So I was delighted to see how beautifully Life360 has captured my inner thoughts in its ‘I Think of You (Dying)’ film. An absolute slam-dunk of an idea. Executed with perfectly animated details, from the Cinderella-esque little blue birds to the severed leg. And the spoken rambling bridge of the song? I could listen to it all day because it’s exactly how us mum’s think (when we’re not busy hoovering up a murder show). I’m sold. And right when I’d just signed my daughter up to a smartphone-free childhood, n’all.

Orlaith Conlon, creative director, social, Dentsu Creative: Tourism ads can be a massive trope, but this one makes my toes tingle. Such a simple premise – ‘Iceland is so beautiful it must be AI-generated’ – and suddenly I’m in a tinfoil hat, wondering if Iceland is actually real.

The whole thing is set up with a tongue-in-cheek confidence that lets it fully embrace the absurdity. It’s culturally smart, tapping into our collective paranoia around AI and fake content while using the product itself as the proof against the conspiracy.

Every ridiculous claim becomes another showcase of what makes Iceland incredible. Puffins? Nah, they’re robots. Trees? Don’t grow on green screens, duh. They further expand the idea with fake v real AI test and games.

It shows the power of an idea that inverts the brief and plays social back into itself with a wink. But what I appreciate most about it is that it trusts the audience enough to understand the strange first and do the sell second. True social gold.

Matt Gay, executive creative director, Adam&Eve\TBWA: The last few weeks, I’ve had the privilege of judging the shortlist for the Creative Commerce Lions. The sheer range of creative thinking and different-shaped ideas is mind-blowing and it reminded me just how difficult it is to win a Lion. And while there are favorites, nothing is a sure thing in Cannes, so I hope an underdog sneaks in and snatches a trophy or two.

Of the favorites, I suspect Claude and Coinbase will do very well.

I hope Apple’s ‘Little Critters’ is up there with the winners. Certainly in craft. While idea is king and always will be, I’m a sucker for craft. It’s a wonderful and charming film that has been painstakingly and lovingly crafted by the team behind it. You can literally feel the fingerprints of the director.

The final one I’d like to see take home some metal is McDonald’s brilliant ‘Golden Zone’ campaign.

Tim Pashen, executive creative director, Worthing Your While: A bit like tipping Manchester City in their pomp (hardly a bold call), my money’s on Coinbase for the Film Craft Grand Prix. ‘Your Way Out’ was one of those rare bits of work that stopped the AI-generated long-reads on LinkedIn for five minutes (no mean feat) and made everyone sit back and watch in awe.

Shot in-camera like a real-life video game (because doing things the hard way is back in fashion) and paired with a remastering of I’ve Gotta Be Me by Sammy Davis Jr, it was all pulled off by an emerging indy micro agency with Oscar Hudson at the helm.

I’ve bored more co-workers banging on about this than any other piece this year. Which probably tells you everything you need to know.

Teemu Suviala, global chief creative officer, Landor: There is a tired habit in our trade of mistaking executional choices for ideas. We keep polishing surfaces and calling that polish a deeper thought. So, it is worth pausing over three pieces of work that nicely resist this sad drift: Uncommon’s ‘Periodic Fable’ for The Ordinary, Coinbase’s ‘Your Way Out’ and Anthropic’s Super Bowl films.

All three are distinguished not by their finish (considerable and finely crafted as they are), but by the thinking behind them. Beauty marketing only impersonates science. The modern consumer is a non-playable character in somebody else’s game. AI will, before long, be selling us all loads of crap under the guise of helping us (if it’s anything other than Claude, that is). Each is a small, uncomfortable truth, well articulated and presented with clarity, generating multiple executions from that one thought and, most importantly, driving emotion and action.

They are also, refreshingly, unwilling to court everyone, arguing a position in the market instead. Anthropic’s satire was pointed enough to provoke Sam Altman into a lovely little rebuttal, which is its own kind of endorsement, and prime entertainment these days.

All are unmistakably made by human hands, too, avoiding general AI slop. The craft, from acting to design, is on point and it knows its place, in service of the argument rather than standing in for it.

Beth Anderton-Allen, creative director, Amplify: Most campaigns about a crisis explain it. This one simply showed you and shocked you. In Dirty Business, water executives blame Victorian sewage systems; it’s their favorite defense. So there’s something brilliant about 4Creative building a fountain. The Victorians built those to give working people clean water during a contamination crisis. Taking that civic symbol and corrupting it, bronze figures vomiting brown water, a suited exec perched on top, briefcase stuffed with cash, reframes the whole argument. The infrastructure is Victorian. The negligence is entirely modern. Raw, untreated sewage in our waterways and ordinary people paying the price. This work carried all of that.

Robert Doubal, global joint chief creative officer, M+C Saatchi Group: More change in our industry in the last 12 months than the last 12 years, said Arthur Sadoun. Our industry is certainly evolving rapidly and it’s fair to say creatives may have felt under pressure and perhaps even under fire over the last year.

