Cannes Goes Big on Creators; AI Copycatting Surges and Podcasters Descend on the Nancy Guthrie Case

0:00Jasmine Enberg: Hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy. I'm Kaya Yurieff. And I'm Jasmine Enberg. Every Thursday, we take you beyond the headlines to tell you what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. True crime podcasters are disrupting the Nancy Guthrie crime scene, while AI copycatting of creator content is getting out of control. In this episode, we'll dig into both of those stories and give you an exclusive look at the new creator track and activation coming to Cannes Lions this June.

0:34Jasmine Enberg: Hi, Jasmine. Hey, Kaya. This is the first full week that we've been at home for a while, but it has not been any less busy. We just published a special newsletter and podcast with our full interview with New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. And today, we're also excited to announce the first ever Scalable Summit, which will take place on May 6th at the Lighthouse Campus in Los Angeles. We'll share more details about the event on the podcast soon, but you can check out our website in the meantime. Speaking of events, today we're also going to be joined by Ed Davidson, who is the Chief Growth Officer at Lions, which hosts the annual advertising festival CanLions in the south of France.

1:13He is going to tell us all about what to expect from Lions creators this year, and we also publish an exclusive on the expansion as well as Lions' partnership with Adobe in our newsletter today. But first, let's get into the news.

1:26Jasmine Enberg: Earnings season has wrapped up for the fourth quarter. For most, it was a stellar period. YouTube shared that its total revenue, including ads and subscriptions, for the first time, came in at over$60 billion worldwide in 2025. So it was the first time that they broke out subscriptions for YouTube. That was more than Netflix, which brought in about$45 billion. But that's less than a third of what Meta made in mostly advertising last year. Its worldwide revenue surpassed$200 billion for the first time. For the smaller players, it was a little bit of a different story. Snap did key expectations on revenue, but it lost users both in North America and in Europe, which is never a good sign.

2:07Jasmine Enberg: Pinterest stock also fell as much as 20 % after it reported Q4 earnings that missed expectations, and it also issued weak guidance. Spotify, though, fared quite well. Its stock rose 15%. Monthly active users grew 11 % to 751 million. And they also cited a very successful Spotify wrapped with more than 300 million users interacting with the feature. On the earnings call, the new co-CEOs of Spotify also, of course, talked about video podcasting. But the stats really didn't give us that great of a picture because they didn't really share kind of comparisons. So they said that video podcast consumption has increased by more than 90 % since it launched its partner program.

2:49Jasmine Enberg: Though it's really hard to know what that stat really means. They also said that there are now more than 530 ,000 video podcasts on the platform. Jasmine, what do you think? What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, overall, it was a good quarter, again, for most of the big creator platforms. I think AI was the theme that was dominating all of the headlines coming out of earnings once again. What we were more focused on, though, was how these companies talked about creators and their earnings calls. So let's start with Meta because executives did not mention creators once in its fourth quarter earnings call.

3:24Right? Which includes, you know, prepared remarks as well as a question and answer session with analysts. AI, though, came up almost 50 times, which just speaks to that broader point of AI really being, again, the theme of the earnings calls this quarter. The only time I did hear creators come up was in the follow-up call with analysts. And it was very brief. And it was a response to a question about Instagram for TV. Quarterly earnings calls, of course, are a snapshot in time, but they are a really good way to get a pulse of what these big tech companies are focused on and, you know, what they want investors and shareholders to know.

4:04And so when we looked at 2025 as a whole, we found that Meta only mentioned creators five times across its four earnings calls. And compare that to 2021 when creators appeared in its earnings transcript over 70 times. So that is a huge decline there. I think it makes sense, you know, if you think about what was happening in 2021. It was the height of the creator economy boom. You had TikTok rising really fast, really challenging Meta, posing a big threat. And analysts, of course, had a lot of questions about that because so much of what, you know, executives talk about on these earnings calls also has to do with the questions that they're asked.

4:45I think overall, you know, our read at this point is that Meta's role in the creator economy is now kind of established, right? And its investments and creators are much more of a given than they are a gamble. And so there's probably fewer questions coming from investors. They are, however, still concerned about, you know, what Meta is doing in AI. And they had a lot of questions about its continued AI spending spree. Although judging by the stock reaction, they still seem pretty happy to let Meta spend as long as that core ad business is doing well, which it continues to be. Totally.

5:23Jasmine Enberg: One company that did get a lot of questions about creators was Netflix, though, which is not something we would have thought a few years ago, right? And I think that obviously makes sense given the recent podcasting push and deals free with creators in the past month or so. They've announced deals with Alex Earle, Jake Shane, Jordan Matter, Alan Chicken Chow, just to name a few. And working with social media creators is still new and somewhat uncharted strategy and territory for Netflix. So it makes sense that analysts are asking about it. And it's had some, you know, early wins with big hits with Mark Rober and Miss Rachel.

