Cannes Lions Lessons: Effective Marketing Unites Brand and Performance

The long-standing divide between brand and performance is outdated. Brand marketing has traditionally owned storytelling, emotion, and long-term equity, while performance has been tasked with precision targeting and near-term ROI. 

But this binary has created inefficiencies: fractured budgets, siloed teams, and campaigns that prioritize function over cohesion.

At Cannes Lions 2025, that model was firmly challenged. Leading brands showed how integrating brand and performance within a unified creative framework can unlock compounding returns. These companies are proving that long-term brand value and short-term business results are not competing forces, but interdependent levers when managed with strategic clarity.

Cannes Lions 2025 wasn’t just about inspiration—it was about domination. Brands showed up to outshine, outspend, and outsmart the competition in what could only be described as the Battle of the Brands. The takeaway? Playing it safe means getting left behind.

This article distills key takeaways from some of the festival’s most forward-thinking sessions, offering practical guidance on structuring teams, campaigns, and measurement models to build a more integrated and resilient marketing strategy.

The Case for Integration of Brand and Performance

For decades, brand and performance marketing have operated in parallel, often with separate budgets, distinct KPIs, and siloed teams. Brand marketing focused on long-term equity through storytelling and awareness, while performance marketing targeted short-term conversions through measurable tactics like clicks and sales. This division created a rigid framework that no longer fits how people engage with media or make decisions.

The session “How to Give Your Brand the X Factor” offered a clear call to move beyond this split. Speakers argued that brand and performance should not be seen as separate or opposing forces. When thoughtfully combined, they can amplify each other and drive more sustainable growth.

One of the most compelling points centred on economic downturns. Instead of pulling back on brand investment during tough times, marketers should lean into it. Consumers may not spend as much during a recession, but strong brand-building during these periods leads to a stronger rebound when demand returns. This idea challenges the default reliance on ROAS, which tends to favour short-term returns and ignores the value of future demand.

A more holistic approach, portfolio ROAS, allows business leaders to evaluate how different investments work together across the funnel. This method supports longer-term thinking and recognizes the role brand-building plays in driving future performance.

Rather than treating brand and performance as separate tracks, marketers now have the opportunity to build a single, flexible strategy. In a media environment defined by complexity and fragmentation, integration creates clarity, consistency, and results.

Creative Platforms as the Bridge Between Brand and Performance

Creative platforms serve as the connective tissue between brand and performance. A creative platform is more than a single campaign—it’s a durable, idea-driven framework that can evolve across channels, formats, and objectives. It provides a clear creative direction that supports both storytelling and sales, making it easier to maintain a unified voice while tailoring messages to different parts of the funnel.

Instacart’s “The World Is Your Cart” is a strong example of how a creative platform can bring efficiency and cohesion to modern marketing. Born from the insight that shopping is a reflection of who we are and what we care about, the campaign reimagined the shopping cart as a window into individual lifestyles and moments. This concept provided a flexible foundation for messaging across brand channels and performance placements alike.

What made this platform especially effective was its ability to do double duty. The brand team could use it to communicate emotional benefits and build affinity, while the performance team could adapt the same creative assets to drive measurable outcomes like clicks and conversions. 

With a limited budget, Instacart merged brand and performance funding to invest in a single platform that served the entire funnel. This eliminated creative redundancy and ensured that every impression contributed to both awareness and action.

The platform also proved culturally relevant and versatile. It showed up across social media, digital video, and even a Super Bowl spot (“We’re Here”), adapting to each medium without losing coherence. 

Creative teams were able to develop content that resonated with different audiences, but always felt distinctly “Instacart.” This kind of flexibility is essential in a fragmented media world, where marketers must engage users in varied contexts while maintaining a strong identity. The ad aligned brand storytelling with performance goals, achieving a 72% increase in website traffic and a 14% lift in sales.

At its best, a creative platform delivers consistency without rigidity. It gives marketers a structure that can stretch, evolve, and scale. For brands looking to align their messaging across the funnel, creative platforms are not just a tool—they are a strategy. They make it possible to build equity and drive conversions at the same time, turning the old divide between brand and performance into a unified, modern approach.

Micro-Engagements and Fragmented Channels

As consumer attention continues to splinter across platforms, marketers are facing a new reality: audiences no longer gather in a few predictable places. Instead, they move fluidly across streaming apps, niche communities, social platforms, podcasts, and games. 

The session “How Can You Build a Big Brand from Lots of Littles?” reframed this shift not as a limitation but as an opportunity. Fragmentation, rather than being a challenge to overcome, can be a powerful asset when marketers lean into it with the right strategy.

The key is to think about micro-engagements—small, targeted interactions that, when delivered consistently and creatively, add up to meaningful brand impact. Instead of relying solely on large-scale, high-production moments, brands can build equity through a steady rhythm of smaller, platform-native content. This approach reflects how people experience media today: in short bursts, different formats, and highly personalized environments.

Imaginative repetition is the technique that allows this to work. Brands that adapt their message creatively to fit the format and tone of each channel, while staying rooted in a clear brand idea, see stronger results. The repetition is not mechanical; it’s inventive. And it pays off. According to the session, appearing in the right micro-contexts can increase ROI by 20–150%. Even brief exposures, under two seconds, can contribute to sales when accumulated thoughtfully across the media mix.

This strategy challenges the old model of relying on a few big campaigns yearly. In today’s landscape, small, fast, and frequent often beats big, slow, and rare. A consistent stream of creative assets, optimized for the platforms people use, ensures the brand stays visible and relevant without overwhelming attention spans.

