Cannes Lions 2026 Grand Prix Winners in Creative Data, Direct, Media, PR, and Social & Creator

As Cannes Lions 2025 hits the halfway point, the winners for five more categories have been announced: Creative Data, Direct, Media, PR, and Social & Creator.

In turn, five more campaigns have taken home the ultimate prize, created in the US, Peru, Puerto Rico, the UK, Italy, and Brazil. Featuring two different Super Bowl stunts from a pair of food delivery apps, a clever promotional offer from Heineken to get people back into the pub, and an innovative solution to help those who’ve had their phones stolen successfully secure their bank accounts, the selection on this list may be varied, but all of it is brilliant.

See the full list of Wednesday’s Grand Prix winners below:

Creative Data Lions

BCP – SOS POS

In Peru, more than 4,000 phones are stolen daily, generally with the purpose of accessing banking accounts to drain funds. While every bank has a free emergency line to shut down cards, should a scenario like this arise, simply put, you cannot make such a critical phone call… if you don’t have your phone.

To remedy this, BCP and Circus Grey turned the payment terminals of small businesses across the country into systems capable of locking down one’s account, using a new, open-source, front-end API. Not only that, but the two identified the areas with the highest robbery points, and placed more than 17,500 blocking points throughout them, before partnering with assorted telcos to provide new replacement phones with no interest for 24 months to the bank’s customers, as needed.

Subsequently announced via a recreated robbery scene in one of Peru’s most-watched soap operas, this initiative led to a 48% reduction in reports of stolen money each month, saved an estimated $7.8 million over four months, and is still being expanded upon to this day.

Creative Data Lions jury president, Anupriya Acharya, CEO, Publicis Groupe, South Asia, said, “Our Grand Prix work stood apart for the beautiful simplicity of its idea and the imaginative use of data – data used to protect data. It turned an everyday payment terminal into a lifeline at a moment of real vulnerability. It solved a human problem, strengthened trust in a difficult-to-differentiate banking category, and showed how creative data can drive business impact while scaling protection for people and society in a way that can transcend boundaries.”

Direct Lions

Uva App – Uva Uva Bombón

When it was announced that Bad Bunny would be performing at the Super Bowl, one of the big questions on people’s minds was, ‘What songs will he perform?’. With less than 15 minutes of airtime, and given the depth of his discography, making an accurate prediction seemed like an impossible task.

For Puerto Rican delivery service Uva App, however, the stakes were just a little bit higher. Mentioned in one of the artist’s songs (Tití Me Preguntó), it was hoping to achieve a sneaky on-stage shoutout, despite not even being a key chorus lyric. Teaming up with de la Cruz Ogilvy, the brand turned this potential into a Super Bowl ad of its own. By promising consumers the app – if mentioned – would turn into a $1 store until the show ended, and telling them to promote this possibility on socials, the two ultimately got the desired outcome, becoming the only brand mentioned by Bad Bunny on the big day. On top of this, the delivery service entirely sold out when the time finally came, and gained 70.9% new app users in the process.

Direct Lions jury president, Joaquín Cubría, chief creative officer, GUT, Argentina, said, “In an industry obsessed with control, this work proved that courage is still our most valuable currency. A challenger brand chose the most expensive advertising day of the year not to outspend the competition, but to outsmart it. A bold, simple idea that turned uncertainty into disproportionate impact.”

​Read more about it here.

Media Lions

Uber Eats – Build Your Own Super Bowl Commercial

As it turns out, Uva App wasn’t the only delivery service to find success with a Super Bowl marketing endeavour. In the case of Uber Eats and Special Group USA, the two decided to turn their iconic Matthew McConaughey and Bradley Cooper-backed ‘Football Is For Food’ platform – which jokingly argued that the big game was a conspiracy invented to sell food – into an actual marketing stunt.

Putting all the ‘evidence’ into the app, down to adjusted product names, the agency and brand created more than 1,000 bespoke Super Bowl films, with the express purpose of giving fans the opportunity to build their own versions of the commercial, based on selected items (all of which unlocked special deals). Revealing new, never-seen-before jokes, as well as a whole new cast of celebrity conspirators, this initiative turned Uber Eats into an entertainment destination, keeping people’s attention while competitor ads played out. In fact, it resulted in 3.7 million new app visits, record conversion, and its best-ever Super Bowl sales.

Media Lions jury president, Sindhuja Rai, chief client officer, WPP Media, APMEA, said, "This is modern marketing at its most transformative. Rather than using communications to drive consumers to the product, it turned the product itself into the communications platform – seamlessly uniting creativity, media, technology, talent, commerce, and personalisation into a single connected experience, effectively collapsing the traditional funnel. The result was a campaign that didn’t just capture attention; it converted participation and engagement directly into business growth."

​Read more about it here.

PR Lions

KitKat – The KitKat Heist

Everyone knows about the infamous KitKat heist. One week before Easter, a truck in Europe gets 400,000 bars stolen, leading to a supply chain crisis for the brand. But, the fact that you’ve even heard about it is testament to why VML UK and Burson have won a Grand Prix in this category. By telling the world about the incident, rather than hiding it, the two helped the brand lean into the moment generating $224 million in earned media, in just 10 days. Bolstered by a KitKat tracker which allowed people to enter a bar’s eight-digit batch number – to determine if it was part of the stolen collection – the brand successfully got 2.2 million people to try it out, all while social media was awash with discourse about the absurd situation. Talk about making lemonade from lemons!

PR Lions jury president, Dana Tahir, CEO, HAVAS Red, Middle East and Egypt, commented, “Crisis communications has long been the discipline of caution, protecting reputation, minimising damage, staying safe. But this year's work rewrote those rules entirely. KitKat didn't just manage a crisis, it transformed it into a cultural moment, proving that creative bravery and crisis counsel can coexist. This work didn’t eliminate risk, it choreographed it. Every pun, every quote was calibrated to keep the brand on the right side of the line. And in doing so, it set a new standard for what’s possible when brands trust their instincts and lean into the unexpected. We hope this work serves as a reminder that the greatest opportunities often hide inside the biggest challenges, and that crisis, handled with creativity and courage, can become a brand's finest moment.”

​Read more about it here.

Social & Creator Lions

Heineken – Could Have Been a Heineken

According to Statista, we spend 150 hours a year listening to voice notes. That’s an awful lot, especially when the content therein can get rambly, drab, or just turn into straight up nattering.

For Heineken, this is especially egregious, considering the fact that all of this could easily be in-person conversation over some cold beers. So, that’s exactly what the brand did, in partnership with LePub and LePub Sao Paulo. By launching a WhatsApp bot that people could forward three-minute-plus voice messages to, the agencies helped the brand easily give away promotional offers for free beers at the bar. Launched initially with creators promoting this service, along with funny stickers declaring ‘Could Have Been a Heineken’, this endeavour would successfully turn 280 hours of voice notes into beers around the globe, and prove that there’s better, more enjoyable ways to communicate.

Social & Creator Lions jury president, Mihnea Gheorghiu, global chief creative officer, LePub, said, “Voice notes make connection easier, faster. But for a new social behaviour – do they really make us more social? Heineken makes a beautifully crafted argument that a long voice note is best delivered in person. Whether you love voice notes or hate them, you can’t really argue with that. The jury decided to award the Grand Prix for its social-first simplicity and iconicity, and for converting a new social behaviour into the oldest social behaviour.”