AI was the undisputed hot topic among the more than 15,000 attendees at this year’s sweltering five-day Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
In public, CMOs and agency chiefs struck an upbeat tone, positioning the tech as a tool to supercharge human creativity, not replace it.
However, as the Riviera temperature climbed, so did the tension, and multiple industry execs told ADWEEK of their quiet anxieties about what AI means for creative agencies, media buying, search, industry jobs, and established business models.
On the Palais stage, optimism was in the air. Apple’s Tor Myhren addressed the audience with a keynote rallying for human creativity. Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman spoke to former Snap CCO Colleen DeCourcy about AI’s creative opportunity. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen chatted with Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun about how AI is empowering creative teams.
Meta, Google, Adobe, and more showed off shiny new generative AI tools along the Croisette—demonstrations that fueled both curiosity and unease.
Sir Martin Sorrell, industry veteran and founder of S4 Capital, told ADWEEK that the mood at Cannes was “not good,” saying the 2025 festival marked the end of advertising’s current “golden era.” “Huge changes are coming,” he added.
Sorrell described AI’s impact on the traditional ad industry as “existential,” noting an exec from a major ad platform told him during a dinner they were “very concerned” about AI’s impact not just on advertising, but on industry employment.
In May, Forrester reported that the U.S. ad industry will lose 7.5% of agency jobs (roughly 32,000 roles) to automation by 2030.
“The big theme this week [was], is AI going to upend the industry? I really worry about it,” Sorrell added.
Michael Ruby, president and chief creative officer at indie agency Park & Battery, watched curiously the “bombastic optimism” around AI that was “staunchly parroted” on stage. But behind closed doors, he said the tension was palpable.
“The discomfort is painfully obvious,” Ruby said, echoing Sorrell: “We’ve got to get over it fast, because our industry is evolving in a way it hasn’t in 25 years.”
Agencies face a ‘Kodak moment’
David Jones, founder and CEO of the Brandtech Group, said the ad industry is facing its “Kodak moment.” He didn’t mince words: “If you’re a creative agency, you’re screwed.”
Sorrell observed that art director and copywriting jobs were most under pressure as new tools like Google’s Veo 3 produce more realistic outputs faster.
S4’s Monks agency has developed entirely gen AI-created commercials for Puma and other clients currently live in the market. Such projects can be produced in a matter of days and cost as little as a few hundred thousand dollars, versus spending millions on a shoot in an exotic location.