Cannes Lions 2026: 4 AI Takeaways for Enterprise Leaders
The real conversations happened off stage
Cannes has always been the industry's biggest creative stage. In 2026, the most important conversations happened in villa roundtables, private lunches, and sidebars between sessions, away from the Palais. The through line was the same everywhere: AI has become a business imperative.
One of the highlights of my week was a panel at Semrush Villa on brand visibility in the age of AI discovery. Carmen True, Head of Solutions Marketing at HP, joined Andrew Warden of Adobe, Adam Collins of Reddit, and Kamal Ahmed of Fortune. The conversation landed on a point that keeps coming up with our clients.
The framing around AI has shifted, too. A year ago, sessions asked what AI made possible. This year, they asked what it is delivering, which puts AI on the agenda of the full C-suite. After a full week in Cannes, here's what I'm bringing back to CourtAvenue's team and clients.
Workflow redesign is what separates the leaders
The companies making real progress are redesigning end-to-end workflows and rethinking how value gets created. How many AI tools they deploy matters far less. That makes AI a decision for the CEO, CFO, CTO, and CHRO as much as the CMO.
McKinsey's research puts numbers on the gap. In its State of AI survey, 88% of organizations reported regular AI use in at least one business function, yet only about 6% qualified as high performers seeing significant value. Those high performers were nearly three times as likely to have fundamentally redesigned their workflows (McKinsey).
The stakes keep climbing. McKinsey projects AI agents could mediate up to $5 trillion in global commerce by 2030 (McKinsey).
The advantage lives in the space between adopting AI and transforming around it.
1. Visibility is the new KPI
A well-known brand can still go unfound. Enterprise buying journeys increasingly run through AI-assisted research before anyone talks to a human, and consumers have moved even faster. McKinsey found that half of consumers now intentionally use AI-powered search (The Drum), and it projects $750 billion in US revenue will flow through AI search by 2028 (IADS, summarizing McKinsey).
Positioning now has to work for two audiences: the people making the decision and the AI agents doing the early research for them. Brands that describe what they do, who they serve, and what proof they have in clear, consistent terms are the ones agents recognize and recommend.
A useful first test: ask the leading AI assistants how they describe your company today, and compare the answer with how you describe yourself.
2. MarTech has entered the chat
Adobe was everywhere. Salesforce ran a full beach. Optimizely hosted VIP networking. Andrew Warden of Adobe called it "the revenge of the nerds," and the data and SEO specialists in the room earned the label.
That presence reflects where the work is heading. Agentic search and commerce run on data foundations and infrastructure, and the architecture behind purchase decisions is changing with them.
For most organizations, the harder question is operational. Are your teams, systems, and data actually wired to act on it?
3. Industry M&A is accelerating
Roundtables hosted by Ervos's Andreas Roell and Adweek's Dealroom pointed the same direction. More acquisitions are coming as companies close capability gaps that organic growth can't fill fast enough.
That raises a practical question about partners. Are yours building toward where your business is going?
4. The winners keep people at the center
AI is starting to deliver its real value by removing friction, which frees people for the work machines can't do. The organizations seeing results pair that with stronger governance. They get better outcomes and more humanity in how they run the business.
Done well, AI amplifies the best of what people bring to their work.
From "what's possible" to "what's delivering value"
In just one year, the defining question at Cannes moved from "what's possible?" to "what's delivering value?" I dug into it on the Signal & Noise podcast with Brett House and Rio Longacre, where we talked through how CourtAvenue is modeling the future of the AOR and AI agency partnership.
Marketing investment and business transformation are converging, and the brands that commit now will set the pace for their industries. That's the work I came back ready to keep building.
CourtAvenue works with enterprise leaders to close the gap between AI adoption and real business impact.