Jonny Bauer spent 13 years at Droga5 before testing a theory at Blackstone: what if brand got a seat at the table before any other intervention happened. That theory became FundamentalCo, now working with six of the top ten PE firms and public companies like Delta Airlines, Visa, and Hilton. From BBH to Droga5 to Blackstone: Jonny moved to the UK right after college, worked on accounts like Unilever and Audi at BBH, then spent 13 years at Droga5 before joining Blackstone in 2021 to test whether brand could shape a company before anything else did. 🌍 Brand as the Thread, Not the Afterthought: Most companies bring in brand last. Jonny built FundamentalCo to flip that, using brand to align a company's transformation from day one. 🧵 AI as Transformation, Not Just Efficiency: Jonny draws a clear line between AI that speeds things up and AI that changes what a company actually is. With Thrive Capital's Crete Financials, his team helped shift an accounting firm toward a CFO mindset. 🔬 Measure Twice, Cut Once: Brand plus AI beats AI alone, every time. The real question is never how to use AI, but what the company is trying to become. 💡 A Wordle Streak Before Any Big Meeting: Jonny starts every morning with the New York Times games. A clean sweep on Connections and Strands means he is ready for anything. 🧩

Josh Stinchcomb started at Condé Nast navigating the disruption from print to digital before joining Dow Jones eight years ago to bring the Wall Street Journal into the next chapter. Now as Global CRO, his obsession is the same as it has always been: trust. And in a world where AI models are only as good as the data that feeds them, Dow Jones has something most companies do not. From Condé Nast to Dow Jones: Josh watched the first great disruption in media up close at Condé Nast, where he oversaw digital properties and built a centralized branded content studio. Everything he learned there turned out to be exactly what Dow Jones needed when he arrived eight years ago. 📰 Trust Is the Obsession: High-stakes decisions are being made every day using Dow Jones data. The bar for accuracy is incredibly high, and that is exactly what makes it incredibly valuable. Josh calls it an obsessive focus on being trusted. 🎯 Crossing the Streams: Dow Jones is just beginning to unlock what happens when its business, risk, and energy verticals work together. Net new capabilities. Net new analysis. And a path to a billion dollars in EBITDA over the next five years. 📊 AI Needs Better Data: Every large language model is only as good as what goes into it. Josh sees Dow Jones as uniquely positioned to make those models more valuable by feeding them exclusive, useful, and insightful information that nobody else has. 🤖 Meet Everyone You Can: The advice Josh would give his younger self is simple. Take the time to meet people even when it does not seem immediately useful. People remember when you gave time you did not have to give. 🤝

KC Sullivan said yes to a CFO role at CNBC in 2009 without knowing exactly where it would lead. Fifteen years later he is running the whole thing globally, and the conviction driving every decision he makes has never been simpler: be essential to your audience. From GE to CNBC: KC spent nine years at GE working in finance roles around the world before jumping at the chance to become CFO of CNBC in 2009. He fell in love with how quickly media changes and never left. 📊 Running a Hot Hand: CNBC has real momentum right now and KC is leaning into it. Going narrower and deeper, identifying the voices central to the audience, and making sure those voices are fully supported. 🎯 The Most Important Word in Media Right Now: Essential. Audiences have more choice than ever. If you are not essential to them, they will choose something else. Delivering on your brand promise is the whole game. 📺 A Direct-to-Consumer Subscription Is Coming: CNBC is expanding beyond its cable legacy into something new. KC is not giving away the details but the direction is clear. 🚀 Say Yes. Blindly.: Japan at 23. Shanghai at 25. A pivot to global advertising under Linda Yaccarino. KC has built his entire career by saying yes to the things that stretched him most. The advice he gives everyone is exactly two words. 💡

Fred Asquith spent six years trying to find his voice, moving from real-life comedy to sketch comedy before landing on film criticism. He found the voice that felt authentic, and now he is building a community around a passion he almost talked himself out of trusting. Six Years to Find the Voice: Fred started making content six years ago and tried real-life comedy and sketch comedy before landing on film. He found his authentic voice. 🎬 Letting People In Changed Everything: The turning point was letting his audience into his family and relationship life enough to create a narrative. Not manufactured. Completely real, but curated with intention. 📱 Letterboxd Is Life: Fred fell in love with Letterboxd as a late arrival to the platform and is now obsessed. His goal is the best esoteric three-word review that gets 300 likes. 🎥 The App Running His Business: Things, a third-party scheduling and notes app, runs his business and his personal life. WhatsApp handles his business negotiations. 📲 Trust Your Strengths Earlier: Eighteen months ago Fred wasn't sure he knew enough about film to talk about it online. Now he knows the real strength was never how much you know. It is how passionately you communicate what you love. 💡

