Cannes Lions’ battle of the brands

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DARA TRESEDER: When things go wrong, marketing gets blamed. When it’s all going well, nobody’s talking to us. It’s a real point, and I’m going to sit with it for a minute. I often say marketing is like plumbing. When was the last time, Bob, you went to your house and thought, “Ooh, I love my plumbing”? You’re not thinking about your plumbing day to day.

BOB SAFIAN: No, only when the pipes break.

TRESEDER: Only when the pipes break. And you see it all the time now. Your reputation matters as a business. Customers will switch like that from one service to another because of the trust in the brand, in the business, and the story being told by a powerful marketing engine. That is how you build a house that stands the test of time.

SAFIAN: That’s Dara Treseder, CMO of Autodesk and a recurring guest on Rapid Response. Dara and I sat down together at the Cannes Lions Festival in France to break down the buzziest stories and trends in the advertising and marketing world, from the industry’s flip-flop on AI to the growing pipeline from CMO to CEO to the trillionaire brand of Elon Musk. Plus, the hottest and not-so-hot campaigns from the likes of Adidas, Nike, Starbucks, and more. As always, Dara brings her A game: quotable, funny, and full of future-forward lessons. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

[THEME MUSIC]

I’m Bob Safian, and I’m here with Dara Treseder, the CMO of Autodesk, at Cannes Lions. Dara, great to be with you.

TRESEDER: Thank you so much. This is our annual thing. I always love spending time with you here.

Copy LinkThe mood of Cannes Lions 2026

SAFIAN: Yeah, it’s fun. So what’s the vibe this year? What are you feeling? Are people excited? Are people anxious?

TRESEDER: I think people are really excited, but there’s also a lot of anxiety about what’s going on. Some people are feeling clear. Some people feel like there’s a lot of chaos. So it’s a tale of two cities.

SAFIAN: Is the chaotic feeling about the world? Is it about AI and the business? Where’s the chaos landing?

TRESEDER: I would say the chaos is a little bit about the world, but a lot about AI. I feel like the chaos around AI is more rampant than it was last year.

SAFIAN: I feel like the mood … we’ve had such a crazy 2026, right?

TRESEDER: Yes.

SAFIAN: Things going on in the Middle East and the Knicks winning the championship.

TRESEDER: The Knicks winning the championship.

SAFIAN: There’s good news and bad. The brand of the Knicks, though — the best thing that could happen for New York. No?

TRESEDER: The best thing. I think everybody likes an underdog. Everybody wants to see the challenger win. I’m in the Bay Area — West Coast, best coast — but even I was rooting for the Knicks, and I was so proud. The whole story, the resilience, the story of the coach, the story of Jalen. There’s just so much inspiration. And just to say, you New Yorkers, y’all are wild.

SAFIAN: Yeah. I was a little worried that things were going to get a little …

TRESEDER: You gave the tech bros a run for their money there.

SAFIAN: I was worried things were going to get a little too wild at the parade because it was a madhouse.

TRESEDER: It was wild.

SAFIAN: But joy was what took over.

TRESEDER: Joy. And we needed joy. I actually think it brought joy to more than just New York. I think it brought joy to America.

Copy LinkWhat the World Cup ads reveal about Nike & Adidas

SAFIAN: You were mentioning that you went to the World Cup with your son. And since we’re here, I wanted to ask you about the World Cup ads. Is that part of the conversation you’re hearing?

TRESEDER: It’s part of the conversation. And I have to tell you, I’ve been hanging out with some CMOs — some are Team Nike, some are Team Adidas.

SAFIAN: Yes.

TRESEDER: I want to give both brands a lot of credit because how do you enter a conversation in a very culturally relevant way? I think Adidas approached it from a nostalgia perspective, and they really nailed it, and they created so much meaning. They focused on the semantics. They leaned into, I think, the lost art of deep storytelling, and it really paid off. And Nike took a different approach. They went a little more 360-degree.

SAFIAN: A little zany.

TRESEDER: A little zany. And they captured a lot of attention. They drove a lot of conversation. So both brands did a really great job. And in the spirit of heated rivalry at the World Cup, people are taking sides.

