ICYMI: Instagram Wants to Be Your Everything App (With All New Info!)

Plus, the TikTok update that is going to change everything!

Hello from the south of France. I’m living on Coke Zero and Spritz — overheated, dehydrated and sleep-deprived. But I’m also giddy at being here at the Cannes Lions festival. The entire newsletter is themed to the news and interviews coming out of France. The newsletter is also really looong (there’s a lot of good stuff!) so click the “More” button at the button if it gets cut off — you’ll be able to read the full thing on Substack.

⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY

• Instagram wants to be the go-to app for anything creators can produce

• An exclusive conversation with Instagram’s VP of Product, Tessa Lyons (!)

• Meta unveiled new smart glasses, including Meta Glasses by Kylie

• TikTok just quietly turned Starbucks employees into paid creators

• TikTok partnered with Tinder on a reality dating series, Double Date Island

• LinkedIn is launching collab posts for its creators and brands

• YouTube Shorts is retiring the “Dislike” button

• 11 of the most useful ICYMI takeaways from Cannes Lions

• 18 industry leaders (marketers & creators) share their top takeaways from Cannes Lions

---

FROM MY FRIENDS AT CALENDLY

Cannes is a week of nonstop conversations, critical relationships, and — for most people there — an inbox that doesn’t care about any of it.

If you’ve ever been somewhere important and felt the rest of your work quietly piling up in the background, you know exactly what I mean.

At Calendly, they’re building something that’s coming soon to help with that. To protect your time — your most valuable asset — so you can be fully present for the moments that actually move your business forward. And If you haven’t been inside Calendly lately, now is a good time to look around. You might be surprised what’s already there waiting for you.

*sponsored

---

💻 ROADMAP

📲 The most interesting Instagram news from Cannes Lions

[Meta Beach via Meta]

I went to Cannes to hear Adam Mosseri speak… and instead ended up in a one-on-one conversation in a café with Instagram’s VP of Product Tessa Lyons. (She was in Cannes in Mosseri’s place to deliver a keynote on The Evolution of Creativity).

When a product person tells you something, you pay attention. They’re literally shaping how we all use the app.

So imagine how surprised I was when I heard her drop this:

“My hope is that by the end of the year creators really see Instagram as a place for long-form content and they feel like they can build their audience here.”

- Tessa Lyons, Instagram VP of Product

Quick reminder: Lyons spoke at the Scalable Summit in May. And, at that time, she hinted at updates rolling out over the next two years:

• IG supporting long-form creators

• Podcasts being a big part of its future

• A focus on short-form dramas

• Expecting more from IG Live

“It’s funny, I feel like I shared a little more than I intended,” she laughed about the spring session. “But the audience didn’t pick up on it.”

(Always attend Meta keynotes — you never know when they’ll drop top-secret updates.)

Fast forward to today and she’s accelerated her timeline, telling me she hopes that creators see Instagram as a place for long-form content “by the end of the year.” (!)

A new release this week reinforced that pacing: Instagram expanded its Instagram for TV app. Buried in the release notes, the platform said it’s testing a dedicated home for horizontal videos.

I asked Lyons if this test meant that there would be a hub for horizontal content across both TV and mobile.

The answer: yes — sort of.

“You can watch horizontal content on mobile, but it’s not a first-class experience. So we’re starting to think about what it would mean to do that really well.”

According to Lyons, there’s a lot that Instagram can also do to better support creators who are streaming Live. “We’ve obviously invested in Live but I think there’s a lot more we can do now with revisiting how Live is integrated into Instagram.”

One reason Meta is eager to offer a whatever-you-need platform experience is that Instagram doesn’t want to be a dumping ground for cutdown clips anymore. Lyons says they’ve been watching long-form creators who “share clips to Reels to grow an audience, and then that audience has to go find the full content somewhere else.”

Another focus area: micro-dramas. “Serials are really interesting because they work well on mobile as short-form, vertical content,” Lyons told me. “You can also imagine them working really well on TV, strung together.”

Lyons added that they already see people using Instagram in the living room — literally sitting next to each other, scrolling on their phones or DMing from a few feet away.

“We watch shows, talk about them at dinner, and text about what we’re watching,” she said. “So for us, it’s a really natural extension.”

So what does this mean for social teams and creators? If you’re good at long content, IG wants to be your platform sooner rather than later.

