The Carat Cultural Catalyst session, part of Carat's presence at Cannes Lions 2025, centered on Carat’s core mission to help brands connect with audiences in more meaningful ways.
Brand Reset
Fiona Lloyd, Global Brand President, Carat, kicked off the session by introducing Carat’s new Brand Reset, the industry’s largest ever attention-based study into the long and short-term brand impact of video advertising.
“Video is changing within the Algorithmic Era. Video is tunneling through the funnel. … It’s delivering both brand and performance. It can be setting you into really relevant cultural context in one second and, a click away, be building a commerce transaction, or sometimes the other way around.”
Video marketing has evolved
Bram Meuleman, Global Head of Strategy, Carat, served as moderator for the first of two panel discussions. He asked each panelist to briefly respond to his leading question, “What’s the biggest shift you’ve seen in how video drives business results?”
Luiz Felipe Barros, CMO, Channel Factory: “Creators started to tell their own stories … and the ability of anyone to become their own platform is really unique.”
Jia Hyun, VP, Marketing Solutions, Linkedin: “Demographic shifts. GenZ is the fastest growing membership on LinkedIn. … Video is their preferred native format particularly for brand building, for upper funnel mid-funnel awareness and considerations.”
Tara Walpert Levy, VP, Americas, YouTube: “Creators are supercharging results and AI is supercharging creative.”
Hayley Kalil, Creator, Model: “People crave authenticity, and creators hopefully bring that into the digital space.”
From there, Bram led the panel with a series of questions including:
- How are brands rethinking their approach to creative partnerships vs. more traditional advertising?
- How can brands make the most of the broad palette of different modern video options?
- Considering brand building vs performance marketing, how do we negotiate the continuing debate in today’s climate of ROI pressure everywhere?
- Looking ahead to the next 12 to18 months, what’s one trend in video marketing that you’re excited about or that keeps you up at night?
The power of culture
Mike Law, CEO, North America, Carat, moderated the second panel in a discussion focused on the intersection of culture, creativity, and commerce. He asked the panelist to share their thoughts on the role culture plays within their brands.
Mike: How do you define culture? How do you think about it? How do you amplify it inside of United? How do you take advantage of those moments to make your brand shine?
Maggie Schmerin, Chief Advertising Officer, United Airlines: “We love pop culture at United. We live it, we breathe it. Our analogy is basically the internet dinner party conversation. What’s the tone? What are people talking about? When should we insert the brand? And when not to insert the brand? When to be disciplined and to say this is not the right moment.”
Mike: How has culture changed from watercooler talk to real-time social feedback?
Josh Duhamel, Actor, Producer, Writer and Director: “The way we consume entertainment has changed completely over the last 10 years. … We have a creative production company - started in branded content, telling 30-90 second spots that were little mini stories. [We have evolved into] partnering with certain brands so that we shine a beautiful light on them while still telling the same story that we did before.”
Mike: What’s the power of culture in your brands?
Questlove, Podcast Host, Cultural Icon, Author, Musician & Filmmaker, and more: “I still have a non-cynic, curious-child mind about creativity. … I’ve started to notice that creativity is transferrable. … Once I realized there’s a certain method of thinking that we all apply to our creativity, then I started to wonder if the common person … do they apply it as well? Answer is a resounding yes.”
Mike: How do you think about approaching brands?
Josh: “We want to tell honest stories. No matter what AI does in the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years, we’re always going to have that human spirit. And for us, it’s about telling stories that connect on an emotional level. Whatever it may be - honest, sincere, funny. We want to be irreverent; we want to make noise in a sea of content. You’ve got to make positively disruptive content, but it also has to be honest.”
Mike: Culture can move in minutes. If you miss it, then the brand can feel stale. How do you in real time decide safe, not safe, let’s go for it?
Maggie: “If you’re not moving quick, then you can’t participate in pop culture.”
Click here to watch the entire panel replay.
Many thanks to our guest panelists for sharing their time and expertise with our Cannes audience.
Click here to learn more about Brand Reset and download a copy.