SAFIAN: So you talk about ads being relevant, memorable, and ownable. Now, both of those ads are definitely memorable, and they’re relevant. Are they ownable? Could Adidas have done the Nike ad, and Nike have done the Adidas ad?

TRESEDER: I actually think they are ownable. Adidas did what Adidas does best: detailed storytelling. It’s a hallmark of the brand. And I have had the opportunity to work closely with Adidas. When I was CMO at Carbon, we had a big partnership with Adidas. I’ve seen how they think, and they understand what their customers love, and they leaned into that. Even at Cannes Lions, we saw them win two Grand Prix in the same day. Even that campaign they did, the Adidas Oasis campaign, is very similar in terms of style and ownability, which is: let us lean into original storytelling. Let’s not try to zag because everybody is zagging. Let’s zig and do our own thing.

SAFIAN: And for Nike?

TRESEDER: I think Nike is about marketing at the speed of culture. That is what they do. Even look at the Knicks game. The marketing that Nike did at the Knicks game, where they were able to take user-generated content and piece together beautiful creative that really had everybody feeling that New York spirit, and they did it in real time. That is Nike at the speed of culture. I almost think the brand embodies that idea that if you have a body, you’re an athlete. They take that elite-athlete mindset in terms of how they try to move and the speed at which they try to move. So I think the Nike work was very true to their brand.

SAFIAN: Yeah. Although Adidas got Timothy Chalamet, who’s a Knicks fan. So they both got to play there.

TRESEDER: They both got to play, exactly. And I love me some Timothy Chalamet. I’m a Dune fan. Once the ads started, I was like, okay, all right. Don’t ask me what team I’m on. I like both brands, but if I had to pick, it would be Adidas.

Copy LinkWhy human creativity matters more as AI raises the floor

SAFIAN: Last time we talked, you spoke a bit about opining with a spine, and how important and effective that is. In the environment of change we’re in right now in 2026, is that harder?

TRESEDER: It is risky, but the risk is worth it when what you are opining on is core to your business strategy, and you can back it up with your spine. Because there’s so much sameness. The unfortunate thing about what is happening is AI is raising the floor, but it is human ingenuity that’s going to vault the ceiling. And there isn’t enough emphasis being placed on that human ingenuity and human creativity. But I’m a rigorous optimist.

So I think we are in the golden age for marketers and creatives who have excellent taste, are willing to master these tools, know when to use them, but, most importantly, have the discernment to know when not to use them. And I think when you have that down, the clarity and the peace come in the midst of the chaos.

SAFIAN: The conversation last year here was about how AI is going to crush all the creativity, or people were worried about that. And this year it’s a little more about maybe AI shouldn’t be applied to the creativity part of the business or the product. It should be applied to the process a little more.

TRESEDER: I think so. When you’re using AI, it is operating in two dimensions. There’s the syntax and there’s the semantic. When you’re using AI in the syntax, it can really address processes and help. But when you want to focus on meaning and the semantic, that is where you want to make sure the creative is still in control of the art. AI is here to serve humanity. Humanity is not here to serve AI. And I think the brands that are willing to say that unapologetically are building trust with their customer bases.

Copy LinkHow transparency builds trust when brands use AI

SAFIAN: Is there conversation, or how much conversation are you hearing from colleagues and others here about when you acknowledge that AI has been used in the creation of content or an ad?

TRESEDER: I was with a bunch of CMOs and CEOs yesterday, and the conversation was that you have to acknowledge it. Because if you don’t acknowledge it and it gets discovered, your customers feel like you were trying to deceive them. Everyone will forgive an honest mistake. No one will forgive deliberate deception. And so it’s so important that you are transparent about when you’re using AI. And by the way, when you have to be transparent, it forces you to put in the right checks and balances that allow you to have guardrails that minimize your chance of making bad choices, obvious bad choices.

SAFIAN: You are at an organization where you are marketing AI as a tool for folks, but people are suspicious in a way even more than they were last year at this time. How does that impact how you think about marketing what you’re delivering?

TRESEDER: One of our core values as a company is to be trusted. And so when we talk about our AI, we want to make sure that our customers understand what it is, what it isn’t, and how it was composed. We actually have these cards called AI transparency cards. They’re like little nutrition cards. You know when you buy cereal boxes?

