By Neville Shah
If you aren’t sunburnt, dehydrated, or standing in a queue while reading this, are you even in Cannes? There’s crowded. And then there’s Cannes 2025 crowded. This year, the town feels like Andheri station at 8:48 in the morning (the simile fitting this year) except everyone’s wearing linen standing in queues.
The city transformed overnight. I arrived on Saturday afternoon to this semi-sleepy French town. But by Sunday, it was a full-blown creative mosh pit. Agencies spilling out of cafes. Clients at beach panels. People sneaking into every free rosé event in town. It’s a miracle any meetings happen at all.
I’ve done three so far. Successfully yelling over a DJ and a talk that was meant to be over 30 minutes ago. Another inside the Palais, because melting outside wasn’t an option. Pro tip: carry water. Lots of it. Cannes is less an advertising festival and more survival sport. Of ideas too.
But beneath the sweat and the chaos lies something genuinely magical, an electric energy, an appetite for ideas, and a sense that creativity is being celebrated more widely, and more democratically, than ever before.
What stood out? For one, the work. Absolutely top drawer this year. Brave, sharp, global. And then, India. What a year. From insightful to insane, the Indian presence is strong and, in many rooms, dominant. We won a silver so far for TOO YUMM! TO CHEER, but Lucky Yatra from FCB India is the talk of the town, riding in with the kind of tailwind you can’t fake: a growing whisper that’s starting to sound like a roar.
There’s a spirit in the air. One that says, creativity still matters. And not just the “cool-ambient-installation-on-a-beach” kind, but the kind that is brave, brand-building and norm-breaking. Big ideas are getting big love this year. But the romantic in me also wishes the smaller ones, the deeply local, insight-rich, underdogs were getting as much shine. Soon maybe, there are three days left.
Another shift: the award nights themselves. They’ve become a magnet. Every night, the theatre is packed to the rafters, with people standing in line almost an hour before the show. There’s a quiet joy in watching your peers and competitors win. And a louder joy when it’s your friends. This year, the industry isn’t just here to party. It’s here to pay respect.
Cannes, as always, remains beautifully absurd. Impossibly hot, heartbreakingly expensive, and wildly overbooked, yet it continues to be the place where our world comes alive. Where the most celebrated thing isn’t a budget or a celebrity, but an idea. That’s rare. That’s worth sweating for.
(The author is CCO, FCB Kinnect)