The Human Advantage: Reflections from the LIONS CMO Accelerator, London

In December 2025, I had the privilege of speaking at the LIONS CMO Accelerator Series in London, joining a room of senior marketing leaders navigating one of the most consequential shifts our profession has faced.

Building on my two previous LIONS presentations at Cannes Lions in 2022 and 2024 my session focused on AI. Not as a technology update, but as a leadership challenge.

The temptation when discussing AI is to start with tools, platforms, and vendors. I chose a different entry point: judgment. Because AI does not replace the fundamentals of marketing. It exposes whether we have them.

From funnels to learning systems

One of the core ideas I explored was the need to move from marketing funnels to marketing learning systems. AI works best when organisations treat marketing as a continuous feedback loop rather than a sequence of campaigns.

That shift sounds technical. It is not. It is cultural.

Learning systems demand clarity of intent, data discipline, and the courage to say no. Without those, AI simply accelerates noise.

Strategy still means sacrifice

A recurring theme in the room was overload. Too many tools. Too many vendors. Too many experiments without ownership.

The essence of strategy has not changed. It is still about sacrifice.

In a landscape with more than 15,000 marketing technology vendors, the competitive advantage does not come from doing more. It comes from choosing deliberately: which platforms to commit to, which problems to solve, and which capabilities to build internally.

AI rewards focus. Indecision is expensive.

Agents, automation, and the next generation of teams

We also discussed AI agents and automation, not as abstractions, but as practical extensions of teams. We are likely the last generation of leaders who will manage human-only teams.

That reality raises new questions for CMOs: governance, training, data quality, and accountability. AI needs ownership. It needs rules. It needs leaders who understand both its power and its limits.

The human edge does not disappear

The most important part of the session came at the end.

I heard this first, I recall, from Mark Ritson. AI is not going to kill marketing. And it is not going to save it either.

The only thing truly threatened by AI is low-imagination work. When everyone has access to the same models, the only remaining competitive advantage is taste. Taste cannot be automated. It cannot be commoditised. It cannot be downloaded.

Technology accelerates. Feelings scale. But meaning still comes from us.

The next creative revolution will not be AI-driven. It will be human-AI hybrid craft, where imagination, judgment, and emotional intelligence are amplified rather than outsourced.

Speaking at the LIONS CMO Accelerator was a reminder that the future of marketing will not be decided by tools alone. It will be shaped by leaders willing to combine discipline with creativity, and efficiency with meaning.

That is where the real advantage lies.

Cannes Lions 2025: Hegarty Warns “Giants Can’t Dance” Without Cultural Courage

Sir John Hegarty and me at Cannes Lions 2025

At Cannes Lions 2025, Sir John Hegarty returned to the Croisette with a provocation that cut through the AI noise with characteristic clarity: size is no longer a competitive advantage—creativity is. Addressing a packed audience, the BBH co-founder made the case that legacy institutions are structurally ill-equipped to thrive in the AI era unless they undergo radical cultural reinvention.

“It’s not the big that beat the small or the small that beat the big. It’s the bold that beat the bureaucratic.”

This central thesis—delivered with Hegarty’s signature wit and steel—has clear implications for CMOs and agency leaders. As WARC has previously reported, organisational agility and creative bravery are outperforming traditional scale economics (a). Hegarty’s framework clarifies why bureaucracy and process, once the hallmark of durable enterprise, are now liabilities in a landscape shaped by speed, signal, and strategic improvisation.

The Collapse of the Creative Pyramid

Hegarty contended that the traditional triangle of leadership—where decision-making is concentrated at the top—is outdated. Instead, he offered the metaphor of the inverted triangle, where leadership serves from below, unlocking the distributed creativity of the organisation.

In the age of AI, everyone becomes a creative director. That shift necessitates more than upskilling—it demands a wholesale rethinking of structure, culture, and philosophy.

AI as Collaborator, Not Tool

Rejecting the reductive view of AI as a “tool,” Hegarty framed it as a collaborator. This nuance matters: AI can preserve and evolve founding philosophies, keeping a brand’s original vision relevant long after its originator is gone.

