Best of LinkedIn: Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2026

This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennis, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about Khan Lyon International Festival of Creativity. Frennes is a B to B market research company that supports enterprise marketing teams in unlocking the full potential of their customer data with the help of AI. you can find more info. So, welcome to today's deep dive everyone.

We are really thrilled to have you with us! Yeah thanks for joining uh... Today our mission is basically unpack the absolute top trends from The Con Lion International Festival of Creativity twenty-twenty six and we're specifically focusing on all the insights that were buzzing across linkedin curated directly For You the BtoB marketing professionals right? And I think we need a quick tone.

check Right out of the gate because if hear the word con your brain immediately goes to like consumer brands throwing these lavish parties on yachts with celebrities. Which is usually what happens, right? Right exactly but we need to completely reset the stage for this one. We've been analyzing all of these dispatches The debates...

the raw insights flooding LinkedIn from the B-to-B folks actually On the ground This year and What were looking at today Is not about the flashy parties. It's about severe fundamental shifts in how enterprise growth is being orchestrated Exactly. I mean, if you're listening to this on your commute or sitting at your desk right now You are probably feeling the whiplash of last twelve months Oh for sure. And The biggest operational shift like the absolute center gravity at Khan This year was how the conversation around artificial intelligence has completely mutated.

Mutated is a great word For it Right! Because we spent that Last Year treating AI Like a shiny new toy. We ran pilots and did little isolated tests But based in Intel from Khan That era is completely over. Yeah, it's done.

the industry has no longer marveling at the engine. The panic now is figuring out how to actually run the machine and It is this sheer speed of that transition they just catching people off guard. I think there was a great recap on LinkedIn from Fina Pang that really captured This. oh yeah?

I saw that one. yes She noted that. the industry as official-done debating AI philosophically What if phase it's over. We are in pure execution mode now, right?

She specifically highlighted that agentic systems and autonomous buying journeys They're beta tests anymore like they are shipping as we speak. Okay wait before we go further down this road Let's unpack that for a second because agentic AI gets thrown around a lot in pitch decks. Right? no you definitely does.

yeah. And we aren't just talking about a slightly smarter chatbot That sits in the corner of your website, right What exactly is an AI agent doing in a twenty-twenty six B to be marketing workflow that a human being used to do? That Is the crucial distinction actually. A chatbot waits for a prompt.

An agentic system on the other hand has a goal and it executes The steps to achieve that goal autonomously. right? so in a bdb context an agent isn't just Writing email template, It is actively monitoring intent data across the web. It notices that a target account is researching a specific problem, and then it dynamically generates a highly personalized outreach sequence.

Wow! Yeah. And then routes through your CRM secures internal compliance approval sends it analyzes the prospects reply and adjusts to next steps which is insane right all without a human marketer ever clicking send. I mean, which sounds incredible on paper but in reality that brings up a massive issue.

think about it like this. imagine your company just bought a fifty million dollar state-of the art formula one racing car. yeah i like this. It's an absolute masterpiece of engineering.

But there is just one massive problem. Your current pit crew only knows how to change the tires On a two thousand twelve minivan. That is painfully accurate Right, and Danilatoro put out this brilliant insight during the festival that touched on exactly this. He pointed out that picking the right tech partner is only like fifty percent of the challenge.

The real gritty painful work Is changing your internal operating models Your processes, your KPIs, your incentives Because if you strap a hyper-efficient AI engine onto A broken legacy process All you do is scale the brokenness. Exactly Toro was very specific about this, You have to rewire everything internally and This directly ties into what Linda Tong was hearing from Fortune. five hundred CMOs on the ground at Khan. Oh What were they saying?

They are entirely focused On what The modern marketing team even looks like in this environment. But whole talent profile Is shifting dramatically To define future tech stacks. So, are B-to-B marketing teams actually prepared to rebuild their entire workflow while the plane is still flying essentially? Or they just strapping AI onto these broken processes like?

what does that new marketer even look like. Well The CMOs Tom spoke with Are looking for systems thinkers. They're shifting away from people who manually execute tasks and moving toward People Who can architect the work flow And manage the AI agents. I hear That but let's be honest about the reality of BWB marketing for a second.

It is notoriously terrified at risk, it's safe and corporate. if AI making good professional content virtually free and instantaneous to produce aren't most corporate brands just going use this tech pump out exact same boring white papers on massive scale? Well that was the trap! And its actually the exact tension driving these.

second major theme we saw emerging from deep dive into those posts Because AI is democratizing execution, making it practically free. The execution itself is no longer a competitive moat Right because everyone has exactly having a flawless Ai generated. twenty page report doesn't make you special when your competitor can generate the exact same report in three seconds. So the only true competitive advantage left for a B to be brand Is the human driver?

Human creativity has officially become the premium layer. I love that And that perfectly aligns with how Schuyler-Matson framed this. She quoted Kinsani Nobanda on this, and the quote was that we should be using AI for The Logic so he can get to the magic. THE LOGICS FOR THE MAGIC?

That is a great mental model! Isn't it?! You use the machine For The Logic, The Scale, The Administrative Busy Work. All of the paper cuts are the job...

you clear away all of that So human beings Can Actually Focus On Original Thought The Magic. And that magic Is Highly Specific. Breanne Olson provided a really sharp perspective on this at Khan. She acknowledged that in an AI powered world, the operational impact is totally undeniable.

but she made it explicitly clear technology alone will not create brand differentiation taste judgment community and culture. those remain deeply stubbornly human. you cannot automate cultural empathy You can't code strategic judgement. Yeah, Gulen Benji from Mars echoed this exactly on LinkedIn.