But creativity is a weapon. And when you back the world’s best creatives into a corner, they fight back with outrageously good work. The creatives are smart and out to impress this year – and it shows.

Anthropic’s ‘Time and a Place’: A beautifully conceived, wonderfully written, flawlessly directed, gloriously timed campaign, which proved craft, taste and timing (and a Super Bowl budget) can help shift a company’s fortunes overnight.

Coinbase’s ‘Your Way Out’: Creating in-game for real with jaw-dropping craft is crazy good. Stunning craft. Surely a big winner.

Columbia’s ‘Expedition Impossible’: Perhaps a few winners from Columbia this year. A brave company behaving like a punchy, entertaining challenger.

The Ordinary’s ‘Periodic Fable’: A 1984-esque message to the beauty industry to take note. Wonderfully crafted. Superbly rebellious. And beautifully designed.

And finally, a small, but mighty winner. ‘Pope Yes’ from Popeyes. A masterclass in simplicity. Good luck to all. Creativity always finds a way.

Sophie Evans, creative strategist, Teads: Looking at the buzz of work at Cannes this year, Heineken takes the top spot for me. Its campaigns stand apart because they genuinely combine emotional storytelling with cultural relevance. They occupy an authentic space, one they earned through a steadfast commitment to these themes and their brand personality, telling their stories in environment-tailored ways to maximize impact and connection. Its work, such as ‘Now You Can’ and ‘Fans Have More Friends,’ demonstrates a deep understanding of what matters to people, creating concepts that audiences genuinely connect with while staying true to the brand’s identity.

For creative work to transcend attention, it must also be emotionally resonant and deeply rooted in real experiences. This is what separates award-winning campaigns from the rest. Juries will continue to reward work that creates meaningful connections with audiences and it’s the brands that balance creativity with authenticity that are likely to stand out. For me, Heineken has consistently shown how powerful that combination can be.

Curro Piqueras, chief creative officer, Dude London: Some of us would describe our job as creative problem-solving, seeing the world from a different perspective and believing that behavioral change is possible. This is why this idea, while not being purely a communication idea, might be one of the most ambitious of this year, as it aims to radically change at a global scale something we’ve all gotten used to: closed captions.

‘Caption With Intention’ for Chicago Hearing Society by Omnicom is already a multi-awarded piece (apparently got an Academy Award) and is one of those ideas that will have a long life after the festival. Definitely a Grand Prix contender, ‘Caption With Intention’ reimagines what subtitles mean to the hearing impaired, empowering them to experience cinema like never before.

Nicolas Rajabaly, chief creative officer, MakeMePulse: We spend a lot of time thinking about how digital can genuinely elevate the museum experience: not just layer technology on top of it, but reshape how people connect with art and culture. This campaign moves me because it does exactly that. Point your mobile at a painting and Google Gemini generates a personalized, real-time dialogue between you, the artwork and its history. No script. No pre-recorded voice. Just a conversation. In a moment when so much of the AI conversation is about productivity and automation, it is genuinely inspiring to see it used to bring people closer to culture, to history, to beauty. This is AI at the service of humankind and that, to me, is when technology becomes truly meaningful.

Ivan Beczkowski, chief creative officer, Fullsix: Cannes 2026 will crown Parkside’s ‘The Pull,’ because when an industry no longer knows how to regain trust, proof becomes the new spectacle. In an era where generative AI can fabricate any image, deepfakes make every video suspect and influencer feeds sell miracles that don’t work, Parkside bolts a battery-powered drill to a 73-ton aircraft and pulls it. No render. No metaphor. Just torque, steel and Newtonian physics. It’s a radical return to demonstration – advertising that proves before it seduces. The emotion isn’t scripted; it’s built into the risk, the weight, the ‘there’s no way this works’… until it does. A jury exhausted by virtual craft and polished promises will recognize the simplest provocation: reality.

Parkside doesn’t offer a story about trust – it offers evidence. And right now, evidence is the rarest creative commodity. Cannes 2026: back to basics as a revolutionary act.

Simon Cooper, creative director, Born Social: At Born Social, we work closely with Wieden+Kennedy to look after Ford across Europe. It means I get to see its work up close and its ‘Absolute Tabasco’ campaign from earlier this year is a great example of W+K’s creativity at its spicy best.

The hero film is glorious. Striking images, cheeky humor, a simple idea executed perfectly. It’s a real example of ‘committing to the bit’ and treating the audience like adults. It doesn’t spoonfeed the message; it gives us something to enjoy and ponder. Why are these people, wearing protective gear, being delivered by helicopter to a volcano? Where are they heading? And why are they drinking what looks to be molten lava? It takes us 40 seconds to find out. Every second is a joy.

The behind-the-scenes posts on social media reveal the craft behind the work. It looks like a mad scientist’s experiment, a papier-mache style Blue Peter art project dialed up on to a giant set. Art directors pour red gunge out of a plastic measuring jug as a paint brush delicately touches up mountainous volcanic ash. I love how real it is. I won’t be the only one.