“There are two groups of creators right now. There are the creators who already produce great long-form content, who could bring it to Instagram. And we need to make sure that we’ve created the right product and the right support for them to do that.

And then there are the creators who are Instagram native, who never really got into longer form content, but who are interested in doing so. And if we could make it easy for them to do so, I think they would have a lot to say and a lot to share.”

Other Meta Updates:

• Instagram is expanding Instagram for TV to Samsung TVs across the US, and testing a dedicated home for horizontal videos.

• Meta is bringing Live Video Ads to Instagram, allowing marketers to reach audiences and drive sales with live shopping streams. See the above emphasis on Live!

• Meta announced a partnership with EssilorLuxottica to launch Meta Glasses. There are 3 different frames, including Meta Glasses by Kylie — a slim oval frame that’s supposed to be inspired by Kylie Jenner’s personal style.

• Facebook is resurrecting its Creator Studio as a stand-alone, AI-powered, companion app. We learned of this news during a tour of the Meta Beach space at Cannes, so I asked whether we could expect a similar treatment for Instagram. “We recognize some of these features would also be valuable for creators’ audiences across our apps and we haven’t ruled out a cross-meta experience for Creator Studio,” a rep told me. “We will continue to assess the best ways to expand some of these new technologies.”

📲 The most interesting TikTok news from Cannes Lions

[TikTok Garden, via TikTok]

TikTok hosted a Cannes Lions session for journalists and newsletter writers, sitting us amongst reality stars (Jeremiah Brown; Micky Gordon; HenryHenryHenry; and more). And casually dropped this huge news:

TikTok and Starbucks have partnered on a beta program called Custom Creator Networks to empower employee-driven storytelling. The pool will also have the option to include creators and brand advocates.

Employee generated content (EGC) and enhanced employee advocacy programs are becoming a major source of credibility and influence for brands online — everyone wants their own Staples Baddie.

Now, TikTok wants to be the engine that helps companies onboard, brief, and manage employee creators.

They’re starting with Starbucks, scaling the coffee company’s current Green Apron program.

For their part, Starbucks will be able to share creative briefs with their Custom Creator Network, they’ll benefit from an endless supply of organic-style, employee generated content; and they can amplify that content through paid ad spend.

In turn, employees in the program will be able to benefit just like any other creators, earning revenue share on those ads.

Dig up your brand’s social media guidelines and re-read your company’s employee advocacy program because this has the potential to radically transform how brands and employees think about their respective roles on social.

Other TikTok Updates:

• TikTok announced several advertiser-friendly AI tools:

  • Symphony Agent in Symphony Creative Studio is meant to help advertisers create TikTok-first campaigns through an AI-powered chat experience.

  • Symphony Agent in Content Suite sorts through thousands of relevant creator videos to identify content recommendations that align with the brand’s goals.

  • Symphony Agent in TikTok One helps brands generate creator briefs, identify and invite creators at scale, and discover creators who speak specific languages.

• Tinder and TikTok partnered on a reality dating series, Double Date Island, that will launch its new season exclusively on TikTok this summer.

• International World Cup tourists documenting their discovery of regional American subcultures has been dubbed “The Great American Sleepover,” with in-app searches for the term surging 525% over the past four days, according to TikTok.

📲 The most interesting LinkedIn news from Cannes Lines

LinkedIn hive mind assemble. Ironically, while B2B creators gathered to film content at a two-story LinkedIn studio in Cannes, the platform announced it would soon support collaborative posts. LinkedIn says it’s starting with a small cohort of creators and brands to test the ability for members to collaborate when publishing content on the platform.

Other LinkedIn Updates:

• LinkedIn and Adobe partnered to launch AI training courses for marketers.

• LinkedIn updated its Brand Kit in Campaign Manager to allow advertisers to set your brand’s core assets such as color palette, fonts, and brand voice.

• LinkedIn’s Senior Director of Product Marketing Julia Cabral Flavin said they’re testing something called Suggested Feeds — dedicated to news and big moments.

📲 YouTube Updates

• YouTube announced a new insights tools for advertisers. Built with Gemini, it’ll offer brands a granular look at what’s popular on YouTube, a better understanding of their paid and organic presence on the platform and deeper insights about YouTube creators and audiences.