“Maybe one of the functions of AI is that the founder never dies.”

This reframing invites serious consideration from brand stewards. If AI can embody the sensibility and philosophy of a company’s origins—Chanel, Ford, Apple—then strategic brand leadership must shift from protecting the past to actively operationalising it in real-time.

Rebuilding from First Principles

For Hegarty, the path forward for large enterprises lies in rediscovering and reactivating their original philosophy. This rebuilding from first principles is not a nostalgic exercise. It is strategic regeneration. As he put it:

“Go back to what built you.”

This approach aligns with a trend WARC has observed in post-pandemic brand strategy: a return to essential values, often codified in founding principles, used as a compass for navigating transformation (b).

Hegarty cited Patagonia, Oatly, and Apple as examples of brands whose philosophies were not marketing lines but business doctrines—creatively interpreted through product, communications, and culture.

The Strategic Imperative for Brands

Hegarty’s presentation was a call to action, particularly for global brands under pressure to remain culturally relevant in a fragmented, AI-powered landscape. His advice:

• Rethink structure: Flip hierarchies to empower bottom-up creativity.

• Rediscover your philosophy: Make it central to innovation and brand behaviour.

• Use AI to scale culture, not just content.

• Stop aiming to be the biggest. Start aiming to be the boldest.

Final Thought

Sir John Hegarty may be a familiar voice at Cannes, but his message this year felt newly urgent. For organisations struggling to keep pace, his challenge was simple: either dance or die. And in the AI era, the pace is only accelerating.

I have recently completed the Creativity for Growth Course. It was a brilliant opportunity for insight and learning from an industry legend.

Sources:

(a) Building Belief: What It Takes to Instill a Culture of Creative Effectiveness

(b) WARC Asian Strategy Report: Staying relevant amidst changing tides

Also published to Medium.

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Published on June 25, 2025, at anthonykennedy.com

Setting the pace

"The pacing team isn't an accident. It's a choice." – Seth Godin

With my transition into a senior marketing leadership role, some things have become more precise and critical.

1. I do not have the 30 cycles that Mark Ritson speaks of for a marketer in their 20's Call to Action podcast(Episode 100). While I've already worked 20-plus cycles, I have 15 more to own and deliver.
2. Knowing the appalling state of implementation, delivery, structure and framework, efficiency, and approach across the industry as regularly reported in Marketing Week and [Marketing Professionals] (https://www.marketingprofs.com/cmp/stateofb2b/22report/sa/#), I do not have time to waste not to do this properly the first time.
3. I want to have an impact; that's one of the reasons why our in-house agency is called Impact, and we deliver results now. So, as per Seth Godin's Choosing your pacemaker, I must link myself to experienced and professional pacemakers.

I am pleased to have semi-regular arms-length access to Mark Ritson and the brilliant teams at Xeim in London. I am excited to return to Cannes for the Lions Festival in a few weeks.

Fortunately, I am a part of the Cannes Lions [CMO Accelerator programme] (https://www.canneslions.com/initiatives/cmos/cmo-accelerator-programme-2023) for senior marketers this year. I look forward to working with Jim Stengel, Suzanne Tosolini, Gary Vaynerchuk and the Cannes Lions education team.

The pace set by Mark, Jim, Suzanne, Gary, and Cannes Lions will be fast and just the speed I need to deliver results and make a positive Impact.

Day five: Cannes Lions 2022

Day five at Cannes Lions was the best day of the week.

I listened to Anne Krogh, the CMO of Ikea in Denmark, talk about how IKEA puts customers at the heart of its circularity strategy and how they approached the need to assemble a global circularity movement.

Think long-term. Rather than having old unwanted IKEA furniture go to the rubbish dump, IKEA bought back 155,000 items of furniture and repaired items where needed. They then offered second-hand items for sale, enabling customers to get what they wanted for less, avoiding the premature costs of destruction and the cost of needlessly producing new furniture.

