Cannes Lions Signals A Shift In The Mandate For Creative Work To Prove Business Impact

For most of its history, creative work was judged on assertion. Someone senior in the room said the idea was strong, the campaign ran, and the results were argued about afterward. That standard is collapsing. The industry's most prestigious awards now require submissions to show results confirmed by the brand's own CMO, and the work that wins is rarely just clever communication. It is a business decision, a product decision, and a brand-equity decision operating at once. For executives outside marketing, the shift matters because it reframes creative from a cost line the marketing department defends into something that has to be read, timed, and evidenced like any other strategic call.

Creative strategy has moved out of the marketing department and into the C-suite, because the work now has to prove business relevance, cultural impact, and long-term brand value rather than just cleverness. The shift is visible in how the industry's most prestigious awards programs, like the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, are judged. Submissions are increasingly expected to show measurable results confirmed by the brand's own CMO, and the biggest winners are rarely just smart communications. They're business ideas, product ideas, and brand-equity ideas operating at the same time. The change reframes creativity as a growth decision executives should own rather than a cost line they approve.

As a member of the design jury at Cannes Lions 2026, Eva Stetefeld reviewed a wide body of global creative work. A creative leader herself, Stetefeld has deep experience guiding brands through the strategy and execution of high-impact campaigns, and she brings a perspective grounded in evaluating what separates work that merely looks good from work that moves a business.

"If we try just to create for the sake of creating, the C-suite won't take us seriously," she says. "Creative work has to connect back to the reason we do it. We create because we want to, and are able to, deliver results for our clients. However, to ensure that we can help our clients achieve their goals, we need to be involved throughout the entire process and have a seat at the table from the very beginning." That principle of creativity that's accountable to business impact is what the current awards landscape now enforces.

The rules changed, and so did the standard

According to Stetefeld, the judging conditions themselves have shifted. Following the AI controversy that shadowed the 2025 festival, juries were reconstituted to be more diverse, bringing in more marketers alongside creators, and submissions were required to provide evidence of results confirmed by the submitting brand's CMO. "It's no longer, 'Wow, that's a clever idea. Let's give it this nice prize.' It's about what kind of impact it had," she notes.

The effect is a higher bar. Clever execution is table stakes. The work that rises now carries emotional and cultural weight, and often extends beyond communication into the product itself.

When the creative idea is the product

The clearest illustration is the AXA "Three Words" case, which Stetefeld points to as the model for where creative value is heading. The insurance company added three words to its contracts to cover domestic violence, turning a societal insight into a product change that redefined the brand's relationship with its customers. "This is more than a creative idea. They saw the problem and they changed it with the product itself. Those three words changed the whole perception of the brand and its connection with customers." Not only was the AXA case one of the big winners at Cannes in 2025, but it also won a Grand Prix in the Creative Effectiveness category in 2026.

The business result followed the commitment. Stetefeld cites roughly 10% more signed insurance contracts in the months after, because customers rewarded the brand's stance. The lesson is that the strongest creative ideas alter what the company actually does, which is precisely why the decision belongs at the executive level.

Bring creatives in before the strategy locks

If creative work is going to carry business weight, the process has to change. Stetefeld's core operational argument is that creatives need a seat at the table early, before the goal is set, so that ambition and business objective are aligned from the start. "The most important thing is that as a creative, you have the chance to arrive at the table early enough to sit with the people in charge on the client side and get on the same page," she says. "Is the goal financial return, market share, or brand value development? Then you can decide together the right strategy and come up with a creative idea that fits it."

When the alignment happens up front, the creative idea has a defined result to serve, and Stetefeld is confident the impact follows. When creatives are handed a locked brief and asked to decorate it, the connection between idea and outcome is left to chance. She's also candid that the industry has to meet executives partway. The days of creatives refusing to discuss business impact are over, and she treats that as progress rather than a loss.

AI still can't generate the unexpected

The pressure point running underneath all of this is AI, and Stetefeld's position is precise about where it helps and where it doesn't. AI compresses production timelines, adapts ideas across channels, handles translation, and integrates new product ranges. What it can't do is produce the unexpected. "AI will always just produce stuff that fits in the mask. When you want to do the unexpected, the thing people will remember, creativity is the way to go. AI is the factor that helps us produce these ideas faster, but you need the people who see these opportunities."

The market context sharpens the stakes. Stetefeld points out that ad spending and marketing impact have decoupled, with spend rising while global marketing impact declined meaningfully in 2025. Throwing more money at the problem no longer yields more return, in part because the number of platforms and touchpoints has multiplied while audience attention has shortened. In that environment, the differentiator is not budget or volume, but the human judgment to find the idea that cuts through the noise.

The big idea isn't dead, but it's different

Against the trend toward modular, iterative, culturally reactive content, Stetefeld defends the big idea, but redefines it. Rather than a single execution stamped across every channel, it's the core of what the brand stands for, tying a fragmented set of assets together. "A big idea is something that holds it all together. The target audience groups are so diverse that you can't take one piece and put it in a 360 style on every asset. You have to listen to your target groups and the context they're in, then execute in different ways. It's more than the sum of the pieces," she explains.

Due to the diversity of target audiences within their respective cultural contexts, Stetefeld says, it has become more difficult to develop brands consistently. Yet brands are more important than ever. The big idea as the central creative concept behind a brand must be understood in such a way that it can be interpreted differently across cultures and can also feel different. The AXA case is an extremely consistent, socially relevant implementation of "know you can.” However, strong brands also allow for seizing opportunities as they arise and leveraging them in their communications. "The stolen Kit Kat tracker, one of the big winners of 2026, is a wonderful example of how this can be done," she says. "It demonstrates fast, culturally responsive creative that reacts to a moment with speed." The key is to decide what constitutes an opportunity and what does not.

Stetefeld's guidance is to do the homework first: define the brand's core values, and when an opportunity appears, act only if it aligns fully with them. "When you have an opportunity in front of you and you can say it's 100% in line with our core values, then there's not too much risk. That's what should happen."

On whether marketers should chase awards, her answer folds back into the business case. Awards follow excellent work, and excellent work is defined by impact, though impact is not always a number first. "Maybe you're the talk of the town and it's a long-term impact on brand perception, which in the end leads to more sales," she says. "Your brand is the most valuable thing you have. Ideas with a big creative impact can't be measured in just one kind of result."

The views and opinions expressed are those of Eva Stetefeld and do not represent the official policy or position of any organization.