At this year’s Cannes Lions festival, industry leaders explored how to balance the human touch and technology as customer journeys become more fluid, algorithms dominate media, generative AI gets endless attention, and the lines between brand and demand disappear. To get deeper insights into these conversations, we spoke with Liz Rutgersson, CEO of iProspect North America, about her key highlights from the festival and her experience moderating a panel about F1 fandom. Here’s what she had to say.
What was your overall impression of Cannes this year? Any standout themes that really resonated with you?
A few themes really stood out to me from this year’s festival:
- AI as a creative copilot: Unsurprisingly, AI was part of almost every conversation this year. I was excited to see that most of them focused on real applications and recognized that AI will reshape media without changing its core. Human creativity is still the soul of our industry, and while AI can enhance creativity, it won’t replace it.
- Retail media for all: Just a few years ago, you’d only see performance marketers in the audience for retail media sessions. This year we saw a much broader audience tuned in. Commerce and creativity must happen together now, and that was evident in retail media conversations.
- Long-term brand building is back: Effectiveness and creativity aren’t mutually exclusive. The best work at this year’s festival wasn’t just a big hit or “viral,” it was valuable and drove measurable impact.
There was a lot of talk about the blending of brand and performance. How did you see that play out at Cannes, and how does it validate iProspect’s positioning?
It was very clear across the entire festival that brand and performance are no longer separate disciplines. Our own Chief Client Officer, Liz Vance, spoke about it as part of a panel: the new “brandformance” era where brand and demand are both just part of one fluid consumer journey.
Customers want great storytelling across commerce, media, and every other touchpoint they have with a company, whether it’s their first or fiftieth interaction. With today’s addressability and measurement, we don’t need to bucket marketing as strictly “brand” or “demand” anymore; every dollar is part of a performance-based investment in an intuitive customer journey.
That’s what iProspect is doing—and has been doing—every day for our clients through transparent partnerships, data excellence, identity, and an openness to test and learn.
With the rise of retail media and shoppable content, how do you see the consumer journey shifting, and what role does iProspect play in navigating that?
The customer journey has become a fluid, commerce-enabled loop, where discovery, engagement, and purchase can happen in a single scroll, swipe, or stream. Brands need a new playbook to make media, creative, and commerce teams work in lockstep.
Our role as an agency partner is to orchestrate the entire consumer experience, ensuring that every touchpoint is intentional and connected while driving both brand impact and business outcomes. We connect commerce and culture to create experiences that resonate with shoppers while maintaining a performance mindset throughout the journey.
Was there a piece of work, a talk, or a conversation that particularly inspired you or made you think differently?
I was honored to moderate a session about the rise of fandom in F1 alongside our Hilton client, CMO, Mark Weinstein; Lou McEwen, CMO of McLaren Racing; and Harry Benjamin, Host of BBC’s Chequered Flag. I was inspired by how each of our panelists are adapting to the rapid evolution of the F1 fanbase. Though each panelist has a different connection to the sport, they all emphasized the importance of authentically engaging fans across every segment, from lifelong superfans to new joiners.
Their passion about delivering valuable content and experiences to F1 fans—most of whom might never attend a race in person—is something I’ll bring back to our teams and clients: how do we creatively engage our audiences to connect brands to culture in a way that’s authentic?
Is there anything else from the festival that you plan to take back to your teams?
It’s easy in today’s environment to over-index toward AI and technological advancements. Cannes Lions was a fantastic reminder that human touch still rules, and is perhaps more important than ever. I’m excited to continue pushing our teams and clients to keep connection at the core — building relationships with consumers through emotion, creativity, culture, and community, enhanced by innovation, all with a performance mindset.
To learn more about the key themes from Cannes Lions and how brands can apply them, read dentsu’s Cannes Lions 2025 Rewind Report.
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