The Spotlight is on: creative inclusion, Cannes Lions 2025 and The Echo of sameness

In a landscape saturated with visuals, paid media campaigns and AI-driven content strategies, industries across the digital marketing world are facing a crisis of creativity. This year's Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity has already amplified the conversation around creative inclusion like never before—and for good reason.

Donna Murphy, Global CEO of Havas Creative, has publicly launched Neuroverse, a new consultancy dedicated to showcasing and giving back to the best of neurodiverse talent in creative marketing, brand strategy and business.

This initiative aims to overcome creative stagnation, challenge AI's highly polished creativity, and open the doors to a new world—one that is no longer based on influencer following and personal connections but on actual artistic value and skill. 

Could neurodiversity become the next key advantage in a creative field that has long overlooked diverse minds?

The Cannes festival of creativity isn't just celebrating diversity as a checkbox; it's challenging the status quo that has long prioritised connections and follower counts over authentic, boundary-pushing voices.

The Festival's emphasis on inclusion as a driver of creativity and commercial success is a wake-up call for sectors such as life sciences, hospitality, and digital marketing to rethink who gets invited to the creative table.

The Echo Sameness:

Whether you're in attendance at this year's creativity festival or working on your content plans, you may notice that digital content increasingly feels eerily familiar. Feeds are flooded with recycled opinions, identical visual styles, AI-generated content and templates churned out by ChatGPT. Is this creative stagnation and replication reducing the quality of branding and marketing?

Across sectors, digital campaigns blur. Whether in hospitality, editorial or life sciences, many campaigns are seen to rely on similar styles, stock imagery and the most “personal” impact they can manufacture. Hospitality feeds clog with identikit flatlays of cocktails featuring curated influencers. Meanwhile, photography and design are increasingly overtaken by AI creativity, often deployed without consideration for quality, sourcing or the risk to brand integrity.

This creative repetition and lack of fresh voices may be more than just a passing trend. Data reveals a 38% decline in Cannes Festival entries, attributed in part to rising costs and limited accessibility for emerging creatives. This drop raises important questions about the inclusivity of platforms that shape industry trends and highlights concerns over bias in creative hiring and commissioning.

Could this exclusion contribute directly to the creative stagnation we are seeing today? When teams lack diversity, strategies become trapped in an echo chamber of familiarity, reducing impact and, ultimately, people's first connections. 

UK Calls for Creative Inclusion: 

This week, the creative conversation has been joined by a notable UK broadcasting company Channel 4, who launched a "public apology" in support of the need for increased representation in modern media, challenging a long-standing approach that suggests those with differences have no place in contemporary media and production. 

Channel 4's apology isn't just a PR moment; it's a signal that industry leaders like Alex Mahon are recognising the urgent need to dismantle bias in media to create authentic and creative opportunities for those from underrepresented backgrounds.

Even though the creative industry is one of a success story for the UK, current statistics shows that the representation of working-class creative is at its lowest level since the 1970s as the government responds to these challenges, calls are growing louder for fresh approaches that genuinely address inequality, particularly for disabled individuals and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

While government initiatives are underway, major industry events like Cannes Lions must also evolve beyond symbolic gestures. Greater transparency in hiring, commissioning, and awarding processes is critical to transforming inclusion from a buzzword into real, creative change for those in advertising and marketing.

Although the message of creative inclusion is being heard, questions remain about how industries and brand leaders can lower barriers more effectively and move beyond symbolic gestures. Inclusion must not be mistaken for charity — it is a strategic imperative.

Creativity flourishes when diverse voices, perspectives, and experiences are embraced. Those of us in the creative and cultural sectors are committed to broadening access and ensuring inclusion and diversity—not only within our workforce but also in the work we produce.

As efforts continue to gain momentum, the UK is increasingly committed to supporting freelancers, amplifying underrepresented voices and outsider creatives, and moving beyond influencer-style visuals and templated decks.

This shift embraces creative expressions that are lo-fi, innovative in format, or intentionally raw, opening the door to fresh design and marketing approaches that may have a greater impact than the curated briefs we’re so used to seeing.

Sources:

1. Participation, diversity, and inclusion in cultural and creative industries. https://post.parliament.uk/participation-diversity-and-inclusion-in-cultural-and-creative-industries/#_edn5

2. FutureGaze: The Future of Creative Inclusion. Edinburgh Futures Institute. https://efi.ed.ac.uk/event/futuregaze-the-future-of-creative-inclusion/#:~:text=October's%20Discussion:%20The%20Future%20of,have%20achieved%20a%20positive%20difference.

3. Havas Neuroverse: https://havasneuroverse.com/

4. Creativity Required: Havas Debuts ‘Beyond the Brief’ to spotlight neurodiversity as the next creative advantage https://fox5sandiego.com/business/press-releases/cision/20250616TO09373/creativity-rewired-havas-debuts-beyond-the-brief-to-spotlight-neurodiversity-as-the-next-creative-advantage/

5. Havas Unveils ‘Neuroverse’ to unlock untapped market potential through neurodiversity. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/havas-unveils-neuroverse-to-unlock-untapped-market-potential-through-neurodiversity-302406109.html

6. Ad Week - Cannes Lions Awards Flat in 2025 https://www.adweek.com/creativity/cannes-lions-award-flat-in-2025/