Influencer Alix Earle has had a busy month.
In the past 30 days, she’s bet on Kentucky Derby racehorses and shot a Wall Street Journal cover. Hosted a Carl’s Jr. party — an extension of her ’90s supermodel-style Super Bowl ad with the burger chain — and strutted the Sports Illustrated runway. Presented at the American Music Awards, and announced her upcoming debut on Dancing With the Stars.
Come mid-June, Earle will also attend the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to discuss leveraging authenticity with tools such as Microsoft Copilot to create an online community alongside Microsoft’s consumer CMO, Yusuf Mehdi. While Cannes originated for advertising higher-ups and C-suite executives, it was tucked into Earle’s hectic schedule for a reason.
“When you mention Alix Earle or Josh Richards or Jake Shane, brands don’t have any doubt they can move the needle with their dollars,” United Talent Agency creators senior director of brand partnerships Brittany Gildea told Campaign. “It’s less about convincing brands of creators’ power, and more about utilizing time so these CMOs and CEOs can interact with creators to learn how to create impactful and meaningful campaigns with them.”
United Talent Agency is sending more than 20 creators to this year’s festival — doubling its amount from last year — and isn’t the only agency exponentially increasing the festival’s creator presence. Billion Dollar Boy is also sending 20 content creators to Cannes through its new Creator Fund.
The group selected for Billion Dollar Boy’s Creator Fund “represents the breadth of today’s creator economy,” and includes makeup artist Kennedy Murray, mom motivation influencer Marie Mansaray-Lahai, pastry chef Allison Chen and BAM! comedy duo Bec James and Sam MacMillan. Over 20 brands are participating in the Creator Fund including Dove, Desperados and Heineken.
“We’re seeing an increased appetite for creators to break free of just the phone screens,” Becky Owen, CMO of Billion Dollar Boy and head of its creator program, FiveTwoNine, explained, mentioning creator interest in creating streamable and TV content. “We’ve seen what’s happened with TikTok. Creators are thinking: ‘I need to think long-term and be resilient to platform changes. I need to have power. If I only have power within one app without direct brand relationships, and something goes wrong, I’m not earning a salary and I’m back in the job I had 10 years ago.’”
Gildea echoed Owen’s sentiments, noting influencer presence at brand-sponsored tentpole events including the World Cup, the Olympics and Formula 1 Grand Prix races. But, despite interest in traditional entertainment spaces, influencers are still learning how to navigate them — which is why Billion Dollar Boy began the Creator Fund, Owen said.
“Cannes Lions has always seemed like this out-of-reach, walled garden,” travel filmmaker influencer Colby Banks, who will attend Cannes through the Creator Fund, told Campaign. The Creator Fund concept emerged from creators’ confusion about navigating Cannes events and maximizing the festival’s opportunities at the first Cannes Creators Rooftop last year, Owen explained.
“It’s one thing to offer influencers a ticket, and another to show them how to use Cannes for access,” Owen said. “I also realized there wasn’t a genuine representation of the creator economy.”
At this year’s second-annual Official Creator Rooftop — which will host speakers from Rare Beauty, Matte, and Duolingo, and is sponsored by Meta, LTK, YouTube and more — a wide array of creators hope to build long-lasting relationships with brands. This year will have more support embedded in increasingly influencer-focused Cannes events and through agency programs such as the Creator Fund.
“The chance to develop some new long-lasting relationships across the creative and advertising industry is super exciting,” Banks explained. “When creators and brands have the opportunity to connect outside the context of a specific campaign, it becomes less about one-off deals and more about mutual understanding, creative alignment and long-term potential.”
Banks and Earle are among dozens of influencers speaking at Cannes as part of the Creators Lions programming. Many influencers are partnering with brands for panels — for example, comedic live streamer Kai Cenat is teaming with State Farm for a demonstration of brands involving content creators in creative processes.
Amelia Dimoldenberg, who has flirted with artists Jack Harlow and Billie Eilish over fried chicken for her Chicken Shop Date celebrity interview web series, will conduct a chat with BBC Studios’ SVP of digital, Jasmine Dawson, about redefining rom-com for the digital era with “funny femme” awkward charm and cultural savviness.
Some influencers will discuss their own brands. Style influencer Campbell Pucket, known online as Pookie (her husband-dubbed nickname), and Bethenny Frankel, who just went viral for walking the Sports Illustrated runway at age 54, will discuss their respective businesses, Quintessential Love and BB Endeavors, for a panel. That same day, culinary creators will discuss how their niches impacted small businesses and national markets.
Logan Moffitt, who cooks Dubai pistachio chocolate and vodka pasta recipes for mukbang videos, sparked a cucumber shortage in Iceland when his line, “sometimes you need to eat an entire cucumber,” went viral. Keith Lee, who taste-tests restaurants from London to Texas, has lifted struggling restaurants to success with his food reviews. The culinary influencers will discuss moving food markets with food tasting content on their conversation with TikTok’s global head of business marketing Sofia Hernandez.
“Our creators alone are hitting high fashion, beauty, lifestyle, food and beverage, sports and music — they really touch upon everything,” Gildea said of the increasing variety of influencer presence at the festival. “It’s important to note, because if brands are really trying to maximize campaigns, Cannes is exciting to show all the different areas they could touch.”