Chief Johnson started break dancing, signed a record deal, and spent 15 years in the streets of Los Angeles learning marketing before landing his first corporate job at PUMA in 2017. His first week they sent him to Roc Nation to present on Meek Mill and Yo Gotti's partnerships. He barely knew how to write a proper email. Now he is leading entertainment marketing for a 76-year-old brand and winning film festivals along the way. Nine Lives and Counting: Break dancing led to rap, rap led to a record deal, a record deal led to streetwear mentorship in Pasadena, and streetwear led to marketing. Chief Johnson did not plan any of it. He just kept following what he loved. 🎵 First Week at PUMA, First Meeting at Roc Nation: Chief landed his first corporate job in 2017 and was sent to Roc Nation to present on two major partnerships before he even knew how to start a professional email. His boss pulled him aside and said you cannot open with "Yo." He learned fast. 📧 Content First. Brand Second.: The marketing that cuts through is never about the product first. Chief's approach is storytelling and connection up front, with the brand layered in to amplify. PUMA submitted a short film to festivals on a whim and won the LA Film Festival, a Telly Award, and made it to Tribeca. 🏆 Every Trend Is Rotational: Chief's 11-year-old daughter came home asking for Pro Club because it was trending at school. He reminded her he used to buy Pro Club at the flea market in 1986. Brands design two to three years out for exactly this reason. 👟 Love Thy Neighbor. Period.: Chief's advice to his younger self and everyone else is old school and simple. Be as happy as you can. Your interaction with people can set their whole day up or tear it down. Bring it back biblical. 🙏

Ryan Webb and David Mataranglo sat down at Cannes Lions 2026 to talk about the one thing every panel kept coming back to: outcomes. David calls it the word of 2026, and together they make the case that the path there runs straight through live sports, programmatic buying, and a simpler viewing experience for consumers. Outcomes Is the Word of 2026: David makes it plain. Everybody is talking about business outcomes now, and that was not the case a year ago. Business growth, incrementality, true attention and influence. That is what clients are asking for and what the industry has to deliver. 📊 Live Sports Is the Most Premium Environment: Every advertiser wants in on the sports conversation because it is the highest engagement, most premium live environment available. The World Cup, Formula 1, the Knicks. The cultural moment is the media moment. 🏆 Targeting Does Not Have to Cost You Scale: David pushes back on the idea that precision shrinks your reach. You can buy for scale and precision at the same time, and the best outcomes happen when you stop treating them as a trade-off. 🎯 DIRECTV Advertising Is Solving the Fragmentation Problem: One remote. One login. One bill. Ryan makes the case that consumers are drowning in apps and logins and DIRECTV Advertising is building the aggregation layer they are going to want. 📺 Lady Gaga, Rosalía, and a Child-Sized Poncho: David saw Lady Gaga at Citi Field in the rain a decade ago, bought an extra-large poncho that turned out to be extra-large child size, and had to stretch the plastic until it ripped. Some concerts just stay with you. 🎶

David Sable told us at TribecaX, he realized early on that sports were never going to be his path, so he found his way into theater, then advertising, training at Young & Rubicam before working alongside legends like Harold Burson and Lester Wunderman. Now as Executive Vice Chair at Stagwell, he is bringing together advertising, digital transformation, and PR for one of the most diverse client rosters in the industry. From the Theater to the Ad Agency: David knew the NBA and NFL were never drafting him, so he leaned into his creative streak, acting in and eventually directing school plays. A piece of copy he wrote in high school caught a client's attention, and from there the path into advertising became clear. 🎭 Trained by the Giants: David trained at Young & Rubicam, then worked under Harold Burson at Burson-Marsteller and Lester Wunderman at Wunderman. He calls it standing on the shoulders of giants, and credits those mentors with shaping everything that came after. 🙏 The Tech Company's Tech Company: Stagwell works with Microsoft, Adobe, and Apple alongside wins like Mondelez, Heineken, and Visa. Analysts now call Stagwell the company to watch, spanning advertising, digital transformation, and PR under one roof. 🚀 The Hat, The AI, and The Address That Was Real: David used Claude to find a Montecristi straw hat, and the AI pointed him to a specific store, a specific size, and even the name of the shop owner. When he arrived, the hat was already in hand. Not magic. Just knowing how to ask the right question. 🎩 Never Take a Job for Money: David's mentor taught him not to chase salary, titles, or the corner office. The only questions that matter: are you learning, are you happy, are you surrounded by good people, and can you make a difference. 💡