You can multiply your efforts by the number of customers who engage by taking action. IKEA has more than one billion customers each year globally, giving them the opportunity for considerable change. In saying this, they acknowledge that as consumers, we want transparency - but we also want items tailored, delivered, and available 24 hours a day. There is massive complexity, and you must be flexible - and one of the solutions may be a new business model.

My favorite quote from this session was, "Creativity is the answer to every question. Creativity is formula resistant". Adam Kerj, Chief Creative Officer, Accenture Song.

I then moved into two sessions on short-form social video with a special session with TikTok and how to build audiences. The team from TikTok and LADBible showcased the different expectations of video content between YouTube, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram. One of the big takeaways from this session was that "content created for TikTok works well in other places, but not the other way around".

My final session of the day and the week in Cannes was with one of my professional heroes Harjot Singh, Global Chief Strategy Officer of McCann. Harjot was, as usual, direct and personable. He walked through the simplicity of communicating for change, whether in advertising, marketing, or general communications.

We spoke through what it takes to produce the best work and the three simple elements it always contains. @Harjot, I think you would own Audacious as a first name. I will write a separate post on this session, and how it served to reinspire me in the work I need to do.

Side note: I included the image above, not perfect as it is, because the name of the cross-funciton Marketing and Communications Services function that I lead at ION, is Impact!

Impact was a word that was used repeatedly by many different speakers throughout the entire week at Cannes Lions - and it’s why I chose this name.

The effort we take and the work we produce must have an eduring impact. I am proud to lead Impact@ION.

My first Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was an incredible experience full of different perspectives and the most brilliant people and their work. I was able to attend working sessionse with two of my professional hereos (Cindy Gallop and Harjot Singh), as well as being invited to two Global CMO Growth Council Sessions to discuss important issues facing our industry. To continue to take advantage of this event and to deepen my knowledge and deliver audacious and powerful results from my work I have subscribed to Cannes Lions Digital. I am already looking forward to Cannes Lions 2023.

Day four: Cannes Lions 2022

Thursday was a pivotal day at Cannes Lions for me. I was invited to participate in the Global CMO Growth Council sessions with industry leaders from the Marketing, Advertising and Creative industries. I attended both the 'Brand, Creativity and Media' and Talent working groups.

I was humbled to be in the room with the leaders of our industry. As a group of 24 leaders, we discussed the actions the CMO Growth Council are taking to resolve real problems facing our industry. We reviewed the steps taken to date and where there are still improvements we can make. This initiative has been four years in the making already, and I believe it will offer sustainable solutions for our industries.

Before those sessions, I was fortunate to hear David Droga from Accenture Song. David is the most-awarded creative at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, and he's Australian!

David spoke about the importance of creative leadership and that it's essential not to be constrained by the rigour or process of your industry. You can't create new solutions or new art if you limit yourself in this way. Everything we do has to have an impact, and we should include all the 'thinkers, tinkers, makers, and shakers' and allow them to showcase their ideas across a bigger canvas.

He also said that we should embrace the things we're scared of, which for creatives are often things like technology and data. If we embrace these things and seek insight, we can solve problems we've never solved before.

“The only thing worse than not having a great idea is having one and not making it happen”

— David Droga, Lumiere Theatre, Cannes Lions 2022

I then attended a session on the 'Do'conomy. The founder, Mathias Wikstrom, opened with a statistic for context.

“Every year, 23 billion pairs of shoes are made. Our innovation has accelerated human consumption.”

— Mathias Wikstrom, The Forum, Cannes Lions 2022

Mathias, based on data from 5,000 brands and a billion transactions in 32 markets, argued about the need for sustainability and what brand owners can do to future-proof their brands.

“Impact is the new language”

— Mathias Wikstrom, The Forum, Cannes Lions 2022

One of the six big changes he proposed is to have carbon labels on products. In an example of the purchase of a pair of jeans (8.98 kpCO2e and 21.45 kgCO2e) consumer behaviour changed. 32% of eco-consious consumers reduced their footprint and 12% of non-eco conscious consumers did the same. This change was achieved through labelling. Mathias also showed that consumers are willing to pay up to 10% more for products from companies that provide greater supply transparency and data around environmental and social governance.

