B2B Creators Take Cannes Lions 2026
The world's largest advertising festival, Cannes Lions, has spent the last few years quietly becoming “the creator Super Bowl.” The conversation has been building for a while. Substack creator economy reporter Lia Haberman described an industry-wide memo effect this year, with far more creators making the trip than in past summers.
Marketer and newsletter writer Lindsey Gamble, attending his first Cannes Lions, came away with a similar read, noting that creators weren't just present on the Croisette this year; they were embedded in it, estimated in the hundreds and treating the week as a genuine business investment rather than a branded vacation. Digiday's own festival coverage backed that up, arguing that creators had moved from supporting cast to the main story of Cannes 2026.
This June, Brand Curators sent two of its own, Jayde I. Powell and Tameka Bazile, to the South of France for a week that landed them on three stages, in two major trade publications, and in the middle of a conversation the whole industry is now having about the power of creator presence at global industry events.
Alongside the activations and panels, Team BC attended the Zoom x Canva Creator Breakfast, the #paid Executive Lunch, LinkedIn's Black Joy Brunch, The Room's Cocktails & Canapés with ADCOLOR, the Sprout Social Creator Kickoff, and a host of exclusive gatherings with brand marketing leaders.
Jayde I. Powell moderated Always in Motion: Brands That Move with Us at The Female Quotient Beach, a decade-plus institution on the Croisette that expanded to a larger outdoor stage this year. Her session and point of view on what LinkedIn creators bring to brand conversations in 2026 earned a feature from Hello Partner, part of the outlet's ongoing Cannes creator coverage. ICYMI, you can view the livestream from FQ Beach here.
Next Up: Tameka took the mainstage at Canva Creative Cabana, sharing the stage for "For You Page: From the People Who Built It, Backed It, and Connected It," alongside leaders from TikTok and Virgin Voyages, and musician-creator Morgan Jay. The panel unpacked what actually built the algorithm-driven feed we all scroll now, and Tameka held her own as the creator-strategist voice in a room of legacy brand marketers,
By midweek, Jayde and Tameka shared their first international stage together, joining the Cannes Diversity Collective's Inkwell Beach at TikTok Gardens for Automate to Amplify: The Human Algorithm. The panel took on the question the industry keeps circling, but rarely answers well: not whether to use AI, but what to hand off so creators can show up more fully for the work only they can do. Alongside Jodie Taylor, Dr. Nikkia McClain, and Liberty White, Jayde and Tameka made the case for automating the workflows, not the relationship or the story.
Press coverage came from Hello Partner and Digiday, both citing our creators as examples of where the industry is heading. Our creators also captured on-the-ground content for our brand partners Wistia, Sprout Social, Zoom, Calendly, and HubSpot.
If Cannes Lions 2026 confirmed anything, it's that the industry has stopped asking whether creators belong on these stages and started asking which ones will be worth watching next year.
