Prompt vs perspective: Cannes Lions and the war for creative authority

Every year, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity arrives with a story it likes to tell about itself - a polished narrative about where creativity is heading, what matters now, and which ideas have moved the industry forward. 

For the first time, Cannes is being asked to define what creativity actually is.

It’s a story wrapped in sun, panels and parties and, for the most part, it holds together because everyone agrees, for a week, to believe in it. Yet, this year, there’s a subtle tension beneath the surface, a sense that the story is harder to tell and less certain of its own conclusions.

Because, for the first time, Cannes is being asked to define what creativity actually is, at a moment when that definition has begun to shift.

Above: "Cannes is being asked to define what creativity actually is, at a moment when that definition has begun to shift."

Over the past two years, AI has collapsed barriers at lightning speed. Tools that once required budgets, teams and weeks of production can now be accessed from a laptop, producing work that carries all the familiar signals of craft: cinematic lighting, seamless effects, emotional storytelling, and a level of polish that was once scarce. The cathedral of craft hasn’t disappeared, but it’s acquired a side entrance, and almost everyone now has the entry code.

Cannes may find itself in an uncomfortable position, because the conversation is now forced to move beyond how something is made and into whether it is worth making at all.

The consequence is dilution. When execution becomes widely available, it ceases to function as a meaningful differentiator. Work that looks expensive or technically accomplished no longer guarantees exceptional skill or investment; it may simply reflect competence with increasingly ubiquitous tools. And when execution is no longer scarce, the criteria by which work is judged must inevitably move elsewhere.

This is where it gets interesting; Cannes may find itself in an uncomfortable position, because the conversation is now forced to move beyond how something is made and into whether it is worth making at all. The shift from execution to intention is far less objective, far less measurable and, let’s face it, far more revealing.

Above: The tension between prompt and perspective, between what AI can achieve and what humans think should be made, is growing. 

At the centre of this shift is a new divide. On one side sits prompting, a skill that’s highly valuable but fundamentally mechanical, built on iteration and the ability to generate coherent outputs. It’s a skill that, given experience and depth, spreads quickly and scales easily. 

On the other side sits perspective, which is slower, harder to replicate and rooted in judgement. Taste, experience, cultural awareness and the instinct to decide not just what can be made, but what should be made doesn’t scale neatly, nor does it present itself cleanly in a case study. In many ways it’s an inconvenient currency.

This tension between prompt vs perspective is now playing out in the jury rooms, where work is increasingly indistinguishable at the level of execution.

This tension between prompt vs perspective is now playing out in the jury rooms, where work is increasingly indistinguishable at the level of execution, and decisions must be made on more subjective grounds. To reward perspective is to expose taste, to make calls without the safety net of spectacle, and to accept that those calls, will inevitably be the subject of much debate.

Yet the alternative - defaulting to surface-level brilliance - risks reinforcing a cycle where appearance is mistaken for substance. The industry has always had a talent for staging importance, for constructing compelling narratives around work that may or may not deserve them (and brands that often don’t). With AI accelerating not just production but the storytelling around it, that dynamic becomes even more pronounced.