Viral Nation

AI may be changing how brands move, create, and scale. But the harder question is whether it is helping brands become more meaningful, or just more efficient. That question underpinned yesterday’s Cannes panel ‘Anti-Slop, Pro-Humanity: A Playbook for Developing Brands That Stand Out’ featuring our very own Chief Creative Officer Brandon Lentino, Yasmin O'Neal (Global Brand Senior Director, DECIEM), Elizabeth Preis (Chief Marketing & Customer Officer, Victoria’s Secret & Co.), and moderator Christine C. (General Manager, Beauty & Wellbeing, Unilever). This conversation challenged the idea that AI’s biggest risk is technology itself. The real risk is sameness: brands using the same tools, chasing the same trends, and, through this sameness, creating work that feels disconnected from the people it is meant to reach and impact. Brandon’s perspective was simple and sharp: distinction starts with community. Brands should not market for their competitors, their category, or the industry conversation. They should market for the people they serve. And AI’s role should be to help brands listen better, test faster, and cut through to find stronger insights, but the starting point still has to be human. The panel also explored how brands can stay culturally relevant without becoming derivative. From Elizabeth’s focus on listening closely to real customer moments, to Yasmin’s challenge to know what a brand is willing to stand for, the takeaway was clear: the brands that win with AI will be the ones that use it to deepen understanding, strengthen conviction, and create work people actually feel. Big thanks to Yasmin, Elizabeth, Christine, and everyone who joined this poignant conversation with us at Cannes!

Creators are rewriting the rules. Brand deals are getting smarter. And the next 10 years of the creator economy are up for debate at VidCon this year. Our team is heading to VidCon Anaheim with our CEO, Mat Micheli, joining two conversations built for anyone thinking seriously about where creator-led growth goes next. 📈 Creator Economy State of the Union: Trends, Tensions, and What Comes Next Thu, June 25 | 9:40–10:10 AM | Industry Mainstage, Ballroom AB A sharp look at monetization, platform power, emerging tech, and what it will take to thrive over the next 5–10 years. 🤝 The Brand Deal Desk: Unlocking Win-Win Brand Partnerships (Presented by YouTube) Fri, June 26 | 1:45–2:15 PM | Room 210 AB A session unpacking real brand partnership stories and best practices, with a focus on negotiating stronger deals, protecting creator authenticity, and building partnerships that work for everyone. Whether you’re tracking where the creator space is headed or looking to build brand deals that actually work, these are two conversations worth being in. More information at the link in the comments.

The Social Brief: Edition #53

Cannes Lions 2026 is about to take over the Croisette! And our team will be on the ground for a week of conversations around creativity, culture, AI, and what brands need to pay attention to next. Here’s where to find us: ✅Creativity at Scale How generative AI is transforming marketing, with Brandon Lentino, our Chief Creative Officer. Mon, June 22 · 1:30 PM · Brand Innovators Beach ✅The Emotion Economy Nicholas Spiro, our Chief Commercial Officer, on how brands earn trust inside culture instead of chasing attention. Mon, June 22 · 3:45 PM · Empower Café ✅Anti-Slop, Pro-Humanity Brandon Lentino joins brand leaders to talk AI, culture, and how brands can create standout moments beyond the feed. Tue, June 23 · 2:35–3:05 PM · Brands & Culture Villa 🏖️Social Beach Our Cannes home base for meetings, conversations, and connecting with the team. June 22–25 · 9 AM–5 PM daily See you on the Croisette!

Cannes next week is going to be all AI, all the time. Every stage, every panel, the same conversation about how it's rewriting marketing. And mostly, it is. But here's what it hasn't touched. Brands have spent years treating creators like a shortcut to credibility, and that was always a little backwards. The creator was never really the prize. It's the community that trusts them, and you can't buy that with a brief and a budget. You earn it by actually belonging somewhere, which is a very different thing from advertising into it. That part is still stubbornly human. No model has worked out how to get a brand into a room it doesn't belong in. Our CCO Brandon Lentino wrote about exactly this for Adweek and it's the perfect pre-cannes read this week. https://lnkd.in/ew5YjCCT

Pinterest 📌 might be one of the most underestimated platforms for brands right now. So we went straight to the source to find out why marketers should stop sleeping on it. We spoke with Pinterest about how the platform is moving from mood board to full-funnel shopping engine and why they are running campaigns to get their users off the platform! A few things we learned that brands should pay attention to: 🗓️ People come to Pinterest to plan, not pass time. That puts the platform much closer to purchase than most brands realize. 🔍︎ Search on Pinterest is about finding the feeling you can’t quite find the words for. With around 80 billion monthly searches, the platform helps people move from a vague aesthetic, mood, or idea toward something they can actually save, shop, or act on. 🌟 Gen Z is using Pinterest as an identity toolkit, saving nearly 2.5x more Pins than other age groups as they build taste, aesthetics, and future selves. We are seeing Pinterest do something most platforms are not. It is built to help people find something worth leaving the app for, while also making the path to purchase easier when they are ready to buy. That mix of inspiration, action, and commerce is exactly why marketers should be paying closer attention. Read the full Decoded edition. Link in comments.

Social has never been short on influence. But the harder question is proving exactly how that influence moves a business. On CMO Confidential, our CEO, Joe Gagliese, sat down with host Mike Linton, a veteran 5x CMO (eBay, Best Buy, Ancestry, Farmers Insurance, Remington), to talk about what “social first” really means today, and why measurement is still one of the biggest challenges in the space. Joe gets into the reality most marketers know well: social drives discovery, validation and conversion, but it does not always fit neatly into traditional attribution models. That is the problem our teams at Viral Nation have spent years working to solve, building smarter ways to connect social performance to business outcomes through brand lift, time-based measurement, platform partnerships, custom models and enterprise media mix reporting. We know that social is not just a content channel but THE place people decide what matters, what to trust and what to buy next. https://lnkd.in/gk_pcG7b

There's a worry going around that AI is going to flatten creative work. Our Chief Creative Officer Brandon Lentino sees it differently. He's at the Brands&Culture Villa in Cannes this year, on a panel called "Anti-Slop, Pro-Humanity: A Playbook for Developing Brands That Stand Out." His take lines up with how we think about it here: AI and data are tools that get you to good work faster, not a shortcut around it. The idea, the taste, the reason a brand stands out at all, still a human job. He's joined on stage by some of the key voices in this space: Yasmin O'Neal (DECIEM | THE ABNORMAL BEAUTY COMPANY), Elizabeth Preis (Victoria’s Secret & Co.) and Christine C. (Unilever). If you're in Cannes this year we will see you Tuesday, June 23, 2:35–3:05 PM. at the B&C Villa, 13 Avenue de Benefiat.

It’s been a week of big conversations at Snowflake Summit 26, and we were excited to be part of one. Our very own Nicolas Doyen, VP of Product & Data Strategy at Viral Nation, was on site in San Francisco with Baris Gultekin, VP of AI at Snowflake, with Rebecca M. Knight and David Vellante from TheCUBE, to talk about creator partnerships, brand safety, live social intelligence and how AI is changing the way agencies work. From live social intelligence to smarter brand decision-making, this is a conversation worth tuning into. Listen in now https://lnkd.in/eqw8kDXu

The Social Brief: Edition #50