Another Cannes Lions has come and gone. The rosé flowed, the sun scorched, and the Croisette pulsed with energy. But beneath the glitz and glamour, the schism that’s been building for over a decade can no longer be glossed over. There are now firmly two Cannes—the one inside the Palais and the other one in the beach cabanas, yachts, and hotel lobbies and rooftops. This has been playing out for some time, but this year, I had to ask myself: does anyone care about this divide anymore?

One Cannes happens inside the Palais: for those of you who have never been blessed with a Festival pass, this is where creativity is lionized, literally and figuratively. It’s where you can ‘walk the work’ in the basement, where CMOs and creative leaders take to the stage to evangelize the power of creativity and big ideas, and where the dulcet voice of Juan Señor announces the Bronze, Silver, Gold Lion and Grand Prix winners.

And then there’s the other Cannes that happens outside the Palais. This alter ego also has content, albeit some of it rehashed from the Palais, particularly if someone has gone to the expense of flying in a crossover celebrity from the US. Still, there is also much more content, especially if you look for it and schedule carefully. The other Cannes is the belle of the ball, hosting many of the lunches, pre-dinner drinks, dinners, and parties. But it’s also where business gets done, whether it’s product demos, quarterly business reviews, networking, or even new business pitches. 

There have been two Cannes for some time, but they are always within touching distance of each other. This year, it felt like they had finally become untethered from each other.

For decades, Cannes was primarily attended by advertising agencies and production companies. Then, in 2003, Jim Stengel, then CMO at P&G, decided that the world’s largest advertiser should attend Cannes to elevate its creativity by benchmarking itself against the best. Although not the first advertiser to attend Cannes, P&G’s decision was a pivotal moment in the history of the festival, setting a precedent for most other global advertisers to follow.

Like the big beasts flocking to a watering hole, the presence of advertisers at Cannes initially attracted digital platforms, then martech vendors and data companies, and most recently, consultancies and retailers. Bearing the torch of technology, these arrivistes crowded out most of the advertising agencies and banished the production companies to their villas in the hills.

Fast forward to Cannes 2025 and congratulations to the teams behind AXA’s « Three Words, » Dove’s « Real Beauty: Self-Esteem Project, » and the other winning campaigns. The big difference for me this year is that for the first time, I couldn’t recall any of the award-winning campaigns sweeping the awards (I had to Google it as part of writing this article). This year’s winning work was not the focus of conversations last week on the Croisette, nor in the beach cabanas, yachts, hotel lobbies, and rooftops—at least not the ones I was in.

Instead, every conversation I was privy to in Cannes, and virtually all the subsequent recaps in my LinkedIn feed, were dominated by AI and its application to media planning and buying, the creator economy, privacy-preserving data collaboration, and other technology-related topics. Perhaps not surprisingly. In a world where every CMO is under pressure to do more with less, creative excellence is no longer enough, and it must now coexist with data and technology to drive consistently high levels of performance.

To be clear, this is not a nostalgic lament. Cannes has continuously evolved to reflect the direction our industry is heading. But do we need to address the elephant in the room: If creativity is no longer the gravitational center of our industry’s biggest festival, then what is?

It may be time to stop thinking of Cannes Lions as a single event and instead see it for what it has become: a celebration of creativity wrapped in a forum for commercial transformation.

The Palais remains the preeminent global stage for celebrating creativity and championing diversity and sustainability. Meanwhile, outside the Palais, the conversations revolve around how data and technology can improve media effectiveness and efficiency. This bifurcation isn’t a bad thing. However, it does suggest that Cannes is now serving two distinct audiences. 

What struck me this year wasn’t so much a merging of creativity and technology but rather the gap that remains between them, as well as the opportunity that still exists to close it. We didn’t see creative directors flocking to data collaboration panels or engineers obsessing over emotive storytelling. But perhaps that’s precisely the point: the tools exist, but the mindset shift hasn’t fully happened yet.

This is where companies like Decentriq can make a difference — not simply by providing clean rooms but by enabling more imaginative and responsible uses of data. Clean rooms aren’t just infrastructure. They’re a canvas for more creative collaboration between brands and publishers, between media buyers and data owners, and between marketers who want to do more with their first-party data without compromising consumer trust.

Used well, data collaboration environments can help marketers move beyond blunt segmentation and into sharper, more relevant communications. They unlock new ways of targeting, measurement, and partnership. But that’s only if we apply them with the same creative intent we bring to storytelling.

If Cannes 2025 showed us anything, it’s that we don’t just need more technology — we need a more creative application of it. The next frontier isn’t about more panels or platforms. It’s about designing ecosystems where the artistry of marketing can meet the discipline of data.

So, has technology finally conquered creativity?

Not exactly. But it has certainly redrawn the map. Creativity is still crucial. However, it now operates within a more complex, multidimensional framework that encompasses data, accountability, and interoperability.

If we’re wise, we’ll stop pitting these forces against each other and start designing our organizations, partnerships, and even our events around their coexistence.

Cannes will likely always be two festivals in one. The key — for advertisers, agencies, digital platforms, and tech players alike — is to make sure we’re not just choosing one Cannes over the other but finding a way to both beaches at once.