Good morning. Now that we’re sufficiently tanned from the French sun and got our fill of Cannes Lions billboards (our favorite was GroundTruth’s that read “ROI? Oui.”), it’s time to head back to the states.

Au revoir, Cannes. And bonjour, ice in our drinks.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

As the sun set on our Cocktails with Creators event yesterday, we caught up with Colin and Samir to talk about how brands are changing their creator playbooks post-Cannes. It seems they’re walking away with awareness of a new industry reality: Creators are the real multi-hyphenates of marketing.

Here are the four big roles creators are playing for modern marketing teams →

Bottom line: Most creator x brand partnerships look like some mix of all of the above these days. “The relationship between brands and creators right now is super amorphous,” Colin said on their LinkedIn show, The Daily Brief. That’s a good thing—leading to more ways to work together, not fewer.

If you want to hear more of Colin and Samir’s takeaways from the week, check out their podcast episode dropping soon. 

At Cannes Lions, we heard the platforms loud and clear: They want to host premium series. TikTok floated incorporating more long-form video, LinkedIn CMO Jessica Jensen spoke extensively about the rising importance of video on the platform (see: Colin and Samir’s daily show), and Instagram VP of Product Tessa Lyons said she wants to support horizontal series in a “first class” type of way.

With every platform chasing the same thing, how does that change the ways creators show up for their audiences?

In the long-term, platforms could all feel indistinguishable. But for now, most creators still recognize the distinct personalities of each app. Here’s what creators are saying →

How will these platform goals affect your long-form strategy (if at all)? Hit reply and let us know.

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Multiple flights. Hotels. Festival passes. Nightly glasses of rosé. Being at Cannes Lions isn’t cheap, but creators who come with the right strategy can earn over 150X the investment in the trip—at least, that’s what film education creator Adrian Per told us.

But creators don’t just show up on the Croisette and start closing high-ROI deals. Per and his manager Ray Hughes broke down how they spent the last few months preparing to make the most of the week →

But managers can only do so much. “My team has gotten me into all these rooms,” Per told us. “They put me at bat, but it's still up to me whether I strike out or hit a home run.”

Hughes said creators who win big change their pitch depending on whom they’re talking to—press, PR, ad agencies, or studios. 

“This is why I don't advise greener talent stopping a senior executive or C-suiter they recognize from their LinkedIn profile unless they understand the nuance of the limited time they have to capture their attention,” Hughes told us.

The content we’re looking forward to reading, watching, and listening to this weekend while we stave off jet lag.