Instead of trying to recreate the mass-reach media moments of the past, brands now have the chance to engage audiences through presence, persistence, and precision. Micro-engagements allow for both agility and consistency, helping marketers meet people where they are and build brands that grow with culture, not apart from it.

Performance Metrics With a Long-Term Lens

Modern marketing has become deeply focused on immediate results. Metrics like ROAS, CTR, and CPA dominate dashboards and drive decisions. While these indicators are useful for measuring current demand, they often fall short when it comes to capturing long-term brand value. This obsession with short-term performance can create blind spots, leading brands to underinvest in the very activities that generate future demand.

To build enduring growth, marketers need to balance immediate outcomes with long-term brand development. This means evolving the way success is measured. Alongside short-term metrics, businesses should adopt frameworks that track how well the brand is building memory, trust, and preference over time.

P&G offers a compelling example through its concept of mental availability. Rather than chasing attention in the moment, the goal is to build consistent, memorable impressions that live in consumers’ minds and can be recalled at the time of need. Attention of 30 seconds or more is often required to make an impression stick. But more than just duration, it’s the frequency, consistency, and emotional impact of the message that builds brand memory.

This approach has guided campaigns like Head & Shoulders’ “I don’t have dandruff” series. The brand ran the campaign across Europe for three consecutive years. The messaging didn’t just focus on product benefit—it embedded a confident, repeatable idea into the culture. That repetition and consistency helped solidify Head & Shoulders in the minds of consumers as the go-to solution in its category.

The takeaway is that brand marketing builds the mental shortcuts that performance marketing later activates. When future demand is ignored, the well of performance dries up. Marketers should be measuring how many people know their brand, remember it, and associate it with a specific benefit, not just who clicked today. 

A full-funnel strategy needs a full-funnel measurement model, one that respects both the urgency of today’s results and the importance of tomorrow’s relevance.

Embedding Your Brand Into Culture

Cultural relevance has long been considered the domain of brand marketing, valuable for building affinity and awareness, but rarely tied directly to sales. That thinking is quickly changing. 

At Cannes 2025, multiple sessions reinforced the idea that when brands embed themselves in culture authentically, they can drive both emotional connection and commercial impact. 

Culture is a performance lever. Few brands illustrate this better than McDonald’s. Over the past five years, McDonald’s has refined its approach to marketing by tapping into fan behaviours and cultural trends, creating a system where brand love and measurable outcomes go hand in hand. Rather than chasing mass appeal through traditional celebrity endorsements, the company has leaned into subcultures and fan-led creativity.

One standout example is the anime-inspired WcNuggets campaign. McDonald’s recognized that anime fans were already integrating the brand into their own content, so the company leaned in. It partnered with Japanese creators to produce four distinct manga narratives tied to its menu items, unlocked through QR codes printed on packaging. This bridged the offline and online experience, turning everyday purchases into content access points. The campaign respected fan culture, used its own language and aesthetic, and, as a result, drove engagement that felt earned, not engineered.

Another example is McDonald’s collaboration with the upcoming Minecraft movie. The company saw that fans were already building McDonald’s restaurants inside the game world. Instead of ignoring this grassroots behaviour, they embraced it. The result was a multi-platform activation including in-game content, physical toys, and exclusive digital skins, all accessed through meal purchases. It blurred the line between entertainment and transaction, between fandom and commerce.

What made both campaigns work was the balance. McDonald’s didn’t just insert itself into culture; it let fans shape the experience. The creative was co-developed, the narrative felt organic, and the performance outcomes were strong. Sales increased, engagement spiked, and the brand’s cultural cachet deepened.

When approached with authenticity and imagination, cultural relevance can drive both brand equity and business outcomes. It invites fans into the process, transforming them from passive consumers into active participants. That sense of shared ownership builds love and drives action.

What Marketing Leaders Must Do

For senior marketing leaders, the message from Cannes Lions 2025 was both clear and urgent: the most effective brands are no longer choosing between brand and performance—they’re building systems where both thrive together.

To lead in this new era, start with a full-funnel strategy anchored by a creative platform. This means developing a unifying idea that can flex across channels, adapt to audience needs, and deliver value at every stage, from awareness to conversion. The days of separating brand campaigns from performance assets are over. Instead, look for ideas that can inspire at the top of the funnel and drive action at the bottom.

Recognize that brand is not a cost center but a multiplier. The data is increasingly clear: strong brands reduce acquisition costs, improve conversion rates, and hold pricing power. When brand-building is done well, performance marketing becomes more efficient and sustainable.

Reframe micro-engagements as long-term investments. Brief, frequent, and relevant creative touchpoints may not always register as major media moments, but together, they build familiarity and trust. This approach requires agility, consistent storytelling, and a deep understanding of audience behaviour—but it delivers compounding results over time.

Above all, make brand building everyone’s job. It should not sit solely with marketing. Brand strategy must be embedded at the leadership level, informing decisions across product, talent, sales, and culture. It’s the thread that weaves together how your company behaves, communicates, and grows.

And finally, commit to bold creativity. The highest-performing brands are those that take risks, play with cultural context, and give their audiences something to feel, remember, and act on. 

In an environment where everyone is trying to one-up each other, blending in is the real risk. Whether it’s a branded gelato flavour or a hot air balloon on the beach (yes, we’re serious), the brands that win are the ones willing to take creative swings that make people look twice. As Ryan Nelsen, our CMO, put it best: it’s not just marketing—it’s Survivor. Outwit, outlast, outplay.