5:57Jasmine Enberg: You know, many of these big stars are already on YouTube, which also talked a lot about creators in Q4. I will say, in general, YouTube is the most consistent and vocal about talking about creators during the call. And a lot of the positioning now, though, is about how brands can better work with them. So YouTube has really been lagging behind others like Instagram and TikTok. When it comes to influencer marketing, they are really trying to change that. And we spoke more about this with YouTube executive Brian Albert in a previous episode and what YouTube is doing to catch up. So you can check that out if you want to go deeper.

6:29Jasmine Enberg: But in general, Alphabet, YouTube's parent company, you know, is just always calling out creators. So if you look at their year-end report since 2022, the word creator appears between 15 to 20 times. So that really backed up the kind of anecdotal feeling we had of like, when we tune into these calls, we hear it a lot. But the numbers really show just how much. One other company I wanted to talk a little bit more about too is Snap because creators only came up a few times in the earnings call and they've kind of been up and down over the years in terms of how and how much they mentioned creators.

7:02But this week it also made a really big announcement. It is launching creator subscriptions, which allows fans to pay for exclusive content from creators on the app. It's very similar to how Patreon, YouTube, OnlyFans and Meta have subscriptions. Those subscriptions cost between about$5 and$20, and creators themselves can set those prices. The catch, of course, is that creators get about 60 % of that subscription revenue. The rest goes to platform fees, meaning to Snap. And that is a steeper cut than what we've seen with some of Snap's peers. So YouTube, for example, takes about 30 % of revenue from channel subscriptions.

7:42and Instagram as well as other meta platforms actually lets creators keep all of their subscription revenue. This move I think also makes a lot of sense for Snap. It is a much smaller ad business than meta or YouTube. Its revenue came in at about$6 billion in 2025 and the company's been trying really hard to diversify its revenue streams in part because its ad business has been struggling and its other subscription products, which includes Snapchat Plus, as well as a memory storage plan, have actually been pretty successful. And they've been driving a lot of the growth in its business lately. Although, of course, that revenue is growing from a much smaller base.

8:23But just to put some context, some figures around this, what they said in their fourth quarter earnings was that those two subscription products now have about 24 million subscribers, and that's up over 70%. Overall, though, I mean, 24 million subscribers is still a little bit less than 3 % of the 900 million monthly active users that Snap says it has. So, you know, clearly, it's still a very small slice of its business. But that's not to say that it really hasn't, you know, at least taken off among, you know, Snap's core loyal user base.

8:56Jasmine Enberg: Totally. And it's been a big success. I mean, we're not used to paying for features on social media platforms. So I think there's a lot of excitement on Wall Street about kind of the potential there. So it makes sense that Snap is going in this direction. Yeah, I think Snap found the right product market fit, right? You know, I think, you know, X has tried and, you know, there's been various reports that it hasn't been as successful. Meta also launched subscriptions and all of these were kind of, you know, a dud in many ways. And I think that speaks directly to your point is that people have been used to accessing these platforms for free and without giving them a real value proposition to pay for it, it becomes an uphill battle.

9:34But Snap seems to have at least figured that out.

9:37Jasmine Enberg: Totally. We'll see if that success can translate to creator subscriptions as well. For those of you who are interested, we also did an in-depth analysis of how big text messaging has changed around creators and earnings calls since 2020. So you can check that out in our latest newsletter or in the Wall Street Journal, which cited us, which is great. But now on to our next story. copycatting has always been complicated on social media. I mean, if you remember the lawsuit where one influencer sued another over her aesthetic, right? Like, drawing inspiration, I think, has become a little more normalized in the TikTok era as short-form video apps have focused on trends.

10:13Jasmine Enberg: But typically what you see is that creators kind of hop on a trend but put their own spin on it rather than kind of blatantly copying. But now we're seeing a totally different level of being ripped off and this time it's happening by AI. I actually noticed this on my Instagram feed this week. There was a micro creator who has about 3 ,000 Instagram followers. She posted a video saying that an AI influencer had posted an almost exact copy of one of her reels. Here's what she said. I can't make this up. An AI influencer just stole my video. So here's the video I posted.

10:51And here's the AI copy.

10:58That is my literal desk and my actual calculator. Is nothing sacred anymore? For those of you who are listening, basically the AI version of the video looks almost identical to this creator's video down to her facial expressions as well as the calculator on her desk. She's clearly very upset. She has a right to be upset. And she's also not alone. I mean, there was a report from NPR last year, which showed that AI was being used to create these really super realistic avatars of real life creators. And they were basically copying word for word what these creators had said in their videos. And the issue here, of course, as is pointed out in the video by the micro creator, is that blatant copying isn't just a fall paw in the industry.