SAFIAN: The label?

TRESEDER: The label. We have that. So you can actually look and say, “Oh, what went into this product or tool? What does this AI mean? How will I use it?” It gives you that information, these AI transparency cards. And that has been a great way to foster trust with our customers. Now, I’m not saying we’re perfect. Like every company, we’re learning and growing, but we are so committed to doing everything we can to be trusted.

SAFIAN: Do you personally use AI differently than you did a year ago?

TRESEDER: I do. I do use it differently. I would say the biggest thing for me has been understanding that I’m not taking an existing process and just layering AI on top of it. I’m actually taking a step back and saying, “What is the outcome I’m trying to accomplish? And then how do I redesign the system so I can deliver not just efficiency, but effectiveness in that outcome? And then how do I integrate humans and machines to do that to the best of my ability?” And that has helped me a tremendous amount. In fact, I believe that we are in the era of system and design thinking. And it’s not in conflict with creativity. Actually, designing and creating systems gives you more space to be creative. It allows you to lean into creativity in a way that you couldn’t without a clear system. And I’ll say, to be a thought leader, you’ve got to have a thought. Radical idea.

But it’s so important. For me, I never want to originate my ideas through AI. I am not going to become a secondhand thinker. I am a firsthand thinker, and that discipline of saying, “I’m going to come up with my point of view and my perspective. Now, I might implement AI as I develop it, as I evolve it, but the original idea and thought are mine.”

SAFIAN: There’s this sort of fracas in South Korea for Starbucks. They built an ad campaign around a sort of infamous massacre, and it blew back on them, and they had to close stores and do a day of training and whatever. And they semi-blamed it on AI. Was this AI leading the charge in a way that it shouldn’t?

TRESEDER: First of all, I just have to say it was a really unfortunate incident. For us in America, it would be the equivalent of a campaign almost around 9/11 or something like that. And to me, this wasn’t so much an AI problem as it was a system problem. There were not the right checks and balances. You have to think through how many people were involved in reviewing and approving this that we got to this place. Because you can’t tell me it was just an agent all the way through. There must have been…

SAFIAN: It’s not that we’re moving so fast that we’re not checking.

TRESEDER: There must have been opportunities. And if we didn’t have that, then that’s a failure of system design. And I think it’s a lesson to all of us, because we are all going in real time, and sometimes you have to go slow to go fast. It’s not velocity versus governance. It is velocity and governance. And that is the power of how we win in this AI era.

SAFIAN: Because if we just move without that governance, we may move into some places that are uncomfortable.

TRESEDER: We might go to places we don’t need to go. There are journeys we don’t need to take.

Copy LinkHow search is changing

SAFIAN: Right. How much conversation are you seeing around AI and search, and how that changes where you find people, where you connect with people?

TRESEDER: I was actually having a conversation with 21st Century Brand. They’re one of the brand strategy firms, and they’ve come up with a framework that I really love. I think the way they articulate it is brilliant, which is priming and proving. You have to actually prime people to love what you are about to offer. You want to prime the audience, and that’s where you’re addressing your total addressable market, your serviceable addressable market. But you also need to prove it. It’s not about what you say about yourself anymore. That 30-year-old on Reddit who just had their little keyboard warrior moment and wrote a scathing review of your brand can now really shape perception of how you’re seen.

SAFIAN: Well, and the AI may pull that up as much as anything.

TRESEDER: Exactly. So you have to prove it to the LLMs. It’s a combination of priming people and proving it to LLMs. The best systems are bringing those two together and making them work in concert. Everyone is trying to figure out what we do and how we do it in B2C and B2B. In fact, one of the CMOs asked me, “Do you think this is as relevant for us in B2B?” I said, “Absolutely.” B2B is a much more emotional purchase, an emotional investment. If you’re spending hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, in some cases billions of dollars on a technology investment, you want to be sure that decision is right. I can’t tell you the number of use cases now involving purchases that began with the CEO, CIO, CTO, or CMO doing an LLM search.

They’re having coffee on the plane, they pull up Claude, they get a short list, and all of a sudden that becomes the shortlist that goes through the RFP process.

SAFIAN: Wow.

