The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity descended upon the south of France in person last week, after a three-year hiatus, to honor some of the marketing and advertising industry’s most outstanding work. While touring the mega beach activations and chatting with marketing executives, we noticed a key through line: It’s back to business, folks—but it’s also time to celebrate.
We noticed more open floor plans conducive to creative discussions and cutting deals, more top-notch entertainment than in years’ prior, as well as some newcomers, like Reddit, showing up strong for brand creatives for the first time. As Keyana Kashfi, Spotify’s global experiential content & production lead, put it, “2019 was very focused on sales meetings. The biggest structures you saw here [in our footprint] were three closed-door meeting rooms. It was a decision to make sure we had spaces to meet and have conversations, but really focus on the celebration of being back.”
“It has been a heavy time, and it still is a heavy time, but at least we could be together and celebrate the good things—and talk out some of the more uncomfortable things,” she continued. “We wanted to have more open spaces to congregate…and use this time to celebrate being back, being out and to celebrate creativity.” Check out this photo tour of some of the brand activations at Cannes 2022—and stay tuned for a full field report on what we experienced along the Croisette.
Reddit’s Explorer’s Club was an homage to the platform’s countless memes, moderators, trends and passion points. In its first-ever Cannes appearance, it offered tools for brands as well.
Showcasing its iconic upvote feature, Reddit's massive voting apparatus invited passersby to vote on lighthearted questions like the above.
Reddit's space featured different subreddit communities, like r/AccidentalRenaissance, pictured here.
And there were plenty of photo ops, like the famous “This if fine” internet meme.
The Amazon Port featured large-scale, open gathering spaces, a stage for content, a spacious cafe and lots of smaller meeting spaces.
The interior of Amazon's footprint for Cannes 2022 included a chill space with lawn games.
Pinterest brought to life the latest trends on the platform with various activities, including screen printing, a gifting gallery, micro tattoos and more.
Pinterest offered nailscape manicures as well.
Spotify brought its live Podcast Studio to the beach once again.
Spotify designed an open floor plan on the beach this year, with gathering spaces, a stage, extra entertainment, cafes, bars, and more.
Twitter’s beach build was the place to be for nightly happy hours.
Snap partnered with Vogue to showcase several stylized spaces, each curated for an iconic designer, such as Gucci, pictured here. Attendees scanned a QR code to access an AR filter that added additional overlays to the experience.
Attendees could also virtually “try on” the Vogue outfits on display in each room.
Meta’s space featured a Horizon Worlds metaverse experience, a Ray-Ban Stories demo, a Meta Immersive Learning VR sample and a Reels SuperStudio experience. Pictured is a room designed by the artist Felipe Pantone, which came to life using several different Reels effects.
SRMG (Saudi Research and Media Group) showcased some of its technical prowess, including the opportunity to create an avatar of yourself that could then be placed in a metaverse environment or used as an AR overlay.
TikTok showcased features for brands, including branded effects, the latest trends on TikTok, and an interactive creator marketplace.
Featured here is a tool to access global TikTok trends.
Shutterstock offered a 3D gallery experience with artist-designed AR filters attendees could play with.
Though EM had already departed Cannes by Thursday, June 23, Google threw a Pride-themed party that evening at its beach build. We hear that the activation was more focused on content this year, with sessions on measurement, sustainability, creativity and inclusive marketing.
Things are moving fast in trade shows and events, and we love being in the middle of it all. Over the past six months, EM’s team has logged in tens of thousands of steps around top shows across the nation. We sampled, shot hoops, and made perfumes, and, of course, mostly scouted the floor for […]
From the Cannes Archives:
