Why Cannes awards and creativity still matter for CMOs, with Unilever's top marketer

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ad Age Marketer's Brief

Episode: Why Cannes awards and creativity still matter for CMOs, with Unilever's top marketer
Date: May 27, 2026
Guests: Leandro Barreto (Global CMO, Unilever Beauty & Wellbeing)
Hosts: Adrienne Pasquarelli (Senior Editor, Ad Age)

---

Overview

This episode centers on the enduring importance of creativity and the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for senior marketers. Leandro Barreto, recently promoted to Global CMO at Unilever Beauty & Wellbeing, shares his perspectives from more than a decade of attending Cannes, the strategic value of awards, tips for marketers attending for the first time, and the staying power of iconic campaigns like Dove’s “Real Beauty.” The discussion delves into how CMOs balance creative excellence with performance, adapt classic campaigns to shifting cultures, embrace AI for efficiency, and build both infrastructure and inspiration in today’s marketing landscape.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Value of Cannes and Advice for Attendees

• Cannes as a Learning and Networking Hub

  • Barreto has attended the festival at least ten times and sees it as a place to connect, learn, and celebrate creative work.
  • "It's an opportunity to really connect with people, celebrate good work, learn... always being curious, seeing what brands are doing." (Leandro Barreto, 02:15)

• Advice for First-Timers:

  • Go with intentionality and curate your own agenda according to your interests.
  • Don’t stick only with existing partners—expand beyond your network to maximize learning and inspiration.
  • “A sharp intentional agenda, but like openness. Be curious, expand beyond your inner circle and explore.” (Leandro Barreto, 03:01)

• Practical Tips:

  • Stay hydrated, wear comfortable shoes, prepare for lots of walking, and be open to diverse experiences across the festival.
  • “I had years in which I walked so much that I had blisters. So, yes, good shoes. Be prepared actually to exercise a lot.” (Leandro Barreto, 04:32)

---

2. Do Cannes Awards Still Matter for CMOs?

• Creativity as Competitive Advantage:

  • Awards matter because they represent creative bravery, motivate marketing teams, and foster a culture of excellence—not for personal accolades.
  • "Creativity remains the biggest competitive advantage that brands have... These festivals put together amazing minds that celebrate excellence, bravery." (Leandro Barreto, 05:44)
  • The ripple effect encourages a “virtuous cycle of excellence” internally.
  • “It’s a new generation of marketing talent that feels the contagious effect of winning, that they want to do better work.” (Leandro Barreto, 07:46)

• Awards & Personal Branding:

  • Barreto distances himself from using awards for his own profile, noting their real value is in attracting top creative talent to the brand.
  • “Nothing in my personal brand as a CMO, but we are attracting better talent to work in this brand.” (Leandro Barreto, 08:04)

---

3. Keeping Iconic Campaigns Like Dove Real Beauty Fresh

• Consistency of Purpose, Flexibility in Execution:

  • The longevity of Dove’s campaign is due to a relentless focus on core values (“the consistency of the meaning, but a flexibility of the execution”).
  • The brand adapts to new cultural realities while staying true to its purpose.
  • “We kept... the consistency of the meaning, but a flexibility of the execution.” (Leandro Barreto, 09:02)

• Challenge: Saying No More Than Yes:

  • The hard part is filtering which social conversations or ideas Dove should or should not join, requiring “rigor, discipline, and a deeper intimacy with the brand.”
  • “It's not hard to keep up with the new. It's hard to say no to the things you should not do... The understanding of what not to do is difficult.” (Leandro Barreto, 10:52)

---

4. Spreading Success Across Unilever’s Brands

• Dove “Playbook” and Other Brand Examples:

  • Principles guiding Dove—clear POV, cultural relevance, consistency, and action—are now applied across Unilever brands (e.g., “Dirt is Good”/Persil).
  • “Dove is definitely a reference for us that we try to replicate across brands. Many brands do this extremely well.” (Leandro Barreto, 12:22)

• Vaseline’s Modern Turn via Community-Led Campaigns:

  • Vaseline’s growth attributed to letting communities and creators lead narratives, verified by the brand (e.g., Vaseline Verified).
  • This approach flipped the relationship—Vaseline grew 43% in e-commerce, and transcended traditional skincare into new culture spaces.
  • “We made a significant shift in deciding to let the community lead the conversation instead of curating the messages.” (Leandro Barreto, 13:51)

---

5. Navigating Short-Term Pressures & Modern Marketing Tactics

• Balancing Short and Long Term:

  • Barreto advocates marketing that delivers both short-term returns and long-term brand equity—viewed as an integrated “and,” not an “or.”
  • “Good marketing is the one that allows us to really see impact in the short term and build the equity.” (Leandro Barreto, 16:25)

• Focus on Efficiency and Content Effectiveness:

  • The economic backdrop intensifies focus on content efficiency and maximizing impact rather than just quantity.

---

6. The Role of AI in Everyday Marketing Operations

• AI Embedded in Workflow:
  • AI now supports insight generation, content creation, media optimization, and e-commerce across Unilever.
  • Ensures speed, cost-effectiveness, and brand consistency at scale.
  • “It's impossible to create these assets without leveraging AI first because of the speed, because of the cost, but also because of quality.” (Leandro Barreto, 17:56)

---

7. Brands that Inspire

• Admiring Coca-Cola:
  • Barreto cites Coca-Cola as a standout for its ability to maintain core brand meaning while evolving the brand’s expression and ecosystem presence over time.
  • “I'm a big fan of the work Coca-Cola does... They keep the meaning and evolve the expression.” (Leandro Barreto, 19:39)

---

8. The Evolving CMO Role: “Poetry and Plumbing” (21:05)

• Balancing Inspiration and Systems:
  • The CMO’s job now requires creative courage (“poetry”) and building infrastructure and processes (“plumbing”) to drive impact at scale.
  • “The job now is poetry and plumbing. You need everything we know is fundamental for brands, but you need to create systems, process, tools, infrastructure...” (Leandro Barreto, 21:05)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “A sharp intentional agenda, but like openness. Be curious, expand beyond your inner circle and explore.”
  — Leandro Barreto (03:01)

• “Creativity remains the biggest competitive advantage that brands have... These festivals put together amazing minds that celebrate excellence, bravery.”
  — Leandro Barreto (05:44)

• “Every time we come with some of these awards it's a new generation of marketing talent that feels the contagious effect of winning, that they want to do better work.”
  — Leandro Barreto (07:46)

• “We kept... the consistency of the meaning, but a flexibility of the execution.”
  — Leandro Barreto (09:02)

• “It's not hard to keep up with the new. It's hard to say no to the things you should not do.”
  — Leandro Barreto (10:52)

• “The job now is poetry and plumbing. You need to create everything we know is fundamental for brands, but you need to create systems, process, tools, infrastructure.”
  — Leandro Barreto (21:05)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Cannes Attendance & Advice: 01:47 – 04:32
• Why Awards Still Matter: 05:44 – 07:46
• Impact on CMO Personal Brands: 08:04
• Dove Real Beauty Longevity: 08:57 – 10:38
• Playbooks Across Brands (Dove/Vaseline): 12:22 – 15:55
• Short- vs. Long-Term Marketing, Efficiencies: 16:04 – 17:34
• AI in Marketing: 17:56 – 19:26
• Inspirational External Brands: 19:39 – 20:43
• How the CMO Role Has Changed (“Poetry and Plumbing”): 21:05

---

Tone and Takeaways

The conversation is reflective yet practical—Barreto is candid about pressures, offers actionable advice (from festival logistics to brand stewardship), and balances inspiration with operational realities. Creativity, consistent purpose, community participation, and technology (especially AI) emerge as intertwined pillars of modern marketing leadership.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, I'm Adrienne Pascarelli, Senior Editor of CMO Strategy and Commerce at Ad Age. And welcome to another edition of the Marketers Brief podcast, our weekly discussion about marketing news and trends that have the industry buzzing. We are just a few short weeks away from the annual Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity where advertising heavyweights gather to award great campaigns, News network and of course, Drink Rose. Today we'll be talking with a marketer who is an expert on the event. Leandro Barreto, the new global Chief Marketing Officer of Unilever and the Beauty and well Being business group, has attended 10 Cannes lines in his professional career and is planning to go again next month. He was promoted to his new position in January after working for more than two decades at Unilever Brands including Dove and Vaseline. He'll share lessons from marketers who are attending Cannes and explain how the company keeps long running campaigns like Dove's Real Beauty Fresh. But before we begin, I want to call your attention to a new awards program, Ad Age Mid Sized Brand Leaders honors senior in house marketing leaders making a difference at mid market brands, typically companies with $50 million to $1 billion in annual revenue. Does this sound like you or anyone you know? Find out more including how to [e-mail] midsizeleaders now here's my conversation with Leandro. Hi Leandro, thanks for joining us.

[B]

Hello, how are you?

[A]

So you've been at Unilever for more than two decades. How many times would you say you've attended the cannesline International Festival of Creativity for Advertising?

[B]

Oh, many times. I think at least 10 times. At least the last 10 years? Yeah.

[A]

Wow. Almost too many to count. And I know you're going again next month. How will your trip change now under your new role as global cmo?

[B]

I think it's going to be a little bit busier, but in the essence, I hope it doesn't change much. I feel Cannes is an opportunity really to connect with people, to celebrate good work, to learn my best experiences there were always being curious, seeing what brands are doing to celebrate the work and I hope I will be able to continue doing that. So it's a busy agenda, but I'm excited to see see what the industry is doing.

[A]

Yeah, it is such a busy week with networking and socializing the awards. The reason everyone is there and all the events. What advice do you have for first timers, newcomers on how they can really get the most out of the Cannes experience?

[B]

Yeah, well, I think first is good to go with to make your own Agenda, your own adventure. Right. I think Cannes depends a lot on what you want to curate. I'm an introvert, so I like to spend a lot of time in smaller groups in one to one connections, in watching the work and the presentations. And so I think it's important to go with intention and define your agenda. Agenda before. I also think it's good to again spend time seeing what other brands are doing. I think sometimes there is a risk of staying in your circle with the partners and the ecosystem that you already engage with. And I feel there's so much richness when you open that bubble and connect with brands and with ecosystems that are different from what you normally do when you are in your day to day. So probably those would be my, my two recommendations. I think a sharp intentional agenda, but like openness. Be curious, expand beyond your inner circle and explore.

[A]

Yeah, it feels like there's so much opportunity. It can get really overwhelming. But really taking that inspiration where you can and being as open as you can to those experiences.

[B]

Yes, definitely.

[A]

Do you stay the entire week when you go?

[B]

I stay the entire week, yeah.

[A]

And I'm hearing a lot of stay hydrated and wear linen. Do you have any hot take tips?

[B]

Oh, yeah, that. Those are good ones. I forgot the basics, so I, I feel now I, I went too much into the next level, but definitely. Well, Luca, I think you walk a lot. So I. On top of the hydration, I would, I would say good shows. I had years in which I walked so much that I, I had the blisters in my, in my feet. So I, I would say yes, good shows. Be prepared actually to exercise a lot, stay hydrated. But it's a good opportunity indeed to go to many places to visit different locations. Right. There's so much happening across the city. So I would say yeah, just, just be ready to walk.

[A]

Yeah. We're lucky that sneakers are so in fashion these days. What about the awards in general? Do CMOs still use Cannes as a creative benchmark? I'm kind of wondering how, how important is winning a lion for marketers these days, Would you say, amid so much of a focus around performance, marketing, creator marketing, like, how much do these awards still matter to you and to. To CMOs across the board?

[B]

Look, I think the, the awards matter not because of the awards themselves, but it's because of what they represent. Right. I strongly believe in creativity. I believe that creativity remains the best or the biggest competitive advantage that brands have. I believe that even now when it becomes more automatized and now that there is A the age of sameness, all the brands start looking the same. Creativity is so important. And I think these festivals like Cannes, they do put together amazing minds that celebrate excellence, that celebrate bravery and, and I think creativity, bravery, excellent. Those are becoming very important ingredients to build brands. So I actually feel that has never been so important to actually value the work that is celebrated there. And also it's not only about the awards. It's about how these awards can help to feed a culture of creativity. Inside the company is what they represent to the teams. Right. Every time we come with some of these awards is a new generation of marketing talent that FS the contagious effect of winning, that they want to do better work, they want to create better things. So I see this ripple effect of the awards. Right. It creates a virtual cycle of excellence. And this is, this is really important. So bringing back the award is more important than winning because it creates a long term impact in the organization.

[A]

Yeah. It feels like it can be so invigorating for the future and for employees.

[B]

Yeah. And there is a point on joy, Right. I think, I believe marketing is a lot about joy. And the awards help to see the joy of marketing. Right. Everybody, everybody likes to win and everybody likes to create excellent work. So the awards help us to try to motivate people to achieve that.

[A]

Can award wins also help with a CMO's own personal branding? Since there's this huge push, it feels like in the industry for CMOs to kind of get their own names out there, get their own brands out there as much as they can. Is that something that can help feed?

[B]

I don't know. I don't see this way. I don't see that. I suppose there might be. It's not something that for me is that important. I think it helps to attract good creative talent, for example, from the partners to work in our brands. So the branding of the brand becomes good. Right. So brands like Dove or now Vaseline is in a very good phase. I see the effect of awards nothing in my personal brand as a cmo, but we are attracting better talent to work in this brand. So this is more how, how I see rather than in the personal brand of, of the individual.

[A]

So switching gears a little bit, you mentioned Dove. Let's talk about the Dove real beauty work, which I feel like is one of the longest running campaigns having having been in the market, what, since 2004?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Why do you think it's had such long running success?

[B]

Yeah. So look, Dove has a special place for me. I have been working with Dove for 16 years. So a long part, part of this year since the Campaign for Real Beauty. And. And I think what is special in Dove is because we know very well what the brand stands for. As you said, I think the community, people who knows the brand, they know what the brand stands for since the Campaign for Real Beauty. And this has not changed, right? We have been focused on helping people to have a positive experience of beauty. And the consistency in which we have pushed our focus on real beauty has been something that's very difficult to achieve. But at the same time, we managed to flex the execution, right? So we kept what I normally say, the consistency of the meaning, but a flexibility of the execution. So when we started the Campaign for real built in 2004, the focus was in representation, in the toxicity that was happening. The time was magazines and outdoors in our original films. And then we had to evolve to build girl's self esteem and more, an educational program. Then the world changed. We talked about social media. Then it changed again. So Dove has this amazing. And everybody that has worked in the brand all these years is amazing rigor to stay true to what it means, but to stay contemporary to what needs to change. And I think that balance is perfect and has made the brand still very relevant and successful.

[A]

How challenging is that to stay relevant, to keep the campaign fresh, to respond to all this new noise like social media. When you mentioned how hard is that and what do you keep in mind? Do you have any lessons from that?

[B]

It's very hard. And it's not hard to keep up with the new. It's hard to say no to the things you should not do. Because when you have a brand that participates in culture so much as Dove, every day, every week, you are flooded with ideas, opportunities, conversations, social topics, and then say, no, I'm not gonna engage in this conversation. No, we don't have authority to play on here. The brand has no credibility. This understanding of what to not do is difficult because the brand is a massive brand that's touched by so many people in 150 markets. So it requires rigor, discipline. It requires a deeper intimacy with the brand. We say, for example, to work in Dove, you need a Dove passport. And the Dove passport is really understanding what this brand stands for, right? And really understanding what are the things we should not be doing. So I think that is the difficulty, but I think the clarity of purpose helps us to stay true. We don't get it right all the time, but I think the pursuit of that is. Is what it matters.

[A]

Does the real Beauty campaign work as a playbook at all for the other brands in the Unilever portfolio or kind of what are the lessons from the success of that campaign that have informed some of the other brands? If you have any examples there?

[B]

Yeah, I think in the sense of having a clear point of view and what you stand for, understand how you show up in culture, be consistent over time, not only say, but do to the community in all those sense. I think Dove is definitely a reference for us that we try to replicate across brands and many brands do this extremely well. One of, for example of our brands that do this really well in the same through the same principles as Dove is Dirt is good is a brand. It's called different names in different countries. I spurs you in the UK is almost in Latin America. But these are laundry detergent Brazil brand. And from many years ago, same time, almost as as Dove, it became very clear that this brand stands for a celebration that Dirt is good. Getting dirt is a way to discover, to explore, to be fearless. And that clear understanding also has stayed through year after year. But the meaning changed, the expression, the mini state, the expression changed. Right. We moved to, to sports, we move to arts, we move to different scenarios. So I think in a way this playbook has shown to have potential no matter which category you operate.

[A]

What else can we expect to see this year from the other brands in the Unilever portfolio? You mentioned Vaseline's having a great run. What's going on with them?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So Luca, I hope we see a lot of awards. Adrienne, just to mention your point on the awards. But more important, what you definitely you see is brands that are putting a lot of focus on participating culture where culture is, that is through the communities, through the celebration of creators, through leveraging what is happening, the communities to bring the brand message. Vaseline has been indeed a fantastic example of that. It's a 155 years old brand that in the last years have been refounded through the brands of the creators and the people who love the brand. I think with Vaseline we had a very important pivotal moment and now a bit more of a year, year and a half ago with Vaseline Verified, we have for years understood that the community use Vaseline for so many hacks. So this has been there for, for decades. But we made a significant shift in deciding to let the community lead the conversation instead of curating the messages to celebrate and to find a role for the brand in verifying those hacks. Because people use Vaseline in so many ways. But there's always a question of like, does it work? And when we start say okay, the role of the brand is not about controlling the content, but actually verifying the content. So we give back to the community a service. It flipped. We had a transformation. Vaseline has been growing like 43% in E commerce, double digit around the world. And we moved from a universe that was essentially skincare to appear in fashion, in food, in sports. And suddenly the world of the brand exploded. And with that, more engagement, more growth. So yeah, Vaseline is being very successful and it's creating probably another playbook. Right. We talked about the Dove playbook on consistency and staying true to what you are. Vaseline is teaching us more about modern marketing and how, how is about stewardship rather than control.