TRESEDER: It’s amazing. This is now the reality of a B2B buyer’s journey.

SAFIAN: The way to influence those decisions, no one’s quite sure how to do that yet.

TRESEDER: I think no one is sure. We’re figuring it out, but what we’re learning is the importance of cultural relevancy and authority. That has never been more important than it is today. You have to be in the conversation. You have to be culturally relevant for your category, for your space, and you have to be loved and advocated for by third parties. So comms is soaring.

SAFIAN: I was going to say, because earned media suddenly becomes more important.

TRESEDER: This is the era of earned media.

SAFIAN: Because the LLM is going to discount the owned media in a different way?

TRESEDER: They do. They discount owned media, and they place more emphasis on what others are saying about you. So earned media and community have never been more important. Almost every CMO I’m talking to now is thinking through their YouTube strategy and their Reddit strategy. With regard to influencers, you see marketers saying, “Hey, I’m turning a large part of my budget to creators and influencers,” because everyone is realizing, I have to have someone with authority validate me.

SAFIAN: There is a difference in impact between you telling your own story and someone else telling a story about you. So what kind of stories are landing most right now? Unexpected brand collaborations, a $350 million investment in humanity, a SpaceX-size IPO. We’ll talk about all that and more after the break. Stay with us.

[AD BREAK]

Before the break, Autodesk’s Dara Treseder talked about this year’s Cannes Lions and changes in the world of advertising and marketing. Now we talk about the brand of Elon Musk post-SpaceX IPO, why Autodesk is investing $350 million in the next generation of workers, and more. Let’s dive back in.

Copy LinkWhy creators and collaborations are becoming core marketing strategy

Here at Cannes, there was a time when all of the activations were ad agencies, right?

TRESEDER: Yes.

SAFIAN: And then they became the tech platforms, and you have Meta here and Google here, whatever. But we don’t yet have OpenAI and Anthropic owning the beach.

TRESEDER: I think it’s just a matter of time, because they’re starting to activate. There’s always a scouting phase. I think they’re in that little scouting phase. They’re coming in, they’re checking things out, and they’re saying, “What are those people doing there with all that rose and sunshine?” They’re scouting to figure out how they want to show up, but I think it is inevitable. It was interesting to see Databricks. If I had told you a company like Databricks would be at Cannes 10 years ago, you would’ve been like…

SAFIAN: What does that have to do with that?

TRESEDER: How much rosé have you had? And I’d be like, “None. I just drink sparkling water.” But you wouldn’t have anticipated that. We’re seeing that change happen, and I think this is the trend we’re going to continue to see.

SAFIAN: The other trend that seems to continue to grow here, in a way that almost surprises me, is the creator economy part of it. I thought, is it going to peak? Are we over the top? Not close, right?

TRESEDER: You can’t even blink without seeing a creator. I think this speaks to the power of authority and the third-party community movement. You can’t design your campaign, your growth plans, or your marketing strategy without thinking through what that is.

SAFIAN: So do you think of creators as earned media, or are they collaborators?

TRESEDER: I think they are both, actually. Some creators have built such a following that they are a media channel unto themselves, and there are creators who are more in the collaboration space. So it’s both. Some actually do both, and some land more squarely in one of the two buckets.

SAFIAN: And calling it just the creator economy isn’t really doing service to the variety that’s available.

TRESEDER: It’s absolutely not doing it service. In fact, what I would say is that collaboration is no longer just a distribution strategy. It should be a design principle from the beginning.

SAFIAN: Brand collaborations, we see a lot of them around. We talked about Adidas having a bunch of different brand collaborations. Absolut Vodka did one with Tabasco. I don’t know if there are any that particularly resonate for you or that you’re hearing people talk about.

TRESEDER: Well, the Adidas and Oasis collaboration — everyone is talking about this, because it’s been a while since you’ve had two Grand Prix in one day. Oasis have been longtime fans of Adidas.

SAFIAN: It’s a collaboration where each side reinforces the other in the same way.

TRESEDER: And it’s mutually beneficial, because it was great for Oasis, too. It made them cool. It made them show up in interesting ways. It provided merch for their fans that was differentiated and unexpected. It allowed them to surprise and delight their community. The best partnerships are mutually beneficial.