11:41It really directly hurts a creator's ability to build an audience and generate an income. And of course, that disproportionately hurts smaller creators who are just starting out. We've seen the social platforms really try to crack down on AI swap. Many of them are also now promoting original content. But as we're seeing these AI dupes just get more realistic and more rampant, it's getting harder and harder for them to keep up and also harder to know who to give credit for these videos. And I think what makes this even more complicated is that a lot of creators don't know what to do if this happens to them.

12:17They also don't know how to prevent it. And all of the laws around this are still really murky and still evolving.

12:25Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, that's why you're seeing them basically speak out on social media about it because, you know, what other recourse do they really have? But we actually talked to a legal expert about this to get some answers. We asked Rachel Connelly, a practicing attorney in LA, about what the legal remedies are for creators whose posts have been copied. Here's what she said. First step in most cases is typically a DMCA takedown notice. This is a relatively straightforward process. A user would submit a complaint through the platform with a link to the original content, the allegedly infringing content, and explain the unauthorized use.

12:57If that doesn't resolve it, a next step could be a cease and desist letter. This would ideally be drafted by an IP attorney, especially if there are monetary consequences involved. It's important to remember that in the U.S., copyright protection exists as soon as an original work is created. So in the example of a creator, this would be the moment a post is composed. But if you want to file a lawsuit, you need to have that post or whatever the work is registered with the Copyright Office first. That's a step that many creators may not realize or fully understand.

13:29Jasmine Enberg: It's the last part of the answer that really struck us. I mean, given that most creators aren't copywriting all of their work, they may not even be able to file a claim. And if you think about how many videos each creator posts and their entire library, I mean, that seems quite daunting. So this kind of means that their best bet may be either getting the platforms to take down the copycat content or sending a cease and desist letter. Yeah, I mean, I think this just goes to show that the laws really just haven't kept up with the way that people are publishing content on social media and just sort of the magnitude and the amount of content that's on there.

14:04And I think now we're falling even further behind as AI is exacerbating a lot of these problems. We also asked Rachel if there's anything that creators can do to kind of prevent this from happening to them. And here's what she said. Creators may need to start thinking a bit more proactively. Implementing measures such as watermarking their content, signing up for monitoring services to police their content, and other digital enforcement tools could become highly valuable. Especially if content is highly monetized, those services could really be worth the investment. And platforms can continue to integrate the latest technological advancements in this space.

14:41For example, many currently use things like digital fingerprinting and other detection systems to help identify repeat infringers and AI-driven content scraping. And then at a broader level, policymakers and courts, they're still figuring out how to apply the existing laws to AI-generated derivative works. So AI-generated derivative content really sits at a bit of a great legal area right now. One area to watch in particular is the right of publicity, especially when AI uses someone's persona commercially. Over the next few years, we'll probably see courts start to shape clearer boundaries with regards to these issues, particularly if complaints continue to increase.

15:21So the final part there in Rachel's answer about the right of publicity, which is basically an individual's legal right to control and profit off the commercial use of their name, image, or likeness, meaning that, for example, a person's photo cannot be used in an advertisement without their permission really is key here. There's actually a lot of debate about this, if you remember back in, I think, 2021-ish about college sports. And that ultimately ended up in college athletes being allowed to earn money from endorsements on social media, for example. Tyler Cho, who is an attorney for creators, agreed that this right of publicity is an area to watch for AI and creators now as well.

16:03And what she told us is that if an AI, quote unquote, skins a creator's persona so closely that a follower would confuse the two, that is actually violating a creator's right to own and monetize their likeness. And she said that's basically what happened to this micro creator that prompted this whole conversation.

16:22Jasmine Enberg: And of course, this is a much broader issue, right? It's not just happening to creators on social media. This is, you know, a huge reckoning that the AI industry is going to eventually face and is facing with copyright and ownership. Earlier this week, David Green announced that he's suing Google over its AI podcast voice. He is the former host of Morning Edition, and he alleges that Google illegally replicated his voice for its male podcast host in Notebook LM. Google denies this, but Green and others say the similarity is very uncanny. The Washington Post in its article pointed out that it's not just about money.

16:57Jasmine Enberg: I mean, this is a core part of his identity. He's quoted in the piece saying, my voice is like the most important part of who I am. It's terrible, no matter who this happens to. But I think, you know, for people like David Green, they have more resources, they potentially even have financial backing from the media companies that they work for than smaller creators do to fight these kinds of potential copyright infringements, right? But can a micro creator really take on Google in court? I mean, I don't think so. But to your point, I mean, this clearly is not limited to social media, and it isn't exactly new either.

17:29I mean, it's been an issue for a while, at least publicly since early 2024. Do you remember the drama with Scarlett Johansson? I sure do. So if you don't, basically, OpenAI demoed a voice assistant and the voice of that assistant sounded very much like Scarlett Johansson's voice. She lawyered up and OpenAI ended up dropping the voice, even though they always denied that there was any connection between Johansson and the AI voice assistant. But what made this story really bad was that Johansson said that OpenAI had actually reached out to her several times asking if they could use her voice, and she said no.

