If you spent late June on the Croisette, you’re probably suffering from the post-Cannes condition: a mind full of ideas, unexpected conversations, and that lingering question about where our industry is heading.
Yes, the Palais was still packed with award-winning campaigns, and polished keynotes. But the real momentum was happening a few hundred meters away—on the beaches, in brand activations, and conversations that rarely made it onto the main stage. Pinterest built an entire offline experience around inspiration. Salesforce panels spent surprisingly little time talking about AI and much more time discussing trust, PR, and long-term brand value. Adobe doubled down on creators. Everywhere you looked, the industry's center of gravity was shifting from campaigns to culture.
After a week of conversations, panels, and more sweat than I care to admit, I came home with one clear takeaway: The brands that win tomorrow won't simply compete for attention. They'll earn a place in culture—and in the intelligence that increasingly guides it.
Here are the three shifts that stood out.
1. AI from "Tool" to "Agentic Architecture"
Agentic AI emerged as one of the defining themes of Cannes. Not because it's another leap in automation, but because it's becoming the intelligence layer between consumers and brands—reshaping how products are discovered, evaluated, and ultimately chosen.
As AI assistants become a natural part of the customer journey, brands won't just compete for human attention. They'll also need to earn the trust of the AI systems increasingly discovering, evaluating, and making decisions on people's behalf.
The implication is clear: it won't be enough for your brand to be memorable. It will need to be understandable, trustworthy, and machine-readable.
2. Originality Just Became More Valuable
Ironically, the more AI everyone uses, the more valuable human taste becomes.
Several speakers described the same problem using different words: AI is making it incredibly easy to produce average content at enormous scale.
When everyone has access to the same models, average becomes free.
That's why one of the most interesting conversations wasn't about content production at all—it was about PR. Multiple sessions pointed to earned media, reputation, and trust as the assets becoming harder—and therefore more valuable—to replicate.
Culture isn't built by publishing more. It's built by giving people something worth talking about.
3. The Creator Economy Isn't a Side Channel Anymore
The biggest surprise wasn't seeing creators everywhere. It was seeing enterprise brands organize around them.
The beach felt less like influencer marketing and more like the future media ecosystem. Creator collectives, live podcasts, intimate community events, and collaborative brand experiences generated far more energy than many of the traditional presentations inside the Palais. Brands accepted something creators have known for years: people don't follow creators because they make ads. They follow creators because they build trust.
Looking back, it's also a reminder of why we built the very first version of DeepDeets as a creator app. Long before creator marketing reached the boardroom, it was already obvious that creators weren't simply another media channel—they were becoming the media itself.
That's a fundamentally different marketing model.
Looking Ahead
The most interesting thing about Cannes wasn't that creators became impossible to ignore.
It was that the industry started organizing around them.
Creators need tools that help them grow sustainable businesses. Brands need better ways to understand what actually drives influence beyond surface-level metrics. Neither works without the other.
That idea has been part of DeepDeets since day one.
Our first product was built for creators, because that's where we believed the future of marketing was taking shape. As the creator economy matured, so did we. Today, we also help brands make better decisions with real-time creator analytics—but the philosophy hasn't changed.
We've always believed that better data shouldn't replace creativity. It should help great creators get recognized, great partnerships happen more often, and marketers invest with greater confidence.
The future of marketing doesn't belong to brands alone—or creators alone.
It belongs to the ecosystem they build together. Our role is simply to make that ecosystem more transparent, more measurable, and easier to grow.
See you on the beach next year.
Selin Arslan
Marketing & Business Development, DeepDeets
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