At this year's Cannes Lions festival, the advertising industry gathered as it does every year — and once again, convinced itself of some outrageous things. This time, the dominant obsession was AI. Digitas North America CEO Amy Lanzi joined Nilay Patel live at the Uber Villa to separate signal from noise.

The Wrong Promises

Publicis Groupe — Digitas' parent company — released a pointed pre-Cannes video called "The Wrong Promises", cataloguing the wild pitches flooding the ad industry. Think: free AI tools, free platforms, and pay-only-if-you-win-a-Lion deals.

"We are seeing all kinds of partners offer wild things in the pitch process. It's different than it's been before — insane commercial deals that are just generally bad for people and the business."

Lanzi's concern isn't just puffery. She argues these deals erode the collaborative, people-driven foundation the industry depends on. Long-term, bad commercial promises create a people problem.

AI Is the New Programmatic

Lanzi draws a sharp parallel between today's AI hype and the programmatic advertising boom of the last decade — a moment when automation was supposed to eliminate the need for human judgment entirely.

  • Programmatic promised full automation
  • It still required skilled people, brand nuance, and partnership strategy
  • The AI narrative is following the same arc

"I feel like the AI story is the new programmatic story, with the promise of everything just being absolutely automated — and that absolutely did not happen."

What's different this time, she notes, is that the hype is coming from both agency partners and major tech platforms simultaneously, creating a more disorienting form of chaos.

What AI Is Actually Good For

Lanzi isn't anti-AI. Digitas AI was launched to make its people more effective — not to replace them. The goal was to identify repeatable, low-value tasks and hand those off to agents, freeing talent for higher-order creative and strategic work.

"Everyone look at what's on your desk, what's in your day, and think about what you could build an agent to do — and that way we free up our time to do this."

The results, she says, have come from younger talent with a hacker mentality building tools that solve real workflow problems. Multiple AI-assisted iterations before a final client presentation means better, more surprising work — not cheaper, sloppier work.

The Creator Economy Goes Corporate

Beyond AI, creators were the other defining theme at Cannes this year — and the dynamic has shifted significantly. Top creators are no longer just talent; they're openly positioning themselves as marketers and small agencies.

Lanzi sees this as an opportunity rather than a threat:

  • The world's biggest creators are launching their own product lines
  • Those ventures require operational scale and infrastructure they don't yet have
  • Agencies like Digitas can provide exactly that kind of backend expertise

Publicis moved early on this trend, acquiring Influential in 2024 to better analyze and measure creator ecosystem performance.

The CMO Is Dead

Perhaps Lanzi's most provocative statement — especially in a room full of advertising professionals — was her declaration that the traditional Chief Marketing Officer role is finished.

In her view, the modern version of that function is fundamentally about driving business results through data and analytics, not brand stewardship in the classical sense. It's a redefinition that puts pressure on every player in the ecosystem — agencies, platforms, and creators alike — to prove measurable value, not just creative polish.

As Meta and other major platforms push AI-generated ad volume ever higher, the agencies that survive will be the ones that can articulate what human judgment, creative strategy, and brand integrity are actually worth.