Perspectives
Executive Summary: Every year, Cannes Lions surfaces a question the industry is quietly asking. This year's answer was unambiguous: despite the accelerating noise around AI and generative technology, the secrets to great advertising haven't changed. The campaigns that won were the most human. Joe Fullylove, Strategy Director at Hall & Partners, unpacks what this year's Lions tell us about creativity, insight, and what only people can do.
Human creativity is still the lifeblood of advertising
It has become fashionable to frame AI as a threat to creative work. The more honest framing is this: AI is making execution easier, and in doing so, it is raising the bar for what genuine creativity actually requires.
Production is no longer a barrier and iteration is fast and cheap. But the question of what to say, to whom, and why it should matter remains stubbornly human.
Two campaigns made this vivid at this year's Lions. AXA's Three Words took a behavioural insight: that people struggle to articulate where they live in emergencies, and that imprecision costs lives…and turned it into a product innovation.
Heineken's The Pub That Refused to Die found something equally grounded: a stubborn, specific truth about the role of the local pub in community life and defended it without sentimentality. Both campaigns succeeded because the creativity was inseparable from the insight behind it and neither could have been generated by a prompt.
AI is making execution and production easier, but true creativity links ideas to culture, emotions, and human nuance in a way that remains unique to the human experience.
The most powerful ideas uncover a truth and make it matter
Specificity stood out at Cannes. The winning campaigns uncovered new meaning. They found a belief, a tension, or a lived experience that already existed and gave it form.
Hyundai Puerto Rico's Coqui Alarmed is the clearest example of this. The coqui frog is a deeply specific symbol of Puerto Rican identity; instantly recognizable to islanders, largely unknown outside. The campaign became universal by being precise: capturing something so authentically local that it resonated far beyond its original audience.
This is the paradox that consumer insight consistently surfaces: the more specific and human a truth, the wider it goes. Winning campaigns at Cannes were chasing resonance and the reach followed.
It also reinforces something the attention economy keeps testing: audiences share what feels true.
Creativity and insight create value - not just visibility
The strongest work at Cannes treated creativity not as a communications layer applied at the end of a strategy, but as a thread running through the entire brand - from product to customer experience to marketing. AXA's insight that people struggle to communicate their location in emergencies didn't just inform a campaign, but actively changed what AXA built. Creativity created a better product and a more compelling story at the same time.
This is the version of creativity that great brand building has always depended on. It’s not focused on execution for its own sake, but centered around ideas that create genuine value for people and, in doing so, for the brand. It also explains why media strategy and insight matter as much as creative execution: the best idea in the wrong context, with the wrong understanding of the audience, doesn't land.
Key Takeaways
- AI is accelerating production and execution, but the foundations of great creative work remain human: insight, cultural fluency, emotional truth
- Winning campaigns at Cannes 2026 didn't invent meaning; they uncovered specific, authentic human truths and gave them form
- Specificity, not breadth, is what creates universal resonance, the most local ideas often travelled furthest
- The strongest creative work treats insight as a strategic input, not a communications afterthought — AXA's Three Words changed both the product and the campaign
- Visibility is not the goal; resonance is and resonance requires understanding people, not just reaching them
Conclusion: The right question isn't what AI can do
The conversation in recent years has circled the same question: what can AI do? Cannes 2026 instead asks a more important question: what is it that only humans can do? Meaning, nuance, cultural specificity and the ability to find a truth in someone's life and make it matter.
AI is here to stay, bringing genuine opportunities for content creation, production, and scale. But the foundations of great advertising remain what they have always been: human. The real risk for brands isn't that AI becomes creative. It's that organisations become less curious about people because AI makes it easier to generate answers before asking better questions.
At Hall & Partners, that's what we help brands build from: the human insight that makes creativity not just visible, but valuable.
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Key Questions
Cannes Lions 2026 suggests the latter. The campaigns that won weren't distinguished by their production method. They were distinguished by the quality of the human truth at their center and the creativity with which it was expressed. AI lowered the barriers to content creation and execution, but it didn't lower the barriers to meaning. If anything, it raised them. When anyone can produce content quickly and cheaply, the scarcity shifts to ideas that actually say something worth hearing.
The strongest campaigns shared one defining characteristic: they were rooted in authentic human insight. Rather than relying on technology or production value alone, they uncovered meaningful cultural, emotional, or behavioral truths and expressed them in ways that resonated with audiences. The creativity was inseparable from the insight behind it.
AI can accelerate research, generate ideas, and streamline execution, but it cannot replace the curiosity required to uncover meaningful human truths. The most effective creative work begins with understanding people's motivations, emotions, and lived experiences—something that still depends on human judgment and empathy.
Effective creativity goes beyond attracting attention. The best campaigns solve real problems, create value for people, and strengthen the relationship between consumers and brands. As Cannes Lions 2026 demonstrated, the most successful ideas combine strategic insight with creative execution to deliver meaningful impact.
Cannes Lions 2026 showed that technology alone doesn't create standout work. Brands that invest in understanding people, embracing cultural nuance, and building ideas around genuine human truths are more likely to create campaigns that resonate, build brand equity, and deliver lasting commercial value.