[A]

Well, consumer goods companies are under enormous pressure for short term returns. How is the tough economic backdrop influencing the messaging and marketing that you guys are delivering? I mean how, how is, how are those pressures influencing how you're thinking about marketing tactics?

[B]

Look, I don't know if, if it change, of course we are going through difficult economic moment, but I don't know if it changed because the way I see marketing is that it does need to deliver short term results and long term results. I have always seen this as an end. I think the good marketing is the one that allows us to really see impact in the short term and build the equity. I think if anything just help us to be way more focused on these two axes. Right. Making sure that where we are putting our investment is really building the short term and the long term. Of course there is a big focus on efficiencies. I think we are living now in a world where we are producing so much content and as we produce more content is important to make sure this content is not only more quantity but is also more impact and more and their efficiencies there. So what we are looking a lot is about, yeah, how effective and how efficient this content has been. But it's not a changing mindset, it's more like becoming focus to make sure that the job is done in that way.

[A]

And speaking of efficiencies, I feel like that word is now nearly synonymous or brings to mind AI. Are you using AI in any way either for internal innovation, your marketing team, functionality, efficiencies with media, any use case there?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. We are using AI across our marketing workflow. I think in almost every part of our workflow now, from finding insights to creating content to optimizing media to driving agent E commerce. We have initiatives that are leveraging AI, I think to stay in the point on content, this has been one of the areas where we have made significant progress. Right. We moved forward from a production of content that was in a much smaller scale. And now the exposure, especially in some, some areas of our business, like beauty or personal care, the amount of assets that is created every day per market is huge. It's impossible to create these assets without leveraging AI first because of the speed, because of the cost, but also because of quality. Right. One thing that artificial intelligence is helping us is to make sure that some of those distinct brand assets and some consistent cues stay the same. Because in the past, we would have to create a brand book and educate countries to make sure that assets would be on brand. Now we can leverage AI, for example, to produce a large amount of content, but at the same time make sure that it's true to how the brand should be expressed. So this is all over our brands and in our top markets and. And it's been a fantastic journey, actually, of creating those systems.

[A]

What about your own personal inspiration outside of Unilever, what brands are doing a good job right now of connecting with their core customers, would you say? Who are you paying attention to?

[B]

Oh, that's such a great question. I'm always paying attention to all these brands because there's so much good work out there. I have probably to mention, I want to mention Coca Cola. I'm a big fan of the word Coca Cola does, and not for the obvious reasons that Coca Cola is an amazing brand and so important and so presence. But I think Coca Cola managed and all the Coca Cola marketing leadership team managed to do what I was mentioning that I value so much. Keep the meaning and evolving the expression, the transformation that Coca Cola has gone through in how the brands show up in culture, how they produce content at scale, how they connect in an ecosystem that's super complicated with bottlers and with the brands. I'm a big fan and I think the marketing they are doing so good that sometimes we forget they are doing because it's consistent and builds over time. So I'm always a fan of the work they keep doing Coca Cola.

[A]

And one more question before we go. Ad Age has started a new series called CMO Survival Guide that gives practical advice for chief marketers dealing with unprecedented change in the role. So I'm wondering if you can tell us what one thing has changed the most about your job in the past year.

[B]

Great question. I think one of the things that changed the most is that the CMO job has always been about what I call like poetry, creative courage, brand building, cultural relevance, consumer intimacy. And this drives a lot of desire. But I think now we need to drive desire at scale. And to drive scale, we need to build infrastructure. And systems is what I call the plumbing. So I think the job now is poetry and plumbing. You need to create everything we know is fundamental for brands, but you need to create systems, process tools, infrastructure for those brands to impact and for the impact to be exponentially important. And that's a big change because it requires from me and I think from many of us to find the right balance between this poetry and plumbing.

[A]

Thank you so much. We are out of time. It was great talking to you.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

That was Leandro Barreto, Global Chief Marketing Officer of Unilever. And I'm Adrian Pascarelli, Senior editor at Adage. I'd like to thank our producer, Lauren Ciardio, and invite you to subscribe to the Marketer's Brief podcast on your favorite player. We promise to keep it brief or at least short enough for your morning coffee.

[B]

Thanks for tuning in, Marketers brief listeners get $40 off an AdAge.com subscription. Sharpen your marketing edge and visit AdAge.com brief for your disc.