WPP Media and Snap brought their luxury research partnership to life at Cannes Lions 2026, hosting a luxury soiree at La Malmaison built around an immersive AR art exhibition. Clients put on Spectacles, walked through a gallery of portraits, and stepped directly into the art itself, all in service of one question: how is desire being created for luxury in the age of immediacy. Stepping Into the Portrait: Clients sat down, put on Spectacles, and walked through portraits of celebrities and monarchs that responded to their presence. At one point they were inserted directly into the artwork. 🖼️ Shock, Surprise, and Delight, in That Order: The experience was built as a series of small surprises using technology that had never been used this way before. The natural order for any great reveal. ✨ A Lifetime of Painting Meets a New Medium: The artist behind the exhibition has spent his career exploring how painters trick the eye into seeing depth on a flat canvas. Spectacles let him do things that were never possible on a canvas, fully holographic and three-dimensional. 🎨 Desire in the Age of Immediacy: The research behind the experience spans nine countries and multiple luxury categories. The question driving it all: how does Gen Z experience luxury without ever needing to own it. 🛍️ The Future of How We Experience Art: This is not a one-off activation. Technology has turned art from a passive, one-way experience into a dialogue, and that shift is only accelerating. 🥂

A century in the making, NBCUniversal showed up at Cannes Lions 2026 with the receipts to prove it. Fandom is the superpower. Storytelling is the strategy. And a run of live events most companies only dream about turned this year into one for the history books. Fandoms Are the Superpower: Anyone can build an audience. NBCUniversal builds community. People who do not just watch the shows, they show up for each other because of them. Friends, not followers. 🤝 Franchise First, IP First: The formula is simple and it works. Give people the stories they already love, then give them more reasons to love them. That is the whole playbook. 🎬 A Century to Celebrate, A Century to Build: A hundred years deep and still hungry. NBCUniversal is treating this birthday less like a victory lap and more like the starting line for whatever comes next. 🎉 The Year of Everything: Super Bowl. NBA. World Cup. NBCUniversal delivered one of the biggest stretches of live event programming in company history, all in a single year. 🏆 Showing Up Big at Cannes: Connection, culture, and creativity, NBCUniversal brought all three to Cannes Lions 2026 and made sure the industry felt it. 🌊

ATM was inside Casa TU, TelevisaUnivision's home base at Cannes Lions 2026, where brands, agencies, marketers, and media companies came together in one of the most unique rooms at the festival. With the World Cup driving conversation around soccer's growth in the United States, TelevisaUnivision is not treating this as a moment. They are building for the next four years. The Most Unique Room at the Festival: This is probably the only place where brands, agencies, marketers, and media companies are all together at one time. Casa TU earned its reputation for a reason. 🏠 Always On for the Next Four Years: The World Cup has the industry talking about soccer's growth right now, but TelevisaUnivision is thinking past the moment. They are building a four year runway, not a single campaign cycle. ⚽ Budgets Are Shifting, and So Is the Platform: Linear dollars are moving to digital and social, and TelevisaUnivision has the platform and the property to meet that shift head on for the Hispanic audience. 📱 An Amazing Platform and Property: TelevisaUnivision is direct about what sets them apart. The platform and the property are built specifically to serve the Hispanic audience, and that focus is the advantage. 🎯 The Room That Brings It Together: Brands, agencies, and media companies do not often share the same room at the same time. Casa TU makes that happen, and the conversations that come out of it are the ones that actually move the industry forward. 🤝

Emory Vegas Jones has spent his career at the intersection of culture and corporate with one conviction that has never changed. Great brands were never built on great product. They were built on great storytelling. Storytelling Is What Makes People Believe: The brands we love were not built on product alone. They were built on stories that made us believe. Emory says the industry is getting back to that truth and he is glad. 🏆 Fashion as a Universal Language: Music. Sports. Fashion. Emory chose fashion as his communicator and it has put him in every room that matters. 👟 Humility Keeps the Room Honest: Emory is a humble soul and he needs humble souls around him. When humility is present, the edginess gets balanced and the real work happens. 💡 Bet on Yourself. Every Day.: To Emory, betting on yourself is not a phrase. It is the epitome of life. When you are on top of your game, everybody wins. 🎯 Notes Are Everything: The ideas keep coming. Emory pulls out his notes app mid-conversation because a good one is not worth losing. 📝

