Events

Cannes Lions 2026

Cannes Lions 2026

Candid conversations on the future of marketing

Cannes Lions marked a defining moment for marketing; with agentic commerce, synthetic audiences, and the new science of buyer choice reshaping how brands attract, convert, and retain customers. 

On the Croisette, we brought these shifts into focus – holding candid conversations with marketing leaders at The Bain Speakeasy, marking our largest presence at Cannes to date.

Cannes Lions 2026

Cannes Lions marked a defining moment for marketing; with agentic commerce, synthetic audiences, and the new science of buyer choice reshaping how brands attract, convert, and retain customers. 

On the Croisette, we brought these shifts into focus – holding candid conversations with marketing leaders at The Bain Speakeasy, marking our largest presence at Cannes to date.

Signals from Cannes Lions 2026: The Next-Gen CMO Agenda

If you couldn’t make it to Cannes or want to dive-deeper into the festival’s biggest topics, watch our post-Cannes webinar to discover what CMOs should be thinking about next.

Watch the webinar

In The News

In The News

Bain's latest press coverage on the topics that resonated most at Cannes Lions 2026

Business Insider

Creators have dethroned Mad Men as kings of the ad world

"The marketing of today is consumers talking about our brands, and our role as CMOs is to enable that conversation as authentically as possible." - Shweta Bhardwaj, Partner

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Business Insider

Erika Serow says AI strategy has evolved for the better

"[The CMO role is] about incredible creativity, it is about great measurement and confidence in how money is getting spent, and it's about figuring out how to deploy technology to help you." - Erika Serow, CMO & Partner

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The Current

What 1,400 leaders say CFOs actually want from CMOs

"Every marketer I’ve ever met, myself included, always said that finance is harder on marketing than any other department. The truth is … that finance trusts finance more than anything else, and they mistrust everybody else." - Brian Dennehy, Partner

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Marketing Week

CMO-CFO relationships break on measurement, not ideology

Bain & Company research, together with Google, shows a strong relationship with the CFO can make marketers 1.5 times more likely to be a growth leader.

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Adweek

Finding a Balance Between Short-Term Sales and Long-Term Brand Growth

“The capabilities are there to be able to get more holistic, so that I can really see the full picture. It requires marketing and sales coming together a lot more to think about their budgets.” - Lesley Butler, Partner

Read more  

Latest CMO Insights

Dive deeper into the ideas that defined the week—from AI leadership and synthetic customers to the CMO-CFO relationship and the science of purchase intent.

The Week in Pictures

The Week in Pictures

Meet the Bain partners and experts who were present on the ground at Cannes Lions.

Our Delegation

With our largest presence at Cannes Lions to date, our team was on the ground throughout the festival sharing the sharpest thinking on marketing transformation with the leaders shaping what comes next.