18:11So if they went ahead and used it anyway, I mean, that's just really bad behavior.

18:17Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, that was a very bad moment for OpenAI, and they backed off quickly. They did not want to go into litigation with Scarlett Johansson, who is not afraid to use her voice, no pun intended, to stand up for what's right. And I think this will only get worse as voice AI technology and AI video gets better and better. You know, case in point, ByteDance, TikTok's parent company in China has created a new AI model called C-Dance 2.0. And the Wall Street Journal reported that it can generate a very high quality video with a storyline, characters, different scenes based on just one text prompt. So the new model is generating a lot of waves in China, but it's, of course, sparking a lot of issues and concern in Hollywood.

18:59Jasmine Enberg: A ByteDance spokesperson told the BBC that it's taking steps to strengthen the current safeguards as they work to prevent, quote, unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users. So these companies are definitely a little more on edge than they were a few years ago. I think people are on edge, too, about it. I mean, it does feel, you know, kind of dystopian and crazy to even think that we're talking about these kinds of things. But on to our next story. True crime creators and podcasters have descended on Tucson, Arizona, where Savannah Guthrie's 84-year-old mother, Nancy Guthrie, was abducted from her home.

19:34Their presence there has sparked a lot of backlash from lawmakers, from residents, as well as from traditional media. This week, for example, Alma Hernandez, who's a Democratic member of the Arizona House of Representatives, posted on X, I am sick of watching, quote, reporting, grifting, insane speculation, lies, and BS by random wannabe journalists and YouTubers who have now caused more harm than good. Please go home in all caps. I actually first heard about this on CNN, where Hernandez was doing an interview with one of the reporters. But I know, Kai, you've been following this story, too.

20:11Jasmine Enberg: We have both been following the story, I think. All of America is at the edge of their seat of what's happening. I think the other thing that's crazy from the influencer angle, which has really blown up this week, is that people are also compromising the crime scene. A retired FBI agent complained, and according to The New Yorker, you know, people are touching things without gloves on, they're trampling over everything. At one point, a Domino's pizza delivery driver showed up with food for an influencer. He walked up to the front door of Nancy Guthrie's home. And the sheriff's department had to issue a public statement asking people to not order takeout to a crime scene.

20:48Jasmine Enberg: I think it's worth talking a little bit about why the story has drawn so much attention from the media. I mean, I think it has all the elements, right? It has celebrity, right? Savannah Guthrie is such a recognizable personality in the U.S. Then there's the mystery of it all, right? She's disappearing without a trace, the lack of leads, the twists and turns. And then there's the relatability, right? She's someone's mom. She's someone's grandma. So I think all of these things have made it very compelling. And there's interest, you know, all over social media throughout the US about it. What's your take, Jasmine?

21:18I agree with all of that. I would also add that media loves to talk about media. They love to talk about themselves. And we saw that also with the Olivia Nuzzi story that we covered on this podcast earlier. I mean, traditional media and reporters just couldn't get enough of it because the story had to do with one of their own. Of course, it also had to do with a very prominent political figure. But if you look at how the general public reacted to it, I mean, they pretty quickly lost interest. And you saw that in the book sales, which, by the way, Kaya, did you ever end up reading the book?

21:49Jasmine Enberg: I did. So I listened to the audiobook, which Olivia Nuzzi reads. Did you finish it or no? I did. And I know everybody said, you know, the reviews were not great, right? I actually enjoyed it. But I think I enjoyed it for different reasons. Like if you picked up the book, hoping for a salacious love affair story, you didn't really get that. But I did enjoy kind of the inside look into the Trump administration and how Trump and, you know, the other members of the administration really engaged with reporters because she was there on the ground and had a very close relationship with him as well. I mean, what did you think?

22:23Jasmine Enberg: I don't know. Maybe it was the audiobook version, but I did not enjoy it. I just there were definitely elements of it that I thought, like you said, kind of gave an interesting point of view on the Trump administration. I think the other issue I had with it, sorry to go on this tangent, but the first Trump administration was also so different from the second Trump administration that I think books have a really hard time now with these like fast moving events where it just didn't feel as relevant to me in the moment that we're in because of the difference between kind of how he's acted in now versus in the first administration.

22:56Jasmine Enberg: So that also was kind of off for me. I think that makes sense. I also I struggle with audiobooks. I'm not very good at listening to them. I lose interest pretty quickly. I like to actually have like a physical, tangible book. I'm not a Kindle reader really either. But anyway, I could talk about this forever. But back to Nancy Guthrie, I do think some of this is, you know, what is happening in this story as well, or at least why it feels like there is 24-7 news coverage of the Nancy Guthrie case and like breaking news popping up on our TV screens, even when there really isn't anything new to report, right?

