As advertising executives prepare to descend on the French Riviera for Cannes Lions 2026, several sessions highlight the industry's most pressing challenges, from AI-powered creativity to the tension between brand values and customer demands.

"We are right in the middle of a pretty weird era of mismatch between the creative needs that brands have and what they are able to produce either on their own or via their agency partners," EMARKETER analyst Max Willens said on a recent episode of "Behind the Numbers."

The festival runs June 22-25 in Cannes, France. These four sessions reveal where the industry is headed.

The AI creativity gap is widening

Meta's session "The Evolution of Creativity" pairs contemporary artist Daniel Arsham with Instagram VP of Product Tessa Lyons to explore AI-powered creative tools, a pairing that reveals the platform's struggle to convince major brands to embrace automation.

Before Pinterest rolled out its Performance Plus automated campaign suite, the platform recommended two pins per campaign. Now it recommends 10 pins minimum. Experts say Meta's demands are even more extreme.

"Instead of just six or seven different versions of a farmer in Guatemala holding up a big straw bag of beans, you now need six or seven of those, six or seven of the mountains, six or seven of two fit people at work smiling and laughing, drinking coffee," said Willens.

The divide between creative supply and demand has become a chasm. While Meta's Advantage+ automated tools have helped drive the company's ad business growth, adoption among major brands remains limited. These companies remain "precious about their creative assets," Willens noted, creating tension between platform requirements and brand standards.

Brand values versus customer feedback

A session from Vacation Inc. and Thinker Bell called "Stop Listening To The Customer, Build Brands That Last Forever" contends that when brands are "powerful, clear, and ritualized," they reduce or eliminate the need to advertise.

Our analyst Nate Elliott expressed skepticism about the approach's broad applicability.

"If you happen to be a product genius along the lines of Steve Jobs, then by all means feel free to ignore your customers," said Elliott. "I don't know that that's a replicable playbook for most companies."

However, Willens suggested the session could prompt valuable self-reflection, particularly as Gen Z consumers increasingly make purchase decisions based on company values rather than price alone.

While few companies can successfully ignore customer feedback, the session highlights growing pressure on brands to develop distinctive identities. The challenge is determining when to lead with vision versus when to listen to market demands.

Entertainment as advertising strategy

Sir John Hegarty's session "Stop Working in Advertising" calls for brands to "stop behaving like an advertisement and start acting like a movement," creating work that feels like "a song you'd play again, a film you remember, an idea you believe in."

Data supports the entertainment-first approach. Entertainment ranks as the content type that makes US adults feel most favorable toward brands, according to April 2024 data from Ipsos.

Yet execution remains elusive. Elliott pointed to this year's Super Bowl, where dozens of advertisers spent millions on creative and media, but only a handful created memorable work.

"The vast majority of them fall flat, and that's been true ever since Steve Jobs showed the world how to do it 40-something years ago with the original Mac ad," Elliott said.

The entertainment imperative is driving significant investment in creator partnerships, as brands seek to outsource the challenge of being entertaining.

"If these big problems are 'We have a significantly expanded need for creative raw material, we need to be entertaining'... we spend a ton of money on people who have built their whole careers out of being entertaining on the internet," Willens said.

Values-driven brands show the way

Patagonia VP of Creative Alex Weller's session "Forward, Not Flawless" explores how brands maintain values while operating at global scale, a topic that resonated with Elliott as both an analyst and customer.

"I don't think there's a lot of debate that Patagonia products in general are very good," Elliott said. "But they don't lead with the quality of the products. They lead with what they stand for."

The brand's willingness to publish full-page ads calling out elected officials for "deceitful statements and harmful actions" demonstrates a fearlessness rare in corporate America.

"There are not a lot of companies who would be willing to just completely alienate half of the country potentially," Elliott said. "That level of fearlessness is pretty remarkable and tends to engender even greater loyalty amongst the portion of the population who agrees with those statements."

As brands face pressure to stand for something beyond products, Patagonia offers a model for values-first marketing. The approach requires organizational courage that extends beyond the marketing department to the C-suite.

Listen to the full episode.