The Cannes Lions Takeaway: AI Won’t Kill Creative Jobs — It Will Kill Inauthentic Brands

By: Oliver Hawthorne

Marketers are caught in a paradox they can’t outsource to AI. They’re pouring budget into generative AI tools to churn out more content, faster and cheaper than ever. At the same time, 78% of marketing and finance decision-makers across the U.S., U.K., and Canada fear increased AI use will erode consumer trust in their brands. One-third believe AI will replace some creative functions. Nearly one in five think it will slash the need for human creativity altogether. That anxiety hung heavy over this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, where the conversation shifted from AI’s potential to its limits. The core tension isn’t whether AI can make content. It’s whether that content will make anyone care.

The festival’s Fuel Up flagship event opened with a panel featuring Gstaad Guy. The fictional Swiss bon vivant built his brand skewering the ultra-wealthy and luxury brands. His signature verdict for anything mediocre is “À la poubelle” — straight to the bin. That includes lazy uses of the word “authenticity” at marketing conferences. Gstaad Guy now partners with the very brands he once mocked, most recently Bentley. He says he talked about these brands for years before taking paid work.

(SeaPRwire) –   “I was talking about the brands I work with today long before working with them. That’s where the authenticity comes in”

Gstaad Guy at the flagship Fuel Up event at Cannes Lions

That history, he argues, is where real authenticity lives. His 3.1 million Instagram and TikTok followers seem to agree. He says commercial work never made his content feel less genuine. If anything, it strengthened the connection. A 2026 Clutch report backs up that instinct. Ninety-seven percent of consumers say authenticity is a key factor in supporting a brand. Eighty-one percent say they’ve dropped a brand that no longer felt genuine. Gstaad Guy puts it simply. Authentic connections feel obvious to everyone. Forced, artificial ones do too. The audience always knows. That dynamic plays out most sharply in sports, where fans are fiercely invested and unforgiving. Lenovo Intelligent Devices Group SVP and CMO Emily Ketchen calls sport the great unifier. People can connect over sports even if they support different teams. Manchester United chief communications officer Toby Craig says fans are not passive consumers. They give their time, passion, and commitment. They expect the same level of investment back from the club and its partners. Craig points to the club’s deal with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon brand as a success. Snapdragon devices are actually used to shoot Manchester United’s football content. The test of any partnership, he says, is whether it delivers something real for fans. A logo on a shirt is not enough. Kraft Heinz North America CMO Todd Kaplan agrees. Authentic brand moments come from identity, not just presence. They have to go beyond the logo. That philosophy led to the Wienie 500, a race of six Oscar Mayer Wienermobiles at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Wienermobiles are 27-foot hot dogs on wheels that have been on U.S. roads since 1936. Oscar Mayer is a Kraft Heinz subsidiary best known for hot dogs and cold cuts. The race is now in its second year, held the same weekend as the Indianapolis 500. Winners get doused in mustard and handed the Borg-Wiener Trophy. Last year’s inaugural event drew 85,000 attendees and millions of livestreamers. Kaplan says the idea came from an unbriefed session with agency partners. The Wienermobile’s 90-year place in American culture makes the event feel authentic, not forced. Live sports, he says, is the last great lean-in moment for audiences. Many of Kraft Heinz’s best ideas come from unplanned, unbriefed brainstorming. The AI conversation adds a new layer to this debate. A survey of 1,100 marketing and finance decision-makers across the U.S., U.K., and Canada found widespread anxiety. Seventy-eight percent worry increased AI use will reduce consumer trust in brands. Thirty-four percent believe AI will replace some creative functions. Nineteen percent think it will significantly cut the need for human creativity altogether. But leaders at the festival pushed back on the idea that AI can replace human creative work. Uber head of international marketing Lucinda Barlow says AI can’t replicate the human emotion that makes great campaigns work. Humor, joy, and genuine entertainment are hard for AI to nail. She notes a clear shift in tone from last year’s Cannes Lions. Most panels then celebrated AI’s potential.

“What I’m feeling this time is a deep acknowledgment of the power of human creativity…that this is actually seen as a competitive advantage for your brand, for your business”

Lucinda Barlow, head of international Marketing at Uber

This time, there’s deep acknowledgment that human creativity is a competitive advantage. Sephora CMO Zena Srivatsa Arnold says marketers can’t lose sight of the person behind the data. AI can analyze trends and spot patterns. But brands sell to real people with feelings and identities that data alone can’t capture. Even AI industry leaders agree. Timothy Young, CEO of marketing AI agent firm Jasper AI, says AI’s value depends entirely on the people using it. Marketing teams need someone who understands the human side to act as a tastemaker. That person can guide the model’s output and turn AI into a brand accelerator. Young defines authenticity as trust built over time. Brands that chase every viral meme are like artists who sell out on their second album. Their entire body of work tells the story.

This dynamic creates a clear commercial loop for brands willing to read the room. Generative AI tools get cheaper and more accessible every quarter. Any brand can spin up hundreds of ad creatives in an afternoon for a few dollars. That flood of generic content makes consumer attention harder to capture, not easier. People tune out content that feels formulaic or fake. They seek out brands that feel real, consistent, and tied to a tangible identity. Authenticity isn’t a buzzword here. It’s a filter consumers use to cut through the noise. Brands that lean into their existing history, partner with creators who genuinely use their products, and integrate into communities instead of advertising at them will win that attention. They’ll build the trust that drives repeat purchases and long-term loyalty. Brands that treat AI as a replacement for human creativity will fall behind. Their content will blend into the thousands of other AI-generated posts consumers scroll past every day. They’ll lose the 81% of consumers who say they drop inauthentic brands. The end-game for the marketing industry is already taking shape. AI will commoditize every part of content production that can be automated. Copywriting, basic design, and initial trend analysis will become standard tools, no different from a word processor or a design suite. The real value will shift to the human work AI can’t do. That means understanding nuanced human emotion. It means building real relationships with audiences over years. It means having a distinct brand identity that feels earned, not generated. Marketing teams will restructure to reflect this. They’ll hire fewer entry-level content producers and more senior creative strategists who can guide AI tools and steer brand identity. They’ll invest in community management and creator partnerships that build long-term trust, not just short-term clicks. Even AI vendors like Jasper AI acknowledge this. The best AI results come from teams with strong human tastemakers at the helm. Brands that want to survive the AI flood don’t need more AI tools. They need more people who know what authenticity feels like.

Author bio: Oliver Hawthorne, principal correspondent permanently stationed at a top international tech review, has a decade of experience covering AI’s cross-industry impact on business and culture.