Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2026 opened with a question that refused to go away all week: as AI becomes more capable, what becomes more valuable about being human? Our Cannes Correspondents report on different sessions, stages and conversations and bringing the best of it back to our Members.

Some people will tell you Cannes Lions hasn’t moved fast enough. That may still be true on parts of the Croisette, or in the bar at the Carlton, but it wasn’t true in my classroom. Lex Bradshaw-Zanger shares his insight from Brand Marketer Academy.

In Part 4 of the Red Pill series humari’s Joe Hildebrand explores what’s really blocking marketing teams from getting real value from AI - and it isn’t always fear.

Burnout, economic pressure and digital fatigue are reshaping daily life for Chinese youth. Today, cosy, low-pressure spaces such as craft circles and dazi buddying are making connection more modular, interest-led and easy to step into – less about commitment, more about emotional regulation.

The idea that TV advertising is a dead medium remains popular simply because digital platforms make it incredibly easy for cautious marketers to track immediate actions. In a challenging economic climate, the temptation to rely on instant metrics is understandable. However, real-world data from Uni-China Group shows that relying entirely on easily trackable digital data damages long-term business growth. Shifting budgets exclusively to low-attention digital formats costs companies billions in lost revenue compared to high-attention environments like TV.

For more than a decade, marketers have debated whether television is dying. After moderating The Marketing Society Hong Kong's Uncomfortable Conversations: Is TV Dead? panel, I came away convinced we have been asking the wrong question. Television isn't dead. Consumers have simply changed how they consume video, moving seamlessly between broadcast television, streaming platforms and digital video.

The Marketing Society session I participated in asked a familiar question: Is TV dead? I don’t think that is the most useful question anymore.

For a recent Changemakers Club, Prophet partnered with The Marketing Society to host a group of marketing leaders for a timely discussion on what truly drives customers today.

The second in our series explores emotion, perhaps the most fundamental human advantage of all. AI can read emotion, detect sentiment and measure reactions, but it cannot create feeling. Drawing on behavioural science, this piece argues that emotional significance may become one of the scarcest and most valuable assets in an AI driven world, and asks leaders whether their organisations are designing memorable emotional moments or merely efficient journeys.

Highlights and insights from Navigate: Now and Next 2026 Dubai. Building AI capability, not renting it. The discussions centred on listening before creating, with social intelligence, agentic operating systems and brand memory identified as the foundation no tool alone can replace. The emphasis was on personalisation over averaging, premium environments outperforming generic reach, and the traditional funnel giving way to single-moment, creator-led journeys, with marketing success increasingly dependent on judgement and structure rather than the technology itself.