Removing environmental waste and friction is an improvement. As creatives, as designers, as decision makers we should work to be change-makers rather than change-takers.

Day two: Cannes Lions 2022

Day two at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was the busiest plan of my week, with eight sessions across talent, change, ESG, and user experience.

LinkedIn and the fight for great talent

Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn CEO, walked us through changes impacting the fight for great talent with a focus on the advertising industry. Based on LinkedIn's social graph knowledge from 830 million members and 57 million companies. Ryan said that Gen Z moves more frequently than other generations, followed by Millenials, Gen X, and Boomers. He also showed the change in roles within the Advertising industry now requiring tech skills, a 25% increase, and tech skills are becoming table stakes as part of the global arms race for tech talent.

He spoke about storytelling and the invention of the term horsepower by Scottish Engineer James Watt.

"Using a complicated mathematical equation, Watt deduced that a mill horse could push 32,572 pounds one foot in a minute, which he rounded to an even 33,000 pounds. 33,000 pounds pushed one foot in a minute. The power of one horse. One horsepower!" (The Chronicle of the Horse, https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/james-watt-and-revolution-horsepower)

Watt found a way to translate scientific measurements into a unit of measure that people could relate to - that of horsepower. Horsepower was a promise of what the steam engine could do. Ryan reinforced that we are in a promise-making business and must make promises, but promises we deliver. Apple did this with the 1,000 songs in your pocket slogan introduced by Steve Jobs 21 years ago in 2001.

Brand activism - Your power as marketers to make big change

A recent study of the top 50 brands approximated that they have 72 billion opportunities to influence consumers through the sales process for their products. This means that marketers have the opportunity to have a professional purpose with the chance of having a planetary impact.

In Diageo, at Guinness, they have adopted a three-pronged approach to sustainability around reinvention, restoration, and reduction.

• What can you do to reinvent how you operate?

• What can you do to restore the ecosystems in which you operate?

• What can you do to reduce the destructive impact across the supply chain?

How can we make a change to the way that we think and the decisions we make to fundamentally change how we approach and value the impact our actions have on the environment.

Leveraging machine learning and augmented reality for experiential digital commerce

Jeremi Gorman, Chief Business Officer at Snap Inc, showcased some of the most important features available in Snap that leverage machine learning and augmented reality for experiential digital commerce. Every day more than 250 million people engage with augmented reality in Snap. Snap view themselves as a camera company and they have used technology to extend the user experience. She said that 250 million people have already tried on 5 billion products digitally.

Robert Triefus from Gucci spoke about Gucci's deep belief in digital and he encourage everyone to lean into digital hard. Gucci have used digital to expand their community and to bring new kinds of experiences to their customers. Technology also enables Gucci to give their customers a unique experience across different channels, empowering their community to express creativity, and to provide insights to the business.

A camera is a catalyst to personal creation centering the world around the user authentically. This makes cameras and digital experience a part of the future of personal storytelling with the user an active participant in creating the future.

Break the standard leading business creation with unique experience

The design team from Minna Bank in Japan spoke about how they worked to change from business leading experience to experience leading business.

Taehan Yoo, Design Director, spoke about how many times we copy and paste a design, experience, or idea for safety. But once we have copied and pasted and made our expeirence the same as others the consumer then wants the cheapest experience and this takes us to a place we don't want to be.

At Minna, which means everyone in Japanese, they're focussed on delivering a new approach to digital banking, primarily for digital natives in the Generations Z, Y, and Millenials. Minna's users are 70% from these generations, vs traditional banks whose users are 70% from older generations. [There is a video showcasing Minna bank here](https://youtu.be/irKyj-EpTzQ).

The team of designers were very passionate about their approach to understanding their customers and delivering a frictionless experience. Many of the things they spoke about the experience of banking I could relate to from my own experiences with [N26 in Germany](https://youtu.be/IWwrfkkM4iI), and [Starling Bank](https://youtu.be/E7F7s7AOFNk) in the UK who both deliver a similar frictionless digital experience.

