Forget who won. The more interesting question is why. This year’s Cannes Lions’ Entertainment winners show that the ideas cutting through are no longer about showing up in culture: they’re about creating something people genuinely want to take part in.
Every year, Cannes crowns the industry’s most creative work. Every year, marketers race to decode the trends. But the Entertainment Lions (including gaming, music and sport) are often the clearest indicator of where creative effectiveness is heading because they test brands in the most competitive arena of all: culture.
This year, one lesson really stood out in this bellwether category: audiences are increasingly resistant to brands that want their attention and increasingly receptive to brands that earn it. It’s about relevance more than visibility now.
The most celebrated work from Cannes was built around a fandom, community, passion point or a cultural behavior that people already cared deeply about.
And that’s because these are modern gathering places, says Alex Kemp, executive creative director at The Team: “they’re where identities are formed, communities are built and culture moves at its fastest,” he says: “so they’re also where brands have the greatest opportunity to become genuinely relevant. It’s about moving from presence to participation.”
To explore what that looks like in practice, sports, music and entertainment leader The Team reviewed the winners against three audience outcomes – attention, affiliation and action. “Did the work capture attention?,” Kemp explains: “Did it create a stronger sense of connection or belonging? And did it give people a reason to participate, share and act?”
Looking across some of the standout winners, six recurring questions emerge that can help marketers assess how creatively effective an idea really is.
- Cultural fit: does the work understand the world the audience is already living in?
Club Deportivo Municipal’s ‘The Thousand Sponsors of Muni ’ campaign is a great example of tapping into fan culture, where identity, loyalty and belief in a club matter as much as the game itself. After losing its major sponsor following relegation, the club invited 1,000 fans and local businesses to become sponsors instead. The result made sponsorship feel personal and collective, rather than a distant brand logo on a shirt.
As Kemp explains: “Did the work capture attention? Did it create a stronger sense of connection or belonging? And it did it give people a reason to participate, share and act?”
2. Audience truth: is it built on a real human behavior, tension or need?
Mikkeller’s ‘The Switch Hit ’ campaign tapped into a brilliantly specific element of fan behavior which insiders instantly recognized as authentic: the Taiwanese superstition that watching the national baseball team can bring bad luck.
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During a World Baseball Classic game, Mikkeller created an ‘unwatch party’ where fans watched classic Taiwanese dramas instead. AI transformed the show’s characters into live commentators delivering real-time match updates, allowing fans to support their team without risking the curse.
The work succeeded because it gave Mikkeller a credible role in the ritual. The brand became part of how fans experience tension, luck and matchday belief.
3. Emotional pull: does it make people feel something, not just notice something?
Xbox’s ‘Missing Managers ’ campaign participated in football culture from the inside, meeting fans where they already spend time, think tactically and build identity. It turned Football Manager players into real-world coaching candidates, using gaming performance to identify and develop the next generation of female football managers.
The campaign’s emotional pull addressed a real representation gap: it solved something meaningful: the absence of women managers. And, says Kemp, its relevance is especially strong “because its impact is not just a moment in time; it has the potential to be measured and felt for years to come.”
4. Brand role: does the brand have a credible reason to be there?
Adidas marked the Oasis reunion with its ‘Original Forever ’ film that transported fans through the band’s most iconic live moments, ending with the Gallagher brothers’ long-awaited return. Paired with a tour collection, it celebrated a cultural relationship that fans already saw as authentic.
The campaign is immediately relevant because it understands the cultural power of music and nostalgia. Oasis is not just a band to its fans: it’s an identity, an attitude and a generational belonging, which gives the work a huge emotional charge. And this isn’t a random music partnership for Adidas: the brand already has deep credibility in youth culture, style, football terraces and the visual language around bands like Oasis.
5. Participation value: does it invite people in?
Clash Royale’s Pocket-Sized Halftime Show brought the Super Bowl show into its game, with Lil Wayne performing a live in-game concert for millions of players worldwide. By fusing sports, music and gaming in a way that felt native to player behavior, it turned a cultural moment into an interactive fan experience. And it turned entertainment into playable participation, says Kemp, praising the way in which “it didn’t just create entertainment around the game; it created entertainment inside the game, where the audience already is.”
6. Partner power: what does the partner, platform, talent or Intellectual Property make possible that the brand could not do alone?
Jell-O’s ‘Jell-O-Meter ’ brought the brand’s iconic wobble into college football, using it to measure and celebrate crowd energy in stadiums across the US. The result gave the dessert brand a playful, highly visible role within the live fan experience.
The campaign understood that sports fandom is full of noise, emotion and absurd rituals, then used the distinctive wobble of Jell-O as a playful way to be relevant in that culture. It gives the brand a simple, ownable role which shows it knows itself well, in a way that’s “playfully relevant to its jiggly core,” comments Kemp.
Ultimately, as all six examples of winning work show, partnerships are no longer just routes to reach or borrowed equity. “At their best, they are relevance accelerators,” Kemp says: “giving brands access, credibility and cultural permission they would struggle to create alone. The most effective ideas didn’t simply attach themselves to sport, music, gaming or entertainment; they used those worlds to create a clear role for the brand, make something meaningful for the audience and give people a reason to participate.”
For more advice on how to earn relevance with the audiences that matter, get in touch with The Team.
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