Marketers set to meet with TikTok in Cannes to discuss the platform’s future plans

“The big thing to discuss is the future of TikTok and where they’re positioning themselves,” said Shamsul Chowdhury, global evp of social at Jellyfish, whose team at the festival will be meeting with the app. 

Richard Raddon, co-founder and co-CEO of Zefr, is also meeting with TikTok in Cannes and agreed. “Brands don’t just want a view of what’s working now, they want a roadmap for what’s upcoming in the future. They want to know what proactive measures are actively being built by the platform.”

Whether they get any clear answers is another question. Cannes is a place where hard conversations are often traded for rose-fueled “relationship building”, and many execs know how to keep things vague behind closed doors. Still, this is as close as many advertisers will get to TikTok’s top brass this year.  

Basis Technologies is meeting with TikTok’s John Zhao (global head of marketing partners, product marketing, GTM) on the ground at Cannes at TikTok’s request.

“The meeting doesn’t have a set agenda, it’s mostly relationship building,” a spokesperson for Basis Technologies said. 

TikTok’s HQ for these meetings is once again the garden at The Carlton, which has evolved into the de facto off-Palais epicenter of the festival. Like it did last year, the app will use the spot to present recent product news and partnership announcements as well host panels featuring TikTok execs and creators. Attendees typically walk away with TikTok-branded merch as well as some viral or talked-about Shop products. Though TikTok declined to comment on the specifics of the app’s presence this year.

But beyond the tote bags and canapes, the real business happens in the closed door suites just off the garden, where agency leads and brand CMOs are given 20-minute slots to pitch, negotiate and — hopefully — get some answers.  

Some of these conversations will have an additional layer of uncertainty given how much internal upheaval TikTok has gone through. The exodus of senior ad execs from TikTok over the last year has sparked a reshuffle of deck chairs that has brought some new faces to the fore this year. 

Along with Cannes Lions regulars like Sofia Hernandez (global head of business marketing) and Kim Farrell (global head of creators & general manager), Khartoon Weiss (vp, global business solutions) will also be on panels as well as taking meetings this year, given her role bump after Blake Chandlee (president, global business solutions) stepped down from his role on August 1.

Newer faces to the Cannes fold include David Kaufman (global head of product operations and solutions) and Moritz Bartsch (global head of creative operations), both of whom recently presented at the platform’s TikTok World annual ad product summit event.

One U.S. ad exec is set to meet TikTok’s head of agency, Emily Freed, but noted that time, location, and purpose of that face-to-face is still being ironed out, while another U.S. agency said they’re meeting both the U.S. and EMEA teams at Cannes, in a bid to deepen existing relationships at a senior level.

“We’re also part of their indies [independent agencies] lunch [at Cannes Lions] which brings together a handful of select C-suite leaders from their premier agency partners,” said the second exec. 

The lunch, which will take place on Tuesday 17th at 12pm, isn’t new per se. In fact, it’s par for the course for most businesses out in Cannes. But it’s also arguably needed for TikTok. 

After all, the festival is a chance to reset the narrative around the app. For over a year, it has been known more for its ongoing legal battle to continue operating in the U.S. than anything else. And while no amount of grandstanding at TikTok’s garden spot at The Carlton Hotel in Cannes will be able to offset that, it could be the start of a shift.

“I haven’t heard anything about it [the U.S. ban], we’ve just stopped talking about it [with our TikTok reps],” said Chowdhury. “[The impression we get is] It’s kinda back to that idea of maybe if we stop talking about it, it’ll go away.”

And it will probably stay that way indefinitely, especially if reports are true that President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order, extending TikTok’s limbo for a third time.

“There’s less urgency from brands and advertisers to move away [from TikTok], because whether it gets banned or not, engagement is still very high on TikTok,” said Courtney Shaw, vp, social media solutions at Basis Technologies. “Advertisers who want to be on TikTok are going to be on TikTok, and they’re going to see success from it.”