SAFIAN: And so I’m curious, there’s a collaboration between Swatch and Piguet, which did well, but it’s also a high-end brand with a more mass-market brand. Is that a different kind of risk?

TRESEDER: It’s a different kind of risk. You have to be confident and understand what your customer’s looking for. There are certain high-end customers. I don’t really think Hermes would ever say, “Here, here’s a Birkin collaborative,” because it would compromise the integrity of the brand. So I think you have to figure out, hey, what am I trying to accomplish, and what makes sense? When you’re a brand trying to go downmarket, sometimes you have to think about new ways to reach your downmarket customers, but you do not want to compromise the business from your upmarket customers. You want to make sure that you can see that line.

SAFIAN: And that’s a tricky dance.

TRESEDER: It’s a very tricky dance. It’s a fine line, and you don’t want to cross over.

SAFIAN: Right. And I guess sometimes the luxury brands are just trying to stay relevant.

TRESEDER: They’re trying to stay relevant.

SAFIAN: So sometimes they have to reach into new places.

TRESEDER: But usually they’ll do it as a limited capsule to find a way to put a boundary around it and keep it in that box, if you will, to preserve the rest of the brand story.

SAFIAN: Right. To get into culture a little bit more, but to maintain their status, their place.

TRESEDER: Get into culture without losing the fight.

SAFIAN: Are there other campaigns or things you’re hearing people talk about, or that you’re seeing here?

TRESEDER: I really loved De’Longhi’s coffee campaign. I thought it was beautiful. They took a coffee maker and redesigned it in the image of an actual coffee shop. It brought the element and appreciation of the coffee shop experience into your home. Every coffee drinker — my husband drinks a lot of coffee — and the first thing he does when he gets up is go see his… He loves that coffee machine. He starts to make his coffee. And to be able to do that in a machine that reminds you of your favorite coffee shop, there’s a power to that. Obviously, I’m also going to say they’re an Autodesk customer, and I love that. And they won awards. Part of what I think grabbed a lot of people’s hearts and minds is the power of craft: making, bringing the outside in in an authentic way, the industry craft that is sometimes a lost art in the age of AI.

Copy LinkWhy CMOs need revenue ownership and a true seat at the table

SAFIAN: The role of the CMO is changing in some organizations. There have been some studies I’ve seen recently that show CMOs are more relied on by CEOs than they used to be for high-level decisions. Where should CMOs sit in business strategy?

TRESEDER: I think if you’re a business that wants to be successful, your CMO should have a real seat at the table and should be empowered to win, because you are absolutely seeing the best companies treat their CMOs like strategic partners. They’re not seeing them just as marketers, but as enterprise-wide business leaders. And you are seeing that path from CMO to CEO. It is happening at a much faster clip than it was even just five years ago. And the reason for that is because, as CMOs, our remits are so broad. We have to think about everything from the events and experiences and the activation at Cannes all the way to the go-to-market strategy, the revenue accountability, the pipeline creation, and the technology stack. We are on the forefront of the implementation of AI internally. And so having a CMO have a real seat at the table gives the C-suite and the company a competitive edge and advantage.

SAFIAN: What has tended to happen sometimes is, when things don’t go well for a business revenue-wise, the CMO gets blamed. And when things do go well, the business unit takes the credit. How important is it for CMOs to have control of their own source of revenue for the business?

TRESEDER: I think it’s really important to have that revenue accountability, especially for areas of the business where marketing is in first chair, like digital business. For example, at Autodesk, I oversee our digital business. It makes sense that it sits with me because it begins and ends with marketing.

SAFIAN: So you are in charge of delivering revenue?

TRESEDER: Yes. I have a line I have to deliver. I’m in charge of delivering revenue for our digital business, our e-commerce business, the Autodesk store. And most of my CMO friends are in a similar situation. Accountability and ownership have to go hand in hand. And businesses are seeing that separating the two does not set the company up for success. So really getting that done is important.