She shared their brand building philosophy and it was refreshingly blunt. she said people creativity technology in that order and by design In that order? That's powerful Right but let me throw another analogy at us just to see how it holds up. Let say AI gives everyone the absolute best most expensive high-end camera lens in the world.

Suddenly every single brand has perfect focus Perfect lighting but you still need a photographer with actual taste to know how to frame the shot, right? So my question is considering B-to-B as so risk averse. Will B-To-B brands actually be brave enough to lean into human emotion and culture or will they just default on the boring identical stuff? Well...

To answer that we have look at trust Because if human taste and authenticity are the new premium, BB brands have to fundamentally rethink who is delivering their message. Buyers don't trust faceless corporate entities anymore. They know an AI probably wrote that perfectly polished blog post. Yeah they aren't stupid Exactly!

They trust people. And this points directly to third massive theme from the festival The rise of creators as core B-to-B marketing infrastructure. Oh...this is huge.

Cameron Buckner actually pointed out that Creators were not just participating as guests They were running the table. Yeah, they were everywhere! They were building massive IP ecosystems and securing real brand equity not just taking these one-off transactional brand deals anymore. But here is the critical problem And Eli Schwartz offered a very sharp critique of this dynamic.

He pointed out that while consumer brands have spent the last decade Building entire creator economies Oh...they've mastered it Totally. But B to B basically has none. B-to-B influencer marketing is still just, you know a sponsored LinkedIn post and I hope it leaves a massive untapped infrastructure gap.

So when you say infrastructure gap what are we missing in b to be? We're missing the standardized scalable ways to partner with an industry expert, track the pipeline they generate over a six-month campaign and actually compensate them based on revenue influenced. Instead of just handing them a gift card? Right Well you know building that external infrastructure takes a lot of time.

but the immediate solution to that gap might be sitting right inside your own building. Employee creators Yes! Milena Toro highlighted this fascinating pivot at Khan regarding employee-generated content. She used the example of Starbucks and TikTok's partnership.

Oh, that was a great example. Right. think about the historical irony here. for the last twenty years corporate employees were basically terrified to post about work.

It was a massive liability. PR would lose their minds right? And now what used to be a liability is a massive marketing asset because consumers inherently trust a barista showing the reality of their job or in B to B's case, an engineer talking about a coding problem way more than a polished studio campaign. It is so true!

But Daniel Shapiro predicted we are going see massive wave of these highly-nuched BtoB creators emerge from within companies and my pushback here Is our btb company really gonna empower their employees? do this? Like aren't they too paralyzed by the fear losing control? They are definitely paralyzed by that fear, but the financial mandate is forcing their hand which brings us to the final major theme from The Crescent.

The CMO Mandate is expanding aggressively toward measurable business growth because you have to justify the risk. Exactly! To justify the risks of empowering employee creators or deploying agentic AI... the BDBCMO must be able prove to the C-suite.

all this actually drives the bottom line Right, which totally shifts the role of the CMO. The conversations at Khan really highlighted this evolution from the Cmo being just a campaign executor to being a true business orchestrator. Yeah, Sengita Prasad captured this perfectly. She noted that marketing is no longer viewed as adjacent to growth.

It's expected to help shape it Which requires more accountability and way less control Precisely And Lindsay Pollans from Serkana offered a really grounded reality check on this. She pointed out that, sure, Khan is full of beautiful creative work but the most important conversation happening right now is proving that the work actually did anything. she said creativity without data is just art. Data Without Creativity Is Just Noise.

That's quote of year and we finally have hard data to back up. why dual approach is financial necessity? Christopher Harmon shared some notes on PwC and ANA research that was presented at GAN. Okay, what did the numbers say?

It substantiated it brand plus demand marketing. so balancing long-term brand building with AI driven performance actually drives two times The revenue growth of laggard competitors Two times the growth. Wow Yeah You need the brand equity to build trust in the AI engine to capture the intent It's like, okay. The modern B-to-B CMO is an architect who has been given an impossible brief.

How so? Well in the past they just had to design a beautiful building. now They're being asked not only designed the building but also guarantee that property value increases by twenty percent By next quarter. That exactly what it feels Like.

So how does A B-To-B CMO balance need for long term human led brand Building with the CFOs demand For instant measurable ROI without turning their whole department into a pure sales support machine. You survive it by making the C-suite realize that the human element is only thing. makes the ROI possible in first place, right? The AI and creators are just delivery mechanisms for trust.

If the CFO wants instant ROI, the CMO has to prove authentic. human centric brand building Is the only way to earn trusts from skeptical buyer In market completely saturated with AI Man, that is so true. Which leaves us with a final thought for you to chew on as we wrap up this deep dive. Right now massive AI models are training on the content We produce today.

Yeah literally right now The brands that rely entirely On synthetic generation will eventually just be recycling themselves. So what if the ultimate B-to-B growth hack For twenty twenty six isn't having the most advanced AI agent? What If it's simply Having the courage To Be the most radically human brand in A sea of automated noise? That Is definitely something to think about.

If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks. Also check out our other editions on account-based marketing field. Marketing AI in B to be marketing channel marketing MarTech. go to market and social selling.

Thanks so much for joining us on his deep dive. Don't forget subscribe And we'll see you next time.