Unlocking Global Trends from the 2026 Cannes Lions Winners | Cannes Internal Report Session

Hello, everyone! I am Ryota Sato from the Communication Planning Department at SUNNY SIDE UP.

Cannes Lions is a festival of advertising and PR where the world’s finest creativity converges. In 2026, numerous innovative cases questioning the future of communication were announced in Cannes, France, drawing significant attention from PR professionals. This year, four members from SUNNY SIDE UP stayed on-site to directly absorb the many wonderful works from around the world and the high-energy presentations by top creators.

And now, to quickly share this knowledge internally, we held a Cannes Return Report Study Session!

This study session was a commemorative occasion as the first joint review session with Bilcom, which recently joined the SUNNY SIDE UP GROUP. Bilcom has also been conducting its own Cannes review sessions annually using internal exchange programs. By merging the PR expertise and perspectives of both companies, it became a valuable opportunity to demonstrate group-wide synergy and deeply share each other’s knowledge.

The World’s Finest Creativity Converges! Behind the Scenes of the Study Session

From SUNNY SIDE UP, site visit members Asano, Yamaguchi, and Kanai, who researched cutting-edge cases on-site, participated. From Bilcom, Ohno and Yamamoto, who handle activation planning and client accounts, took the stage as speakers.

The study session was conducted in a hybrid format, with many group members participating online in addition to the offline participants gathered at the SSU office.

With the participation of President and Representative Director See Chau, comments and questions were actively exchanged in real-time, deepening the understanding of world-leading cases. The highlight of this session was that it went beyond mere case introductions; it thoroughly analyzed from a PR professional’s perspective why these cases were highly rated and how they can be applied to daily planning.

Notable Cannes Lions Award-Winning Cases

We will explain the award-winning cases that sparked particularly heated discussions during the study session from a PR professional’s perspective.

Unlocking Global PR Trends from the 2026 Winners

Analyzing these winning works reveals global PR trends that are valued precisely because we live in an era where AI has rapidly spread and become established.

First, a major turning point is the shift from traditional targeting based on demographics (attributes such as age and gender) to “emographics” (emotions).AI can now derive correct answers such as efficiency, automatic optimization, and simplification. However, at the heart of the evaluations at the 2026 Cannes Lions were extremely human emotions that AI cannot calculate, such as human enthusiasm, attachment, obsession, playfulness, and unpredictable waste. As AI evolves, a backlash is occurring where human-likeness itself is being sought.

The standard for ideas lies in how newly existing elements can be combined. Presenting a different way of showing everyday scenes that consumers are used to, as in the sleep talk case, or giving new meanings and roles to things that already exist, as in the jersey case, serves as a catalyst for moving the hearts of consumers and stakeholders.

For future PR professionals, AI will become a partner that exponentially increases the volume of ideas. While utilizing the power of AI for tasks like generating large quantities of ideas, I believe it will become even more important to face human emotions and find insights that lead to discovery.

Utilizing the knowledge gained from creative ideas around the world, we will continue to create new “exciting movements”!