23:29And the second part of this, too, is it does feel like traditional media will take any opportunity to jump on creators and independent reporters, right? That is not to say that what these true crime podcasters and creators and influencers, whatever you want to call them, what they're doing is right. I mean, it does feel like they are taking advantage of the situation to a certain degree. Clearly, there's evidence that they are disrupting the crime scene, which can make it really difficult for the police to do their job and find Nancy Guthrie, which is at the core of this case, right? But these true crime podcasters also wouldn't be there if the story hadn't been made into this massive national news story.

24:12And again, a lot of that came from traditional media with those breaking news headlines, seemingly 24-hour news coverage. And I can't imagine that that is helpful to the case either.

24:21Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I mean, I think traditional media is feeding the frenzy. And we've seen this time and again with various stories. I mean, it's not necessarily just with, you know, true crime stories, but also remember Ebola, right? CNN had wall-to-wall coverage of Ebola, of the missing, you know, Malaysia flight that disappeared, right? There was so much coverage over and over, and we've seen it through so many different stories. So I think traditional media also does get a lot of flack in general and has been getting flack also in this case saying, you know, there's so many disappearances every day. You know, they're not paying attention to this.

24:53Jasmine Enberg: I mean, again, I think it's the celebrity element. I think it's the media element. I think it's all of those things. But we've also seen, you know, people who aren't celebrities also get wall-to-wall coverage for, you know, disappearances and crime. So traditional media is equally getting a lot of flack. And it's not just influencers who are on the ground, right? So many people are doing videos on social media about it, both giving their opinions, but also, you know, I wouldn't say making light of it, but sort of meme-ifying it a little bit, which has also gotten some backlash from people who are saying this is a very serious situation.

25:23So we've seen kind of all angles of the story. Yeah. And another thing that stood out to me in the coverage of all of this is that there was an interview on CNN with one of the podcasters who's on the ground in Tucson. And he was asked, you know, why he's there and why he's covering this. And basically, a big part of his explanation for being there was that he wanted to make sure that the police were doing their job. And I was sitting there listening to him explain this and be like, what kind of qualifications do you have to do that? And in so many ways, it feels like we're so far in this new era where so many people have so much distrust in institutions that they would rather go to a podcaster, right?

26:06Or, you know, a creator to get their information. And it feels also like some of these people might be exploiting that or actually believing that they can fill that void. And I am not quite sure which one is worse here. I will caveat all of this by saying that there are some really fantastic independent reporters who also have journalism backgrounds and they're doing really great work. And I think more and more we're starting to see that some of the most interesting stories are actually coming out of newsletters and from podcasts. But I also think the reality, and Kaya, you talked about this on last week's podcast, is that unless they have a professional team and training, they just don't have the resources or the skills to do the kind of work that happens in a traditional newsroom from meticulous fact checking and sort of, you know, these big reporting that media companies really just do have the resources to do.

27:00Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, and we're generalizing here, you know, on the crater front. But I think at the same time, you know, the sheriff's department recognizes that a tip, you know, that might break open this case very well may come from the public, right? Not necessarily from a true crime podcaster, but, you know, someone coming forward who recognizes this person or has a different tip. So they also need the public's help in this case. So it's a very delicate situation. Yeah, I think it's about finding a balance. And, you know, clearly there's work still to do there. But that is all the news we have for you this week.

27:33Now here's our interview with Ed Davidson of Lions. Hi, Ed. Welcome to Scalable. Thank you very much for having me. Thanks so much for being here. It is hard to believe, but it feels like CAN 2026 is just around the corner at this point. I've been going to the festival since 2022. Back then there was very little talk about creators. That has, of course, since changed. And Lions itself has been leaning really heavily into the creator space. So tell us what's new for 2026. What can we expect this year? I think 2022 to 2023 was a really big step change for creators at Cannes Lions. This year, I think the number one big thing I'm super excited about is a change of location for Lions creators.

28:14For the last two years, as you both know, we've been on the roof of the Palais, building out that community and building out what Lions Creators is. But we're moving it down to the beach by the Palais to a larger space, multifunctional space, right next to where our brand village is, where we host all of our brands for the week, near the Can Lions School and near where the MediaLink space is as well. So I'm really excited to make that move. I think it's significant. I think if you think about creators at Cannes, and you mentioned 2022, if you think about that to 2025, the pace at which it's changed is crazy, but representative of the real life change in the industry.

28:54So I think that move to the beach is symbolic to me in a way of creators and creator marketing just being an absolute core component of creative marketing now. Really excited for that move. Tell us a little bit more about that, because I would agree it does. It feels symbolic. I mean, for those of you who haven't been there, you know, the rooftop of the Palais was where the creator, you know, home base was. That is a focal point for the conference, but it does feel like a lot of the action takes place along the beach. So moving the creators into a bigger space, into that action really does feel like a big moment.

