5 observations from Cannes Lions 2026

(None of which are directly about AI or creativity. 🎉)

Between the ages of 9 and 14, I went to a very rough public school in my hometown, which was known for its bullying. Problem was, the alternative was known as even worse, so that’s what it was gonna be. While I made friends there, we were mostly survival mechanisms for each other to make sense of the bad shit we were observing.

Fast forward 20 years, and some of those lessons still live in me. I’m highly attuned to social dynamics around me, my nervous system on constant alert for threats, my peripheral vision nothing short of whatever the Predator might have going on. And yet, there’s a plus.

I also became far more attuned to when the right chemistry occurs, and who are the people who subconsciously make me feel safe, and welcome, and therefore are the people I want to make sure feel safe and welcome in my presence too. Those you can call “my people”.

As I type this, I’m in my hotel room in Nice, passing time before I fly later today, and I spent effectively no more than a day at Cannes Lions yesterday. A waste of a trip, some of you might think. But what follows are a few observations that have made me feel content with the fact that I had a 5-day pass, but chose to partition my week in more sustainable ways – for me, my family, and my business.

1/ Belonging as a brief

This entire experience was governed by a slight reframe of the brief in my head: I wasn’t here to do networking-maxxing. I was here to simply find the pockets in which I feel I belong. When Amy and Sarah invited me to be part of their speaking event (which went very well!), and we all met each other over a call some two months ago. The chemistry and sense of belonging were almost instantly there.

That feeling is something we should never let go of. Chemistry isn’t something you force but rather something that occurs. I hung out with Vanessa Toro, who I’d only met through the internet, and it felt like I had known her for years and we could talk about pretty much anything. It just felt, as she said afterwards, “easy and familiar”.

If you struggle with networking events, consider that what you’re doing might be less about “connecting with potential clients or partners”, and more about finding people who make you feel you belong. Chances are, they’re looking for a sense of belonging as well.

On which note…

2/ Commercial vs kinetic value

I struggle with the word ‘connection’ these days because it’s a wildly overused word. “I’m at Cannes, let’s connect” is “can I pick your brains for 30 minutes” coated in yoga-babble. I’d much rather people just be honest, and honesty can come in a few forms:

• I’d love to meet you, because I love your work

• I’d love to meet you, because you seem like a nice person

• I’d love to meet you, because we need to catch up

• I have an opportunity I’d like to pitch to you

This last one might feel trite, but at least it’s honest. These days, I’d rather someone clearly signals that a conversation is about commercial value, or kinetic value. Are we here to try to generate something that’s commercially worthwhile, or are we here primarily to generate kinetic value as defined by “feeling moved by the fact we’re both learning something meaningful from one another”?

The worst is when you pretend it’s the latter, in order to trojan horse the former. The best is when the latter naturally opens room for the former to emerge, as was the case with a conversation I had with Laura Ranzato from Clean Creatives over dinner. We were simply hanging out and getting to know about each other’s work, and then it dawned on me after a couple of hours that we might want to do an event of some form together. More on that to come.

3/ Invisible influence

I’m fascinated by how we think influence only comes in the form of being very public, and very active on social media, and always writing and sharing thoughts about the latest ad or cultural meme or hot take that everyone else got wrong but you. Sure, some people have built careers on that, and I’m not going to pretend that I don’t play some part of that game by being prolific with my words.

But, one other side of this game is what I call ‘invisible influence’. The way it works is that you’re much more targeted in your interventions, and effectively always meeting people and introducing people and finding ways to generate what I call ‘network deal flow’.

Amy Daroukakis already has a tremendous term for this idea, “network-weaving”, so this is my attempt to offer a fresh way to land essentially the same point. ‘Deal flow’ is a term from the world of investing, but it might as well work for relationship building, because what you’re doing is not only meeting people all the time, but also ensuring people have the opportunity to meet other people.

What this does is it creates an invisible network of influence (as in, you wouldn’t know it from someone’s public profile, for example) where someone is fundamentally known for being helpful and never leaving anyone with a loose end. Whenever I meet people, I am always trying to think who I can introduce them to next. I took this one from James Sandrini, and I gotta tell you, it works a treat. Plus you feel good about helping someone keep their stuff moving along.

4/ Binding ingredients

LinkedIn messages are cheap. Emails are cheap. Zoom calls are less cheap, but still cheap-ish. Not because they don’t carry objective value, but because their subjective value (i.e. the real value our brains really know how to process) has diminished by the fact there’s so much of it. Too much, in fact. So our brains just tune out.

On the other hand, physical exchange now becomes the rare and therefore more meaningful binding ingredient to how people find each other and remember each other. It’s less scalable as you can’t do loads of those back to back by sharing your scheduling calendar link to anyone who’ll listen, but that’s the point. Scalable things are typically one step away from becoming commoditised things.

This isn’t to say you can’t have a meaningful conversation online or over a call, of course you can. I have those all the time. But you’re much more likely to have a memorable conversation with someone in person, maybe for the contents, but mostly because of the environment. The oxytocin that gets released over a cup of coffee and good chat is yet unmatched. And it will only go up in value as culture bifurcates into extremely digital vs extremely analog.

5/ Just-enough-maxxing

While I was having dinner with Laura Ranzato, we discussed a question that I think we need to reflect on far more often: is there an optimal scale to most things? We know from a human relationships perspective there’s the Dunbar number, so fine that’s one side. But there are other dimensions which are even more consequential:

• Do countries have a natural optimal scale? (For example, Switzerland is voting on whether to cap population at 10 million)

• Do businesses have a natural optimal scale? (For example, my theory, purely based on vibes and chats, is that a good creative agency is at its optimal stage between 80 and 200 people, though this is likely to change with automation fairly soon)

• Do categories have a natural optimal scale? (For example, the US advertising industry’s direct contribution to US GDP often fluctuates between 1-2%, we could say this is its optimal scale)

Taking this down to a more micro level, is there an optimal scale to what one day at Cannes Lions can realistically give you? My expectations were moderate: 2-3 meaningful conversations, 4-5 good pieces of work, doing a good job at my event. That was what success was going to look like for me. And I hit all those targets.

You could argue this means I wasn’t ambitious enough, but I’m more curious about how we move from maximising everything to knowing exactly what just enough of something is. Sustainable ambition, if you will. Knowing what “enough” looks like for you might become the next big flex in a world that is trying to “max” everything around it.

Thank you

To the people who agreed to meet, who I serendipitously stumbled upon as I was roaming the Palais, or who were with me on stage and did an excellent job despite what their inner critics might be thinking right now. In alphabetical order:

Amiyra Perkins, Amy Daroukakis, Eman Ebed Alkadi, Ilaria Pasquinelli, Jean Batthany, Kendra Valentine, Laura Ranzato, Monika Jiang, Paddy Gilmore, Sarah Owen, Seetal Fatania, Tash Willcocks, Tom Morton, Vanessa Toro.