Summary:

We started the day off with Bianca Fernandez, current head of brand at Palm Tree right now but previous winner of NBC's On Brand with Jimmy Fallon, former head of brand engagement at Personal Day, and former Social Media & Community Manager at Tarte. It was super cool hearing how she got to where she is today and how she ended up in these roles pretty unexpectedly. She touched on how’s she’s been intentional but also just stayed open to the roads that life and her career could take her on and how she’s really learned new in each role she’s had.

I then attended a CMOs in the Spotlight but it was honestly so dull that I walked out after 20 minutes.

From there I attended Forward, Not Flawless: The Creative Tension between Values and Scale with the VP of Creative for Patagonia. This was one of my favorite talks of the day. Alex talked about how Patagonia is defined by their values: the business of saving their home planet. He posed the question of "How do you hold on to your values when everything about growth is pulling you in a different direction?". The whole presentation that followed was to answer this, using Patagonia has a case study. Some of the points that stuck with me were that Patagonia “will offend, & it will inspire”. If the tension is the work, and stories reveal the work, the story telling is the solution. Because of this they recognize the importance of not only telling the finished version, because if you do you lose the thread of change. He ended the talk saying that “The more clearly you express your values the less universally accepted you become, but the risk is not in people disagreeing in what you believe, it's people not knowing what you believe in at all”. This was one of the most powerful things I heard in the whole festival. Although it can be applied to business, I think it could really be applied too anything you do in life.

After this I went to a couple more talks. At META BEACH they touched on how when brands are hiring influencers they should stop using GEN Z as a buzzword for culture and popularity and instead see who is building community.

In the JURY ROOM for Entertainment lions they said “Entertainment is something that makes you forget time”, so when judging the work they asked themselves "Did it stop me to immerse with it fully?". That is what the Cerveza Victoria film did to them, hence it won.

And lastly Mel Robbins ended her talk asking the audience what they want to be remembered for. And that it’s never too late and she is an example of that.

Overall, this day I concluded that talks at FORUM STAGE were my favorite type of format, and started to see a pattern with the topics of conversation at the festival. There was a lot of talk about the importance of storytelling, authenticity, and GEN Z.

STORYTIME:

One of my favorite stories from the festival actually came this day from waiting in line.

We were planning to attend a Netflix comedy special that was open to the public, so we showed up about an hour and a half before the show was scheduled to start. As we waited, we struck up conversations with the people around us. One had previously worked on the communications team at Duolingo, and another worked at AKA, a New York entertainment advertising agency that I've followed for quite some time.

The conversations couldn't have been more serendipitous. I've always been interested in breaking into Broadway advertising at an agency like AKA, and I had also been hoping to meet someone from Duolingo since I had created a Duolingo campaign that was later brought to life in the real world. Somehow, while simply standing in line, I found myself connecting with people from both worlds.

Ironically, we never made it into the show. Despite advertising it as open to the public, Netflix ended up only admitting VIP guests, leaving everyone else waiting outside. It was definitely disappointing.

But in hindsight, that hardly mattered.

Instead of watching the comedy special, we walked away with two or three genuinely meaningful connections. That experience perfectly captured the spirit of Cannes Lions for me. The most valuable networking didn't happen during keynote talks or panel discussions. It happened while waiting in line, grabbing a drink at the bar, and during all of those unexpected moments in between.

It was a reminder that you never know who you're going to meet, and sometimes the experiences you didn't plan for end up being the most memorable. Ev.en though we missed the show, I left feeling like we had gained something far more valuable