29:28And what does that say to you really about the creator's role in the advertising space? I think it's just become way beyond like a niche element of a marketer's toolkit that it maybe was, I'd argue even like, you know, pre-COVID to something that's just fundamental to a marketer's toolkit, no matter what business size and scale you are now and no matter what type of brand. So I think that's really clear and it represents that. We launched it there because when we were launching Lions Creators, it was clear that coming to an event like CanLions, which is a lot for someone the first time, but for creators who are often running their own business, maybe they found themselves in this industry by mistake, if you like.

30:14They just were building cool content and they're like, oh, I'm going to try and turn this into a business. coming to something like can lions was a really big thing and we were conscious of how can we build a space which is a bit of an oasis away from full breadth of what's going on in can because it's a lot for first timers it's a lot even not for first timers i've been going a long time and i still i'm like whoa so it's like a conscious decision from myself and the team like let's create a space where you can actually just pull away from it for a moment and be with the rest of the creative community and building connections and stuff so it was a really conscious choice the rooftop to have that separation i think over the two years as things have changed as we've got to know on our side the creators who are attending in the creative economy businesses leaders that are attending of oh now we kind of feel where we want to be involved we want to be more integrated so it's based on customer feedback as much as anything and also growth it's grown really nicely.

31:15So in terms of capacity of the space, it wouldn't have been okay for the numbers that we're seeing for this year. So there's a bit of that too.

31:23Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, just to that point, I mean, Jasmine and I were in Cannes in October and we were like, oh, this is what the beachfront looks like without all the brands taking over. So it really is, such a busy event and really does take over the closet. Also, what's new this year is your partnership with Adobe. So we'd love to talk a little bit more about that. Why Adobe and tell us more about what the partnership entails yeah and in terms of why adobe that you know they were super keen to get involved on the creator side adobe have been a partner for years and been super smart so they've partnered on things like young lions different moments that are putting the product in creative hands on site which is super smart and i think this is another moment for that they've got amazing new tools i mean i use firefly a bit with the team to try and understand what's going on and understand the tools that customers are talking to us to.

32:15And I was from a creative background. So I used to use Photoshop and Illustrator every day. Tell us what Firefly is for people who may not know the product. So Adobe Firefly is their generative AI tool. And they built it with creators in mind. So it's supporting creators in creating fantastic content and storytelling. They're going to bring that to life at the beach in Cannes during the week. So creators will be able to use it hands-on and learn more about it, how to maximize the impact of the tool and all that good stuff.

32:45Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, so what does that look like? Are you going to have editing suites, kind of, you know, activations? Yes, so I think we're working really hard on the overarching experience this year on the beach so that you are able to edit content on site and, yeah, be really hands-on with the tools. So more experiential elements to the experience across the week, which is really exciting. Do you expect this to have an impact for Cannes as well? I think just having creators at the festival, obviously they're broadcasting it, they're telling their audiences about it. So does this add another layer by having kind of these editing suites and workshops?

33:20Definitely. I think you've seen it the last few years, but we do Lions Creators as like a dedicated home base for if you're a creator and you really want to learn how I'm going to build a sustainable business and use creativity effectively as the differential that's going to take me there. Lions Creators is there for you. Five days of networking, workshops, content, all that good stuff. Creators in Cannes Lions lives way beyond that, as you both know, and is showing up everywhere. So I think no matter what space you go to across the week, and even on our main stages, creators and creator marketing and their impact is showing up everywhere, which is really exciting.

34:02And to your point, yes, I think, you know, these voices sharing their experiences at Cannes is really interesting. It's really different for us. You've always had, you know, people in the media commenting on Cannes Lions and their experience there and things. But showing up on social live and gaining interest and reaching new audiences is really interesting. Tamika on my team first heard about our internship program on TikTok via someone else who posted about it going live. And that kind of stuff is really exciting when you think about the creative workforce, I think, and how that's shifted and how people are making connections and learning about opportunities within creativity.

34:43I think that stuff's really interesting. So I think creators have brought loads to the festival beyond just being there as delegates or speakers. So it feels like every year there's a couple of different themes that kind of dominate the conversations across the cassette. I mean, since we were talking about 2023 before that year, one of the themes that stood out to me was the metaverse, which now just feels so long ago. Obviously, creators and AI have been big in 2024 and 2025. What are you expecting in terms of themes this year? And is there anything kind of specific within the larger theme of creators that you think will be top of mind for people?

35:19I think creators and AI will continue to be a really big theme for 2026. I just think they're so significant, a shift to the industry and their impact continues to grow. So I don't see those two going away. My guess would be come July, most people's wrap up will say creators and AI is two of the key discussions. I think sport marketing is in a really interesting spot and feels super important at the moment. I think the intersection of that with creators, with traditional media and new media is super interesting. So I think that will be a big topic. We are launching a sort of similar-ish to Lions Creators, a Lions sport element to the festival.

