most-liked Super Bowl ads from 2026<\/a> was Pepsi\u2019s \u201cThe Choice,\u201d which co-opted one of Coca-Cola\u2019s polar bears \u2014 and in the central plot twist, he realizes he prefers Pepsi in a blind taste test. It was directed by actor and filmmaker Taika Waititi and set to Queen\u2019s \u201cI Want to Break Free.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cAll the data would tell you not to use something that looks like your competitor\u2019s mascot,\u201d said PepsiCo\u2019s Kirkham. But the calculated risk was to \u201ccreate new data and you\u2019re not just following all the old rules.\u201d He added, \u201cAll of a sudden there\u2019s gonna be a case for brands, marketers, teams to do work that maybe wouldn\u2019t have been supported before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cYou take risks when you borrow something,\u201d acknowledged Beresford-Hill, chief creative officer of BBDO, which worked with Pepsi on the spot. \u201cBut what was amazing is it was the whole point of the idea. \u2026 The Pepsi paradox is actually, if you try it, you will like it. And we told a story of the mental anguish, the truth around taste and the paradox that is, what you really love versus what you think you love.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAdded Beresford-Hill, \u201cWe had a lot of fun with it\u201d \u2014 but he said the best part was that \u201conline it turned into this huge debate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhy this was in so many people\u2019s feed end to end is actually not that marketers and ad agency people were leveraging AI, but all of a sudden consumers are fucking around on AI and they\u2019re able to make and generate their own parodies, their own memes,\u201d he said. \u201cThe way it caught fire in culture was actually because these tools are now in the hands of every Android and iPhone user, and so all of a sudden they were participating and playing in it in a way maybe a couple years ago they couldn\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\tCracking the Gen Z Code\t<\/h2>\n
\n\tLeonardo Aizpuro<\/strong>, CMO of Nespresso, and Fabiola Torres<\/strong>, CMO of Gap<\/em><\/p>\n\n\tA question on everyone\u2019s minds at Cannes? How to reach Gen Z consumers, as Variety<\/em> co-president and co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh noted in opening the discussion.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cI think to become a modern brand, you always have to talk to new audiences and recruit them,\u201d said Gap\u2019s Torres. \u201cThey need to be in the conversation, and they need to love you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tNespresso\u2019s Aizpuro commented, \u201cIt\u2019s super important to recruit [Gen Z] not only because they are the future of where the category is going, but also because they have a humongous influence on the rest of the generations. A lot of people, you know, me included \u2014 I\u2019m the first one to be guilty of seeing something on the internet that some creator has posted and being like, \u2018Ooh, I wanna try that.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHe said there\u2019s an online community that calls themselves \u201cNespresso Girlies,\u201d who are \u201cvery passionate about discovering hacks, tricks, the newest flavor.\u201d In working with creators, Aizpuro said, the goal is to partner with \u201cthe ones that have the most influence and the ones that feel that can be more true to our brand voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFor the Gap, the considerations are the same when it comes to partnering with creators, said Torres. It\u2019s about treating them \u201cas peers\u201d: \u201cIt\u2019s not a transactional thing,\u201d she said. Two years ago, Gap had zero creator partners; the clothing brand now has a roster of 1,300: \u201cThey\u2019re part of the Gap family.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tLast summer, Gap launched a collab with girl group Katseye, \u201cBetter in Denim,\u201d which resulted in 1 billion impressions in the first week (which would balloon to 8 billion over the next several months).<\/p>\n
\n\tIn recruiting Gen Z and Gen Alpha, \u201cit\u2019s about entertaining them,\u201d Torres said. With millennials, she said, it\u2019s more about \u201cretaining them and making sure that we\u2019re interesting enough to keep them with us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid the blazing soleil of the French Riviera, senior marketing and advertising executives from major brands \u2014 including Netflix, Unilever, Lego and Electronic Arts \u2014 joined Variety in the C-Suite in collaboration with Canva at Cannes Lions to discuss industry trends and how they\u2019re evolving their strategies to reach consumers across the globe. Day 1 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2473680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[475285,486791],"class_list":["post-2473679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-cannes-lions","tag-cannes-lions-studio-recap-2026"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Marketing-and-Ad-Execs-Join-Variety-x-Canva-Cannes-Lions.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2473679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2473681,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473679\/revisions\/2473681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2473680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2473679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2473679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2473679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}