Over the years, the once-clear divide between advertising and entertainment has softened. I felt this shift more keenly at this year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, especially while judging the Entertainment category. This year’s best festival entries showed that we don’t just acknowledge the role of entertainment in messaging, we celebrate it. Entertainment is not separate from advertising, but fundamental to its success.
To me, entertainment has always been at the heart of advertising. It’s how we first engaged, connected with, and rewarded audiences. Somewhere along the way, though, we tried to codify creativity with formulae and templates. In doing so, advertising lost its spark.
This year’s winners rejuvenated that spark. McCann Worldgroup’s 17-minute documentary on Ilon Specht reminded us that, when done with authenticity and emotional depth, long-form storytelling can build brand equity that endures.What we saw in the Entertainment Lions, across General, Music, Gaming and Sport, is a reaffirmation of advertising’s roots: to share an idea, you must first entertain. And entertaining doesn’t just mean laughter or spectacle. Excellent entertainment can be reflective, raw, or even solemn. What matters is the human connection. It must come from the heart.
I also observed the strongest work coming from hybrid teams, a mix of filmmakers, strategists, editors, poets, all contributing unique lenses and expertise. Today’s creatives are hybrids themselves: producer-directors, creator-editors, strategist-anthropologists. Collaboration is no longer optional. It is how creativity will flourish.
Another shift: culture is no longer just a backdrop. It has become the canvas for great campaigns. The best entries didn’t only reference cultural rituals, they made them come alive. Human stories grounded in truth have taken and will continue to take centre stage, especially within platform-native narratives — albums, game activations, and docuseries. They are crafted to flow with audience habits, not interrupt them.
Of course, outcomes still matter. Metrics like reach, uplift, and ROI were discussed. But so were “pause metrics”: the moments that linger. The quiet resonance after the screen fades. That smile. That tear. Brands are no longer mere observers of entertainment culture. They have shifted from announcer to narrator, from passive presence to active participation.
Our job as creative leaders is not just to make better ads. It is to build ecosystems of meaning — of stories people actively choose to engage with, that feel less like marketing and more like memory. Entertain, or fade quietly into the scrolling night. That was Cannes’ chorus, and it will echo far beyond the Riviera.
(The author is chief creative officer & CEO, McCann Worldgroup India and chairman, McCann Worldgroup APAC)