35:58Tell us a little bit more about that. What does that look like? It's a two-day event at the Carlton. So it's a sort of application-based because it's very much built for sports marketing dedicated people. Two days within the Carlton of sports marketing, networking and content similar to the Lions Creators program in its first year. Super excited to me as a sports fan, But I think what you've seen at the festival the last few years is a burgeoning community of sports folks, whether that's teams that are increasingly leaning on brand and marketing to build their businesses out. or it's sports stars coming to the festival and building out their own media businesses and and platforms or the you know the large holding companies you know the publicist wpp type companies are also got huge sports entities within their business now as well and then there's loads of really interesting people that are just have launched like a production agency similar to LeBron's production agency that are coming to the festival and doing really interesting work with huge brands and sports teams.

37:08So really interesting burgeoning community that we want to pull together in one place. I'm smiling because if I remember correctly, Travis Kelsey was there last year, right? Is that correct? And then there was a rumor that Taylor Swift was also on the cassette and it spread like wildfire. She wasn't, of course, but I do remember hearing it from everybody. You know, finally we got the news that she wasn't there and there was a little bit of disappointment, but still so exciting to see so many big sports stars, big creators attending. With that in mind, can you share anyone who is attending this year yet?

37:45No. I can say the submissions are very, very exciting. And I think, you know, you mentioned the Travis Kelsey thing, and this is a moment for me of how different things are now than what they were perhaps is i was waiting in the lobby of the carlton hotel last year and we were running a ceo forum and i was waiting for the attendees to arrive to say hello and in that time and this was no more than two minutes federer kelsey sterling k brown and alex earl walked past me and i was like what's going on that's very different those people coming as business leaders business owners and coming to do business not just coming to talk because someone would like them to talk that's very fresh very recent at the festival but super interesting so i don't see that changing in 2026 there's going to be you know lots of incredible names whether it's on the lines creator program or you know, throughout the week.

38:50Jasmine Enberg: We will keep an eye out for who those folks are when you share. To zoom out a little bit, you know, Can Lions is, you know, the premier international advertising event. It's attended by, you know, big CMOs and business executives from all over the world. And that's a big reason why creators want to come, right? But it's sometimes hard for them to get those meetings or, you know, figure out how to navigate the festival. So is there anything you're doing to kind of help facilitate more of those connections? So I think with the move to the beach, I think that gives us more. opportunity to do so we're creating really intentional moments across the week for the lines creator and creative pass folks with marketers there'll be lunches breakfasts content moments that have them in but have q a in as well where we're deliberately bringing creators and brand marketers together so that would definitely be an elevated part of the lines creators program but to really make the most out of the festival do your prep if you're creator find out which brands are there on the app find out a creative way of contacting them either through your existing network or linkedin or those things and get as much as you can set up beforehand i know there's some you know there's some really it's really interesting seeing the talent managers this year i think they're really skilling up how they pre-present who they're bringing along to the festival to the marketers and the rest of the community as opposed to turning up and only relying on serendipitous moments which is a huge part of can lions as you know but you've got to do that pre pre-prep to make the most of it i think so that would be my advice to to all but it's been a big learning curve i'd say especially for non-us creators that um they come and it's very new and very different and they haven't done the prep work why do you think that is for non-us creators i think there's a simple element of the scale the us if you think about how the big partners and things show up there's a bit a lot of the big global businesses like youtube etc that are from the us so i think it's a natural thing but i think that will start to change this year i think a big thing we're keen to do with lions creators is be truly global so on the stages last year at lions creators we had speakers from Africa the Middle East all across Europe US Latin America that has to be front and center of how we think about how we build Lions creators how can we support creators from all over the globe so I'm hopeful next year that will start to change but yeah I think in answer to your question I think it's just a scale thing of the market mainly in the US the UK is is closely following behind in terms of you know number of creators at the festival and that type of thing and and again And that probably makes sense when you think about the scale of the creator economy there and the maturity of some of the businesses and stuff.

41:42I think in general, networking is just so much more advanced in the U.S. too than it is in other parts of the world. And I can say that because I'm from Finland. And so for me, sometimes, too, it can be overwhelming at some of these networking events, even though I've spent most of my life here. But it's just so, you know, ingrained in the kind of American business culture. And especially at the scale at Cannes Lions, I feel like it can probably be a little bit overwhelming for some creators. I wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, the awards, because back in 2024, you actually received a little bit of criticism from people in the industry for awarding the Grand Prix or the top award for the Social and Influencer Lion to Ogilvy for its campaign survey, which featured a traditional Hollywood celebrity, Michael Cera, instead of a social media creator.

42:30It, of course, had a strong social element, but it wasn't creator-led. It does feel like you took that feedback to heart based on how the awards were given out back in 2025. Can you tell us a little bit more about, you know, what those internal conversations look like and what are the judges looking for this year? Yeah, I mean, we take the awards incredibly seriously. is that you know it's a 70 plus year old business built on those awards and they have to reflect the reality of the industry around them so yeah very deliberate changes in 2025 and we'll continue to edit them um as we go along and as we learn more in terms of next year so we changed it from social and influences to social and creator lions in 2025 again in part due to the feedback and introduced a number of new subcategories that were totally creator focused so i think in 2026 i'd love to see more breadth of creator first work into those subcategories it was a really nice launch year for those subcategories so the continued growth of of that and creator first work if you like entered in the awards would be would be really successful and absolutely what i I think the judges will be keen to see too.

