groupe

Cannes Lions 2025 Jury President Creative Business Transformation

As Jury President of the Creative Business Transformation Lions category, what really inspired me was the longevity and scale of creative solutions that our industry is building for the world’s well-known brands.

A few themes from our jury room include:

1. The evolution of purpose: there are brands that attach themselves to a purpose as an accessory or add-on to drive awareness of a cause. And then there are brands that weave purpose into their very core. Brands are moving beyond tokenistic nods to social good, towards truly impactful platforms that integrate purpose into every aspect of their organisation and operations, and as a result, deliver true commercial and social impact over a sustained period.
2. A migration from ads to ecosystems: today’s most transformative creative ideas extend far beyond advertising. They impact everything from commercial models to supply chains, legal contracts, suppliers, patents and stakeholders – in other words, the entire ecosystem that supports products and services.
3. Transformative brands are driving category reinvention: this year’s most transformative ideas didn’t just grow brands – they redefined entire categories. By changing the rules of engagement, brands are emerging as leaders in the categories they are redefining.

Creativity is the foundation for all Lions categories, but for this category specifically, it’s important to demonstrate a transformative result on the business. The winning formula is to be daring, experiment with new ideas to solve challenges, and transform to be future-fit and relevant to your customers.

Dan Clays, Chief Executive EMEA, Omnicom

Cannes Lions 2025 Jury President Media

We set out to champion work that showcased the creative force that media brings by combining technology with human ingenuity and ultimately delivering quantifiable business results.

The winning campaigns did not just use platforms — they reshaped them. Grand Prix winning Dove Real Beauty AI, for example, retrained the Pinterest algorithm to surface real beauty content that could be channelled into wider paid media.

Commerce showed up, and not simply as a lower funnel sales-driving channel, but to drive brand engagement. Mercado Livre transformed high-profile trophy-lifting sports photos into shoppable moments, applying dynamic discount codes to the falling ticker tape.

Partnerships were taken to the next level – and in the case of Heinz Can’t Unsee It campaign, they used paid, owned and earned media to hack the movie Deadpool, adopting film marketing behaviours to showcase Ketchup and Mustard condiments.

Some of the strongest work invited creator and audience participation. Vaseline Verified adopted the iconic blue tick to tackle misinformation and empower creators to showcase approved content.

Cannes 2025 was about a body of work showcasing the breadth of what media is today, challenging narrow perceptions from the past and signaling future possibilities across media, data and technology.

Chloe Markowicz, Editor, Contagious

Cannes Lions 2025 commentator

The Contagious team set out to uncover what it took to win at Cannes Lions in 2025, gathering the insights underpinning and connecting the smartest work.

We found three key trends:

1. Marketing Jiu-Jitsu: several big winners earned attention by taking a perceived weakness, threat, or cultural tension – and flipping it. Reframing herpes destigmatisation as a matter of national pride in New Zealand, for example, made a challenging topic more shareable.
2. Acrobatic Allies: purposeful campaigns tend to capture the juries’ attention at Cannes Lions, but this year they were particularly swayed by work that went the extra mile to demonstrate meaningful support to their consumers and galvanise wider change. Take AXA updating its home insurance contracts to support the victims of domestic abuse or Dove demonstrating its commitment to women with its 20-year Real Beauty platform.
3. Creative Discounting: inflation and the cost-of-living crisis came up time and again in the winning work, with juries most impressed by campaigns that took a novel approach. This includes Ziploc’s ingenious campaign that transformed expired food coupons into discounts on its storage bags.