Nicholas Kemp, Senior Customer Success Lead at Cannes Lions Learning, spent this year’s festival analyzing what separated Grand Prix winners from everyone else. His conclusion challenges the prevailing narrative about technology in creativity.
“AI has democratized opportunity,” Kemp explains, citing Sir John Hegarty’s observation at the festival. “Creativity is the only thing left to compete on.”
This year’s Cannes Lions revealed five distinct trends that independent agencies should note—not because they’re novel, but because they’re increasingly rare. From 70 years of stage content and winning work, Kemp identified patterns that matter more now than they did 12 months ago.
The competitive edge is humor, not algorithms
According to Kemp, Kantar research presented at the festival showed that the global share of funny ads has dropped to just 33%. Meanwhile, speakers across multiple stages emphasized that laughter remains the strongest remaining superpower of advertising.
Chris Charles, ECD at 21 Grams, put it directly during his session: “Making people laugh is one of the strongest superpowers you have as an advertiser.”
Heinz demonstrated this with their Deadpool and Wolverine integration, where they noticed the superhero duo’s iconic red and yellow suits matched ketchup and mustard exactly. The brand turned a blockbuster film into an unforgettable ad without spending a dollar on traditional media buys.
“Once you see it, you can’t unsee it,” Kemp notes. The work won multiple Lions for doing what AI can’t—finding human wit in cultural moments.
Purpose moved from we to me
Kemp highlights a significant shift in how purpose-driven work functions. According to Edelman’s Cannes presentation, purpose hasn’t disappeared—it has become more specific.
“We’ve seen this move from we to me,” Kemp explains. “Brands are zeroing in on real subcommunities rather than trying to save all the elephants and dolphins.”
Dove’s Code My Crown campaign exemplified this evolution. The brand discovered that 85% of black gamers felt unrepresented in video games, particularly regarding hair texture. Rather than making another broad statement about beauty, Dove collaborated with black 3D artists, animators, and programmers to develop realistic hair rendering software for game developers.
“It’s quite exclusionary,” one gamer explained in the case study. “It feels like I shouldn’t be playing this.”
Code My Crown won three Grand Prix awards. Kemp notes that the work succeeded because it solved a specific problem for a defined community, then made the solution freely available to the industry.
Inclusive culture enables brave work
Laura Winston, CEO at ZBD Talent, addressed what Kemp considers the festival’s most practical insight: “Many people think it’s hard to be inclusive. I can confidently say it isn’t hard. You just need to crack on, have inclusive conversations and make a start.”
The Caption With Intention project demonstrated this principle through action. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences partnered with researchers to redesign closed captions for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences—a system that had remained unchanged since 1971.
The new approach uses dynamic text animation for synchronization, varying type sizes for intonation and colors for character identification. According to Kemp, who is part of the hard-of-hearing community himself, the impact was immediate.
“I remember having an infection in my good ear and having to turn on captions for the first time,” he explains. “It was such a jarring experience to have that wall of text.”
Caption With Intention won three Grand Prix awards. More importantly, the Oscars submission rulebook now requires all eligible films to use the system starting next year.
Long-term brand building still wins
Kemp points to System1 research presented at the festival, noting that brands running campaigns for three years are twice as likely to report profit growth, achieve a four times larger ROI, and deliver seven and a half times the incremental profit of campaigns that are abandoned quickly.
“If something works, smart money is to stick with it,” he notes.
Apple’s Shot on iPhone campaign, which turned 10 years old during the festival and won the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix, proved the point. The campaign began in 2015 when Kantar’s research showed camera quality was the top consideration for smartphone purchases.
Apple responded by letting users’ photos do the talking. A decade later, the campaign continues generating billions of impressions by celebrating human creativity rather than technical specifications.
“From amateur to world famous, all thanks to a cell phone picture,” Kemp observes about the campaign’s impact.
Technology needs trust to work
Kemp’s final insight focuses on what he calls the festival’s quietest revolution. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft AI, shared research showing only 27% of UK consumers are comfortable with businesses using AI—a trust gap that’s widening, not shrinking.
The Innovation Lions Grand Prix winner addressed this directly. Sounds Right, created by the Museum for the United Nations and UN Live, made nature the first verified non-human artist on Spotify. The initiative transforms music streams into conservation funding by crediting Mother Nature as a collaborator.
According to Kemp, the campaign succeeded because it used technology to solve problems rather than create them. “It’s about time that artists and Mother Earth finally shook hands,” he notes.
Nature became a top 1% artist worldwide, with more than 150 million streams, generating ongoing conservation funding from artists such as Brian Eno and London Grammar.
What indie agencies should remember
Kemp’s biggest takeaway challenges how agencies think about disruption. “AI is just the latest disruption,” he explains. “It’s a pretty big one, but so was the internet. So was social media 20 years ago.”
His concern focuses on what gets lost during technological shifts. “Every efficiency you gain from AI—which is wonderful—it’s always important to be mindful of the fact it can only cut down,” he warns. “All of the gaps in learning and knowledge that creates by juniors not being able to learn on the job will create a vacuum in the future.”
The work that won at Cannes Lions 2025 succeeded by using technology to enable human creativity, not replace it. According to Kemp, that’s the insight independent agencies need most right now.
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