43:49As always with Lions, it's about awarding creatively excellent and creatively effective work. And I think that conversation in the creative marketing context is super important now as it has matured to such a big part of marketing spend. What does excellent look like from a creative perspective? How do I stand out? And then what's effective? So I think the conversation will be about that and the continued maturity of the discussion around that as it grows within the industry.

44:19Jasmine Enberg: So some creators have been able to travel to Cannes in sponsorship with a brand or a platform, but for other creators, it is quite an expensive investment to make. They're traveling from far away, there's travel costs, accommodations, time. You have discounted tickets for creators, but is there anything else you're doing or thinking about to kind of make it more affordable for creators to be able to attend? I think we're always looking at if there is something we can do. The pass price was a very conscious decision to try and make it as affordable as possible. I also think we weren't building a product and I don't think the intention is to build something where thousands of creators will be able to come at any given moment.

44:57But I think we're always working on with the hotels and the city and different accommodation partners of what can we do here? Are there different options we can include? So I think one of the things that does get a little underused is through buying a creator pass, you get access to our accommodation system and that's got a whole plethora of options and things on it i think people just don't know that and we haven't over communicated it enough as a a thing to consider to help on your costs we work with the city on things like fixed menus at certain locations so that there's affordable menus and things for people whether that's creators or we have loads of young lions we have hundreds of students in town as well so there are different things we do.

45:41I think it's honestly a case of awareness and there's more work for us to do to make folks aware that there is a different, more affordable experience to be had as you're building your position within the industry.

45:52Jasmine Enberg: We need Ed's travel guide to can for creators and for us. We have one. That's the thing. It's a really good point and we can do it. You got to push it out far and wide. It just needs branding like that, Ed's travel guide. Yeah, that'll do it. So winning an award, of course, is a mark of prestige for creators. But I think at the end of the day, they're so focused on their business and they really want to kind of expand their brand deals. So obviously brand investment in creators is growing, but there's still so much budget left to unlock. So curious kind of what you think it will take for brands to kind of fully shift their budgets or expand their budgets to really focus on influencer marketing.

46:31I think it sounds trite almost, but conversations, right? There's two really magical parts about Lions, the awards side and that celebration and inspiration side. And then there's this open conversations between people from all around the world, different experiences, different seniorities, where they have really open discussions about the challenges or opportunities they have. And that seems really rare. And creators have got to take advantage of that and brands have got to take advantage of that with creators i think it's discussions at places like can lions and other touch points across the year to say look this is why this may be holding us back what do you think how can we look at this slightly differently which is incredibly simple but it's hard to do in the usual day-to-day working experience so just using experiences like can lions to to talk it through i think is one i think you know effectiveness so So constantly re-evaluating and improving the effectiveness tools and the understanding of effectiveness in this space is critical.

47:36And I think that's come a really long way in the last few years and is changing rapidly. And, you know, brands need to understand this in the context of their entire marketing spend and funnels. So clearer metrics and ways of measuring the effectiveness in language and tools that CMOs can understand quickly. I think it's a really critical element too. Last question, because obviously there's a lot of deal-making that happens at Cannes Lions. There's also a lot of parties, which are always a lot of fun. But the festival at its core really is a celebration of creativity. And one of the things that stood out to me a couple of years ago, especially, was that there were a lot of chief creative officers from brands that kind of dismissed creators and their content.

48:19What is your message to traditional creatives, either at brands or agencies who still don't quite understand the value of creators? We have an advisory business that's constantly speaking to brands, chief creative officers, creators, all parts of our ecosystem, and playing it back, whether that's in reports or in, you know, one-to-one discussions and advisory discussions. So I think there may well be a group that are not fully on board yet, but there's very often a huge group playing out in these pieces of work. They're saying, this is critical. This is moving fast. You need to get on top of it.

48:57And we play those things back to people. We also have lots of forums like our CMO Growth Council and our CEO Forum and things like that, where you have all the different viewpoints in the room in a kind of safe place. And you see some minds shifting in terms of thoughts in those kind of rooms too. So I'd say we tend to create places and platforms where others can bring their voices and experience. So you may hear from someone who's leaned really heavily into creator marketing, had great success, and someone who's kept it at arm's length. But that kind of neutral ground discussion makes them curious and they learn.

49:34And then hopefully that has an impact over time.

49:36Jasmine Enberg: Thank you so much, Ed. We are off to book our flights to Cannes now, right after this. And we're excited to see you there. Thank you so much for this. I'm excited to see you there too.