Cannes Lions Creates Award for Organizations That Build Creative Systems, Not Just Campaigns
Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has introduced the Creative Brand Lion, a new award category that recognizes organizations for investing in internal systems, culture, and leadership frameworks that sustain breakthrough creativity and long-term brand growth.
The award shifts focus from individual campaigns to the business structures that enable them. Rather than celebrating a single piece of work, the Creative Brand Lion spotlights how companies build repeatable creative excellence through leadership alignment, operational investment, and team capability development.
Marcel Marcondes, Global Chief Marketing Officer at AB InBev and 2024 WFA Global Marketer of the Year, will serve as the inaugural jury president. His appointment reinforces that the award treats creativity as a measurable driver of commercial performance, not an artistic benchmark.
New Research Initiative to Track How AI Reshapes Creative Work
Cannes Lions is also strengthening its partnership with the World Federation of Advertisers to launch Clients and Creativity 2026, a global research initiative designed to capture how senior marketers expect creativity to evolve in an increasingly technology-driven environment.
The research will invite executives from WFA member companies to complete a short survey identifying where future creative advantage will come from and how artificial intelligence is already reshaping capability building inside marketing organizations.
Survey results will be released in early June, ahead of the 2026 Cannes Lions Festival, where discussions on the relationship between creativity, innovation, and AI are expected to dominate.
Clarity Needed on Creativity and AI
Stephan Loerke, CEO of the World Federation of Advertisers, said marketers are navigating one of the most significant shifts in brand building history. Brand owners increasingly want clarity on which capabilities will define creative success and how those capabilities translate into measurable growth.
Simon Cook, CEO of Cannes Lions, said the new award reflects a broader industry shift toward recognizing creativity as an organizational discipline rather than a campaign-level achievement. The joint research will provide insight into how brand-side leaders currently interpret the evolving relationship between AI and creative performance.
Earlier WFA research from 2022 found that more than four out of five multinational marketers described creativity as marketing's most powerful advantage. Many identified it as essential to business success itself.
Now, with AI transforming production speed, insight generation, and audience targeting, both organizations are working to ensure creativity remains central to brand strategy rather than peripheral to it.
For creative professionals, understanding how your organization builds creative systems - and how AI fits into that structure - is becoming a competitive skill. AI for Creatives and AI for Marketing resources can help you stay ahead of these shifts.
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