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By Rohit Ohri
Cannes Lions 2025 is making one thing abundantly clear — the age of slow creativity is over. This year, the biggest winners will not just be emotionally resonant, they will also be technologically fearless. Brazil claimed Creative Country of the Year by breaking formats, fusing tech with culture, and challenging what advertising can be.
Meanwhile, India — long celebrated for its heart and humanity — finds itself at creative crossroads. The craft is still strong, the storytelling still soulful. But is that enough when the future demands speed, system-thinking, and platform-native ideas? As the global creative engine accelerates, India must ask itself the hard question: Cannes or Cannot?
The yachts are back. The rosé is flowing. But under the shimmer of the Croisette, there’s a quiet urgency in the air.
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has never just been about trophies. It’s where the global ad industry takes a long, hard look in the mirror. And this year, that reflection reveals a landscape being reshaped at breakneck speed.
AI is not a novelty. It’s the new normal. From spatial computing to algorithmic storytelling, the very grammar of advertising has changed. Cannes 2025 is less about polished TVCs and more about ideas that live across realities — digital, physical, virtual.
And in this high-speed redefinition, a sobering question emerges: Is India evolving fast enough — or are we drifting toward creative complacency?
Today’s most celebrated work is not only emotionally resonant — it’s technologically fluent. The campaigns that captivate aren’t just clever; they are code-aware, culture-embedded, and radically fluid.
Synthetic influencers. Generative music. Augmented storytelling. Brands now build ecosystems, not ads. The playground has changed — and the players who understand tech as a native language are dictating the pace.
Creativity, in 2025, demands more than imagination. It demands integration.
Brazil: The unexpected vanguard
And this year, Brazil has taken that integration to a whole new level. Named Cannes’ Creative Country of the Year, Brazil’s rise is anything but accidental. Their campaigns are raw, relevant, and restlessly inventive. They’ve used AI not as spectacle, but as social catalyst. They’ve turned marginalised communities into interactive canvases. Their work is emotionally potent, but also technologically bold.
Brazil has done what great creative nations do — turned constraint into combustion. Their ideas are unafraid, their formats unfixed. They are not following trends. They are setting them.
India’s moment of reflection
India, meanwhile, is in an in-between space. We’ve seen sparks — work that breaks conventions and moves people deeply. But those sparks remain isolated. The broader ecosystem still leans toward familiar formulas, calibrated for scale, not surprise.
It’s not a question of talent. India has one of the richest storytelling traditions and a deep bench of creative minds. The challenge lies in the system — in enabling boldness, rewarding risk, and building infrastructure that supports creative experimentation, not just efficiency.
While India remains a global force in cultural storytelling, the absence of tech-forward ambition is beginning to show. And in an industry sprinting forward, even a moment of hesitation can feel like a setback.
The future isn’t asking for louder campaigns. It’s asking for smarter, faster, more culturally intelligent ideas. India must go from crafting stories to engineering experiences — from directing narratives to designing systems that respond, evolve, and inspire in real time.
We need to unlearn the reverence for the 60-second spot and relearn how to create for a world that doesn’t wait.
A Cannes of consequence
This year’s Cannes is a celebration, yes. But also a wake-up call. It’s proof that creativity is no longer the sole domain of the emotionally articulate — it belongs equally to the technologically fluent. It’s a reminder that nostalgia can’t carry us into the future. And most of all, it’s a prompt to rewrite the playbook.
India has the soul. The question is whether we now have the speed, the systems, and the stomach to leap into the unknown.
Because in this new era of advertising, safe is invisible, and slow is obsolete. The world isn’t waiting. Neither is Cannes. It’s time to choose: Lead. Lag. Or leap.
(The author is founder, Ohriginal)
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