Matt Strauss grew up watching Must See TV on Thursday nights never stopped thinking about what it means to make a viewer feel like they belong to something. Now as Chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, he is building the next chapter of a 100-year-old company that was first to air the Super Bowl, first to launch a national morning news program, and now first to ask what it really means to super serve a fandom across every screen. Quite the Summer: The World Cup is breaking records on Telemundo and Peacock. Love Island USA Season 8 is outperforming Season 7, which already set all kinds of records. Matt calls it a perfect storm and he means it. 🏆 Super Serving Fandoms Across Every Screen: Audiences want instant gratification, bigger screens, and mobile as second nature. Matt sees that convergence as the opportunity to bring community back to the platform rather than letting fans go find it elsewhere. 📱 100 Years of Disruption and Being Disrupted: NBC went from radio to television to cable to streaming. Matt calls that seizing opportunities and taking chances the core DNA of what they do. 🎙️ The Firsts: First national broadcast network. First to air the Super Bowl. First national television commercial. First national morning news program. The history is not nostalgia. It is a blueprint. 📺 LA28 Is Personal: Matt calls the LA Olympics in 2028 a unifying moment for the company and the country. For someone who grew up watching NBC, getting to be part of that feels like a privilege. 🌟

ATM was on the ground at Cannes Lions 2026 for the conversations, the people, and the creativity that make this the industry's most important week of the year. From brand activations to main stage panels to the moments in between, this is what showing up looks like. The Vibe That Unlocks the What-If: Cannes creates a different kind of conversation. More open, more curious, and more willing to go somewhere unexpected than anything that happens in a boardroom. That energy is what makes the week worth showing up for. 🌊 Yahoo Brought Curiosity to Life: Allie Galloway, Senior Director of Global Events and Experiential Marketing at Yahoo, on sharing products with people in an innovative and thoughtful way. Curiosity was the through line of everything Yahoo brought to Cannes this year. 💡 The Brands That Showed Up: Spotify. Disney. NBCU. WPP Media. Dentsu. DirecTv Advertising. The industry's biggest names brought their best thinking to the festival of creativity and ATM was there for every conversation. 🎬 The Talent That Made It Real: Ryan Seacrest. Andrew Ross Sorkin. Lindsay Hubbard. Tim Ellis. The faces and voices that made this year's festival one worth remembering. 🎤 The Moments Between the Moments: The best conversations at Cannes never happen on stage. They happen in the hallway exchanges, the beach brunches, and the happy hours where the real ideas start. 💡

Karen Kovacs and Lindsay Hubbard sat down at Le Studio in Cannes to talk about something the industry is still catching up to: the Bravo fandom is not just an audience. It is a friend group, a commerce engine, and a cultural force that activates the moment the episode ends. Lindsay has been living it for ten years. Karen has been building for it. From Must See TV to Must Participate TV: Karen draws the line clearly. Bravo fans do not just watch. They comment, they shop, they go to BravoCon and Fan Fest, and they immerse themselves in the full experience. The community activates the second the credits roll. 📺 Reality TV Is the Modern Sitcom: Lindsay makes the case that Summer House and In The City are doing what Friends and Seinfeld did for a generation raised in the city. Relatable, aspirational, and impossible to look away from. 🌆 Fandom as Friend Group: Lindsay's followers are not fans. They are friends. She puts her real life on screen, unscripted and unfiltered, and the result is a community that trusts her the way they trust the people in their actual lives. 🤝 Commerce Is a Natural Extension: When fans feel like they are in your friend group, shopping becomes a natural part of the conversation. That is the insight behind Shop What Happens, the digital series Lindsay launched with NBCU combining commerce with conversation. 🛍️ A Publicist Who Ended Up on Camera: Lindsay spent 15 years as a brand publicist before becoming the talent. She understands both sides of the camera, which is exactly why she is so good at connecting brands to the audiences that actually matter. 🎬

Sarah Spain moved to LA hoping to land on Saturday Night Live before realizing sports was the place where all her skills, writing, competing, and improv, came together. Now 20 plus years into a sports career that includes 13 years at ESPN, she is building the everyday institutional storytelling women's sports has never had, as host of the first daily women's sports podcast and Content Director for iHeart Women's Sports. From Comedy Dreams to a Sports Career: Sarah was a Division 1 athlete who moved to LA chasing Saturday Night Live. When she pivoted into sports, she realized it captured everything she loved, locker rooms, competing, extemporaneous thinking, and Second City improv all at once. 🎤 The First Daily Women's Sports Podcast: Good Game with Sarah Spain launched about two and a half years ago as the first and only daily women's sports podcast with iHeart. It covers the biggest scores, trades, deals, and a long form interview every single day. 🎙️ Building a Digital Archive in Real Time: Sarah sees her show as more than coverage. It is a digital archive of the earliest days of leagues like the PWHL and Athletes Unlimited Softball League, so fans ten years from now can look back at how it all began. 📼 The $2 Million to $205 Million Leap: A few years ago, an NWSL expansion team cost $2 million to buy in. This year it is $205 million. Sarah calls that leap in five or six years unprecedented, and it is reshaping the value of the entire product. 📈 Lead With Empathy: If Sarah were queen for a day, her decree would be simple. Everyone leads with empathy. She believes a million problems would solve themselves if people thought more about their impact on others instead of just themselves. 💛