TRESEDER: And the point you made about when things go wrong, marketing gets blamed, and when it’s all going well, nobody’s talking to us — it’s a real point, and I’m going to sit with it for a minute. We’re in Cannes, we have air conditioning, we’ve got some time, so we’re going to talk about this for a minute. Because I often say marketing is like plumbing. When was the last time, Bob, you went to your house and you were like, “Ooh, I love my plumbing”? You’re not thinking about your plumbing on the day to day.

SAFIAN: Only when the pipes break.

TRESEDER: Only when the pipes break. But I bet when the pipe breaks, you’re thinking about it until it gets fixed, right?

SAFIAN: Yes.

TRESEDER: You can’t exist in a house without it.

SAFIAN: I need that plumber now.

TRESEDER: You need that plumber now. And that is the reality for a lot of marketing. It’s often invisible. It’s behind the scenes. It’s not top of mind. But when one little thing goes wrong, it’s the topic of conversation. And so our job, actually, as CMOs, is to market the marketing. We have to make sure that internally and externally, the value of marketing is understood. And you see it all the time now. Your reputation matters as a business. Customers will switch like that from one service to the other because of the trust in the brand, in the business, and the story that is being told by a powerful marketing engine.

SAFIAN: And I feel like the story of a business is its strategy, and the strategy has to be a story.

TRESEDER: Absolutely.

SAFIAN: All of those things have to fit together.

TRESEDER: Absolutely. It has to be cohesive. That is how you build a house that stands the test of time.

Copy LinkHow personality-driven brands shape growth

SAFIAN: So we started by talking about the Knicks as a brand. I want to ask you about a different brand and your take on Elon Musk as a brand. Because to me, a lot of the buying of SpaceX is about him as opposed to being about the business.

TRESEDER: We definitely have to say it’s a culture of personality. That is a lot of what they’re betting on: betting on him, his strategy, his vision. That is increasingly becoming the name of the game, especially in technology. The people behind the products have never been more important than they are today. That almost shapes the company’s strategy. It shapes the perception of the product. People are willing to put up with a lot when they believe in the personality. They’re willing to believe things that almost seem unbelievable to a logical person thinking about fundamentals, because they’re not betting on reality. They’re betting on their perception of potential based on the personality.

SAFIAN: But there’s more. I don’t want to say there’s pressure, but there’s a model for having your CEO be like a celebrity, a public celebrity.

TRESEDER: It is definitely, especially for these large tech brands, the CEO personality, the CEO being a celebrity, the CEO being out there, not just the CEO, but senior leaders on the executive team building their own following, is a core part of driving growth. And look, Elon Musk is having a good year. He’s having a good year. And I think that regardless of what anyone thinks, the SpaceX IPO was a success. Now, what will happen in the long run? We’re all going to wait and see. Let’s grab our popcorn and see what happens.

SAFIAN: We’ll see what happens. As always, this is great. As we look to the year ahead, are there themes, lessons, or guidance that you’re most focused on right now?

TRESEDER: Yes. I’m really focused on investing in people. There haven’t been enough conversations about how we are investing in the next generation. Let’s take a minute and reflect on what’s happening. A lot of students just graduated. I went to a few graduation celebrations. You saw booing happen in certain instances because these students are walking into the toughest job market. And at the same time, like you said, trillionaires are being minted.

At Autodesk, we think about this deeply. We actually just committed $350 million to invest in preparing the next generation for jobs in this AI era. Over three years, we’re going to be doing the work to provide access to technology, training, and credentialing. And I would say that as a company, really think about your people internally and externally. How are you investing to help them win? Because when you do that, you’re going to set yourself up for success in the long run and win that long game. You’ll be the Knicks.

SAFIAN: Well, Dara, as always, great to talk with you. Thank you.

TRESEDER: Thank you so much for having me.

SAFIAN: Conversations with Dara leave me both joyful and reflective. What stuck with me most this time about the lesson she shared was the through line of intentionality. The speed of technology today makes it easier than ever to be reactive, and that lack of intentionality can lead to oversights and a creeping staleness. Sure, it takes extra effort to carve out the time and focus to be intentional, and none of us have enough time, but we can all taste the difference between a meal that’s been lovingly prepared and one that’s rushed out and ultra-processed.

So my advice: Make the time. Don’t automate away the critical moments we need to consider things. As Dara says, you can’t be a thought leader without a thought. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.