Cannes Lions Day 2 Opens With AI, Creators And Marketing’s New Power Shift

The story was originally published on MartechAI.com

The second morning of Cannes Lions 2026 opens with a sharper question than the first: what happens when creativity is no longer judged only by the strength of an idea, but by the intelligence of the system that produces it?

After an opening day that brought together brand leaders, agencies, platforms, creators and technology companies across the Croisette, Tuesday is expected to push the festival deeper into the forces reshaping modern marketing. The 73rd edition of Cannes Lions, taking place from 22 to 26 June in Cannes, is no longer just a celebration of campaigns. It is increasingly a forum where the industry debates how brands will build, scale and measure creativity in an AI-led environment.

Monday offered the first major signal. The opening winners were announced across categories including Audio & Radio, Creative Brand, Creative B2B, Health & Wellness, Outdoor, Pharma and Print & Publishing. But the most significant marker for marketers came through the inaugural Creative Brand Lion Grand Prix, awarded to AB InBev for “AB InBev: Creativity at Scale”.

The win matters because it reflects a larger industry shift. Cannes is not only rewarding the campaign anymore. It is also rewarding the operating model behind the campaign. For marketing leaders, that is the bigger story. The conversation is moving from isolated creative excellence to repeatable creative capability. The question for brands is no longer just whether they can produce one great piece of work, but whether they have the culture, talent, technology and internal systems to make creativity consistent.

Several of Monday’s Grand Prix winners reinforced this direction. Hyundai Puerto Rico’s “Coquí Alarmed” turned a local cultural sound into an audio idea. SKF’s “The Faroe Islands Space Program” showed how B2B storytelling can create a sustainability-led narrative. The Ordinary’s “The Periodic Fable” brought craft and education into health and wellness. Mercado Livre’s “Field Barcode” transformed a football pitch into a media surface. Heinz’s “Look Familiar?” leaned on brand memory and visual distinctiveness to make a print idea land instantly.

Together, these winners point to a Cannes where effectiveness, culture, craft and technology are becoming harder to separate.

Tuesday’s agenda builds directly on that tension. One of the most closely watched sessions of the morning will be OpenAI’s “Advertising in the Age of AI”, scheduled at the Debussy Theatre in the Palais. The session brings Denise Dresser, Chief Revenue Officer at OpenAI, in conversation with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin, and is expected to examine how advertising changes when AI becomes a core interface for search, discovery and decision-making.

For marketers, this is no longer a distant question. AI has already moved from experimentation to workflow. It is being used to generate ideas, accelerate production, personalize communication, analyze customer behaviour and support media planning. But Cannes 2026 is pushing the conversation further. If AI becomes the layer through which consumers ask questions, compare products, discover brands and make choices, advertising will have to evolve beyond formats and placements.

That creates a new set of questions for the industry. How will brands be discovered in conversational environments? What will visibility mean when answers are generated rather than searched through? How will trust, transparency and disclosure be protected? And how should marketing teams prepare for a world where AI is not just a tool inside the department, but a new operating layer across the consumer journey?

The creator economy is another major force shaping Day 2. LIONS Creators, running through the week at Palais Beach in partnership with Adobe, has made creators a central part of the festival conversation. This reflects the new reality of influence. Creators are no longer just distribution partners for brand campaigns. They are becoming creative collaborators, community builders, commerce drivers and cultural interpreters.

For brands, the creator shift is also a measurement challenge. Reach is no longer enough. Marketers are looking for authenticity, engagement quality, community relevance and real business impact. Cannes is expected to see more conversations around how brands can work with creators without flattening their voice, over-commercialising their content or treating creator partnerships as just another media buy.

B2B marketing is also having a stronger Cannes moment. The LIONS B2B Summit, taking place today at the Carlton Hotel, reflects the growing seriousness with which the festival is treating business-to-business creativity. For years, B2B marketing was often seen as the more functional cousin of consumer advertising. That gap is closing. B2B brands are now under pressure to build distinctiveness, emotional relevance and long-term brand value while still delivering measurable pipeline and growth.

This year’s Cannes agenda suggests that the boundaries between B2B, consumer marketing, creator-led storytelling, AI-led personalisation and entertainment are becoming more fluid. The same forces are shaping all of them: attention scarcity, platform change, fragmented audiences, pressure for accountability and the rapid adoption of new technology.

Tuesday night’s awards will continue that wider story, with categories including Design, Digital Craft, Film Craft, Industry Craft and the Entertainment Lions across gaming, music and sport. That makes the second day a bridge between the systems behind creativity and the craft that brings it to life.

As Cannes wakes up for Day 2, the mood is not just celebratory. It is also reflective. The industry is asking what creativity means when machines can generate, creators can distribute, platforms can personalise and consumers can choose to ignore almost everything.

The answer emerging from the Croisette is clear: creativity still matters, but the way it is built is changing. The brands that win the next era will not be those that simply adopt AI, hire creators or chase culture. They will be the ones that connect these forces into a marketing system that is intelligent, trusted, human and built for scale.

For MartechAI, that is the real story of Cannes Lions 2026 Day 2. This is not just another day of festival programming. It is a preview of the next marketing operating model.