CANNES, France – This year at the Cannes Lions festival, the most awarded food campaigns didn’t seduce with taste. They converted with strategy.
If you still think food marketing is about glossy ads and sentimental taglines, you’re sorely behind the competition. The most recognized work at Cannes Lions 2025 proved that utility, creativity, and commerce are not only separate lanes, they’re the same highway.
Here are three keys shaping the next chapter for food and beverage brands:
Commerce Is the New Creative Playground
Ziploc’s “Preserved Promos” campaign took home the Grand Prix in Creative Commerce for turning expired food coupons into usable discounts at point-of-sale. Simple? Yes. Smart? Smarter than most ad films this year.
Why it matters: Food brands that bridge the moment of inspiration and the moment of transaction are winning both awards and loyalty. Creativity that lives inside the shopping journey, on receipts, apps, or retail media screens, is no longer a tactic.
It’s the main act.
Action for brands: If your product is sold in stores, your creativity must live in stores. Partner with retailers. Integrate loyalty. Reinvent the coupon. Make every touchpoint shoppable.
Sound is the Flavor You Haven’t Tapped
Oreo’s “Name This Oreo” audio campaign won Gold and Silver in the Audio Lions category. No video. No influencers. Just voice, radio, and good old-fashioned listener participation.
Why it matters: We’re entering a post-visual era of marketing. Whether through podcasts, smart speakers, or TikTok voiceovers, sound is driving memory and behavior in powerful new ways, especially for food brands, where memories tend to leave consumers craving.
Action for brands: Invest in sound. Explore sonic branding, audio campaigns, and voice-activated storytelling. Consumers listen before they bite into products.
Retail Media Isn’t a Trend. It’s the Stage
Cannes introduced a new spotlight this year: Retail Media as a creative category. And for food brands, this is where the game is accelerating.
Why it matters: Retail platforms now offer storytelling space, measurable, conversion-driven, and consumer-first. You’re not just buying shelves anymore. You’re buying moments.
Action for brands: Build campaigns with retailers, not around them. Target by cart behavior. Use checkout as a creative canvas. Think: snackable storytelling at the exact moment someone hits “add to cart.”
The Bigger Shift: From Emotional to Experiential
Cannes 2025 made it clear: food marketing is moving from emotional storytelling to experiential utility.
The winning marketers at this event didn’t just make us feel, they made us act.
If Cannes was once the Super Bowl of ad cinema, it’s now the World Cup of strategic commerce. For food brands, this is an invitation to rethink how you show up, not just on screen, but in stores, in apps, and in real life.
Because in 2025, the most powerful story isn’t just the one we tell, but the one consumers can taste, scan, redeem, and repeat.
Editor’s note: Ivonne Kinser serves as an innovation advisor at The Food Institute. Kinser previously served as the head of marketing and innovation for Avocados From Mexico for nearly a decade and in 2023 founded Vantage Creative, a marketing innovation lab.
The Food Institute Podcast
This Episode is Sponsored By: Tibersoft
Data is becoming more and more important to the food-away-from home sector, but the quality of both the data and the people who handle it remain key to success. Tibersoft’s Suzanne Cwik joined The Food Institute Podcast to discuss how speed, precision, and efficiency should be the cornerstones of a data management plan.
