Cannes Lions: Top Marketing and Ad Execs on Boosting Brand Voice Through Entertainment, Connecting With Gen Z and More

Amid the blazing soleil of the French Riviera, senior marketing and advertising executives from major brands — including Netflix, Unilever, Lego and Electronic Arts — joined Variety in the C-Suite in collaboration with Canva at Cannes Lions to discuss industry trends and how they’re evolving their strategies to reach consumers across the globe.

Day 1 of the three-day interview series, which took place at the Canva Creative Cabana beachfront on the Croisette, featured Julia Goldin, chief marketing officer of Lego; David Tinson, chief experience officer at Electronic Arts; Amy Reinhard, president of advertising, Netflix; Leandro Barreto, CMO of Unilever; Chris Beresford-Hill, global chief creative officer, BBDO Worldwide; Mark Kirkham, CMO of PepsiCo U.S. Beverages; Leonardo Aizpuro, CMO of Nespresso; and Fabiola Torres, CMO of the Gap brand.

Here are highlights of the conversations, along with full video replays.

Where Play Becomes Culture: Building Experiences That Last

Julia Goldin, chief marketing officer of Lego, and David Tinson, chief experience officer, Electronic Arts

Video-game giant EA is no longer just about gaming. And the Lego Group is no longer just about toys. What these two companies have in common: They’re both working to extend their brands to new content formats and experiences, to reinforce their connection with fans as well as reach new consumer cohorts.

“When you think about what the nature of the participation is, particularly with young people, it’s playing games — but it’s also playing games to create friendships,” EA’s Tinson said. “It’s playing games to create content. It’s playing, it’s watching others play games. So a brand experience today is happening all around our games. It’s in the games, but it’s happening around the games, too.”

For Lego, Goldin said, “We don’t just think of a physical product and then think about the marketing and then think about the experience. It’s always holistic. So if it’s F1, we’re gonna start thinking about what the product lineup will be, but at the same time we’ll be thinking, well, what are we gonna do in terms of activations? … What are we gonna do in social media? You know, what are we gonna do with potential games? And it’s things like that that I think create the opportunities for so many different connections.”

The Power of Brand Building in Entertainment

Amy Reinhard, president of advertising at Netflix, and Leandro Barreto, CMO of Unilever

For marketers, the goal these days isn’t really about “visibility,” Unilever’s Barreto said — it’s about enhancing the relevance of your brands with the desired audience.

Unilever’s recently teamed up with Netflix’s “Bridgerton” for a set of limited-edition Dove products tied to the show. According to Reinhard, the partnership resulted in a nearly 60% lift in new shoppers for Dove. With one of Unilever’s U.S. retail partners, Barreto said, the products sold out within a month.

Said Barreto, “When you think about culture, it’s very difficult to not think about Netflix because it’s really the epicenter of culture. It’s not only about content, it’s creating worlds, right?” he said. “And it becomes almost inevitable to be part of that cultural movement.”

Reinhard said that in measuring the success of such marketing tie-ups, one of the metrics Netflix looks for is social conversation — not just the volume but also the quality of the conversation. The streamer also looks at how is Netflix’s creative partners are reacting to such deals, “because that’s such a huge part for us. We want our creators to make sure that they feel like these are authentic and lift the brand.”

Barreto observed that the consumer-goods conglomerate used to be focused on traditional marketing channels, like linear TV. “And now people are becoming a little bit allergic to interruption,” he said. “So there’s a big shift towards entertainment, passion points, interest-based content. The more we go in the direction of culture and really build from culture the way we engage with the people we serve, the more we get it right and the more we drive more relevance. So it’s a bigger shift in demand creation through relevance.”

The People Can Take It From Here

Chris Beresford-Hill, global chief creative officer, BBDO Worldwide, and Mark Kirkham, CMO of PepsiCo U.S. Beverages

One of the most-liked Super Bowl ads from 2026 was Pepsi’s “The Choice,” which co-opted one of Coca-Cola’s polar bears — 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’s “I Want to Break Free.”

“All the data would tell you not to use something that looks like your competitor’s mascot,” said PepsiCo’s Kirkham. But the calculated risk was to “create new data and you’re not just following all the old rules.” He added, “All of a sudden there’s gonna be a case for brands, marketers, teams to do work that maybe wouldn’t have been supported before.”

“You take risks when you borrow something,” acknowledged Beresford-Hill, chief creative officer of BBDO, which worked with Pepsi on the spot. “But what was amazing is it was the whole point of the idea. … 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.”

Added Beresford-Hill, “We had a lot of fun with it” — but he said the best part was that “online it turned into this huge debate.”

“Why this was in so many people’s 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’re able to make and generate their own parodies, their own memes,” he said. “The 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’t have.”

Cracking the Gen Z Code

Leonardo Aizpuro, CMO of Nespresso, and Fabiola Torres, CMO of Gap

A question on everyone’s minds at Cannes? How to reach Gen Z consumers, as Variety co-president and co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh noted in opening the discussion.

“I think to become a modern brand, you always have to talk to new audiences and recruit them,” said Gap’s Torres. “They need to be in the conversation, and they need to love you.”

Nespresso’s Aizpuro commented, “It’s 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 — I’m the first one to be guilty of seeing something on the internet that some creator has posted and being like, ‘Ooh, I wanna try that.'”

He said there’s an online community that calls themselves “Nespresso Girlies,” who are “very passionate about discovering hacks, tricks, the newest flavor.” In working with creators, Aizpuro said, the goal is to partner with “the ones that have the most influence and the ones that feel that can be more true to our brand voice.”

For the Gap, the considerations are the same when it comes to partnering with creators, said Torres. It’s about treating them “as peers”: “It’s not a transactional thing,” she said. Two years ago, Gap had zero creator partners; the clothing brand now has a roster of 1,300: “They’re part of the Gap family.”

Last summer, Gap launched a collab with girl group Katseye, “Better in Denim,” which resulted in 1 billion impressions in the first week (which would balloon to 8 billion over the next several months).

In recruiting Gen Z and Gen Alpha, “it’s about entertaining them,” Torres said. With millennials, she said, it’s more about “retaining them and making sure that we’re interesting enough to keep them with us.”