The most interesting thing I learned today was from Snap. When Snap added the weather feature to Snap to add the current weather in as the background to a photo people engage with it and activated the feature millions of times, but didn't save the photo. Snap discovered that people were using their camera as their weather app, and were inserting the weather to get the metrics. So Snap expanded the tool to include a multi-day forecast.

A full day with a lot of ideas around using creativity for growth, and for change.

#CannesLions2022 #IONatCannes

Day one: Cannes Lions 2022

My first day at Cannes Lions was action-packed, starting with Gary Kasparov and the Regain Ukraine brand using the power of creativity to support Ukraine in the war with Russia.

The next session was with award-winning CMOs from AB InBev and Microsoft. Marcel Marcondes, AB InBev Global CMO, spoke about building great brands and that 'without trust, there is no greatness'. Trust takes time to develop, and I believe that it must be a goal that is a foundation for what you do. Kathleen Hall from Microsoft, who won the Cannes Lions Creative Marketer of the Year in 2021, spoke about the creative work Microsoft has done on inclusion in Gaming with new devices and controllers for differently-abled people. It was inspiring to see people transform when they could play like their friends using these devices for gaming and learning.

I then worked in a group led by Cindy Gallop on rebuilding the Agency model. I admire Cindy as an intelligent and thoughtful leader who, in her own words, 'likes to blow shit up. Cindy broke us out into six teams to build our agency based on new rules without reference to out-of-date models. This session was with talented specialists making a case for what is needed to achieve these goals. There are lessons I will take back with me to use with my teams.

We were then introduced to four creative industry members from Ukraine whose worlds have been turned upside down since February 24, when Russia invaded Ukraine—hearing the stories of people who lived exactly as we do in a modern European nation now suffering a war in Europe and their experience of 'creativity under bombs'. We were fortunate to be surprised with a special guest, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine. Zelenskyy spoke about how this group of Marketing and Communications leadership could help Ukraine win the war by using branding as a tool and a weapon. Brave Ukraine is a brand to build, retain, and expand awareness of the atrocities being done daily in Europe.

The creative, brand, and marketing leadership of Nike then showcased three different approaches to working with your users to produce great results. The team from Nike spoke about how every one of us is an athlete. They did not talk about users or customers but athletes. The focus on the athlete is a vital part of the vision about who they serve and what they do for athletes. I learned about the goal of achieving the first sub-two-hour marathon and focusing on making products that deliver for athletes. Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya covered 26.2 miles in 2 hours 25 seconds - just 26 seconds short of the goal. The team then showcased the value of crazy dreams and checking if your goal isn't yet crazy enough to deliver the change you want. I have an action item to review my own goals. Finally, the team showcased the difference that can be achieved to normalise through cultural awareness and the introduction of clothing, and equipment to solve bespoke needs for groups such as pregnant women, Muslim women, and other athletes and the impact this can have on civil society.

Today I managed to make it to one of the secret speaker sessions. The speaker was AY Young, and I was introduced to him with a fist bump. AY sang, danced, spoke, and inspired a room full of creatives, communication, and marketing specialists through his work as a Young Ambassador Envoy for the United Nations and the 17 Development goals. It’s not easy to have a room full of grown adults singing, ‘we can change the world’. AY is an inspiring young performer focused on improving the world by delivering the 17 Development Goals of the United Nations. Do you know what? We can change the world, and we are the only people who will do it.

We organised the day's sessions with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Founded initially to monitor and rebalance gender and gender roles in the media, their research now examines the intersectional onscreen representation of six identities: gender, race, LGBTQIA+, disability, age 50+, and body type. In many areas, there has been significant improvement in the representation of these identities in essential roles, including speaking and being in leadership positions. I will take away ideas from this as a framework to better present all of us.

This was a huge day with a massive amount of discussion, learning, and reflection on the power of creativity to change the world. As a creative leader, I believe we can change the world.

#CannesLions2022 #IONatCannes