• YouTube Shorts is testing new audience feedback tools, introducing a heart icon and retiring the “Dislike” button.

📲 Snapchat Updates

• Snapchat rolled out a new suite of AI-powered capabilities across their ads stack, including conversational commerce which lets brands engage Snapchatters through AI agents in chat.

📲 Pinterest Updates

• Pinterest published a blog post breaking down its Pinterest Manifestival space in Cannes.

• Pinterest is rolling out a new set of AI ad tools, including a new experimental app — called Ask Pinterest — for exploring more conversational, visual-first and agentic shopping experiences.

📲 Amazon Updates

• Amazon announced it was creating a dedicated Creator Hub on Fire TV, giving top creators, like MrBeast, Topper Guild, Celine Dept, and 5-Minute Crafts, their own channels.

📲 Canva Updates

• Canva introduced Canva Grow 2.0, a new AI marketing automation platform to help brands create and publish ads across Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

📲 Beehiiv Updates

• Beehiiv partnered with Cloudflare to offer AI tools for newsletter publishers. The Crawl Control technology lets creators see and control exactly how AI models use their work.

---

📣 CANNES VOICES

What 18 Industry Leaders Took Away from Cannes

Whether you couldn’t be everywhere at once or didn’t make it to Cannes, these industry leaders have you covered with the insights that mattered most.

Creator Culture

Tessa Lyons, VP of Product, Instagram

“I had a bunch of creators today, and we were able to ask, ‘OK, cards on the table. What should this look like? How should we think about it? What should we do? We want to be a place where creators can share more formats, more forms of what they’re expressing, and oftentimes these are creators who already produce that type of content.”

Lina Renzina, Head of Top Creator Management, Patreon

“What stood out to me was how the festival reflected where the industry actually is: creators at every stage of their business growth journey had opportunities to lean in, learn from and engage with a really diverse group of creators, brands and leaders. I saw emerging creators getting hands-on brand-building experience on Lions Creator Beach, creators scaling their businesses were in real conversations around deals and programming and already established top creators were shaping the thought leadership conversation alongside c-suite executives at platforms and brands. That range matters because it signals that the industry is looking beyond a famous face to borrow reach from, and is investing in creators as long-term partners that have dedicated communities of all sizes.”

Jared Carneson, Head of Social Media at Adobe

“This week I’ve noticed a new kind of C-Suite at Cannes - Creators. Historically Cannes has been a place for C-Suite executives and the creative industry to connect, get inspired, and grow their professional networks. This year, Cannes belongs to creators. At Adobe Creator Beach, we’ve seen firsthand that creators are hungry for real, in-person community moments to learn and encourage each other just as much as they are here for inspiration and networking with brands.”

Keith Bendes, Chief Strategy Officer Linqia

“I forget who said this but creators will be like sports sponsorships in the future, where they’ll have official sponsors in “x” category for all of their content. And it won’t be sponsored posts anymore. If there’s a drink, they’ll be the official drink sponsor of all of their content.”

Old School vs New School

Joel Marlinarson, Creative Strategist & Founder, Coldest Creative

“The key thing I found here is that so many old-school marketeers, or CMOs, are desperate to speak to creators. Because when they do a campaign, it might be an agency that’s managing a relationship, or most creators’ interactions with brands are just email, invoice, deliverables. ‘See you later!’ One of the most interesting conversations I had was with the CMO of Unilever Home, and that was actually organized by Edelman, the agency who works with them. As much as agencies often gatekeep the creator from the brand, there are agencies, like Edelman, that have actually facilitated that.”

AI-Themed

Joel Bervell, MD, Physician & Creator

“At the talk I went to at Collins House, one of the speakers said: ‘Technology compresses culture. Anytime it gets compressed we get an explosion of culture.’ For example, the printing press compressed access to knowledge and sparked the Renaissance. Radio and television compressed distribution and created global celebrities. The internet compressed communication and gave rise to entirely new forms of culture. AI represents the next possible compression, and the explosion of culture that will come of it is still tbd.”

Sona Iliffe-Moon, Chief Communications Officer, Yahoo

“My biggest takeaway from Cannes: as AI makes content abundant, culture becomes more valuable. The rise of communicators and creators on the Croisette reflects that shift. A line from Coinbase’s CMO captured it perfectly: ‘You can’t buy aura.’ The future may be increasingly digital, but influence is still built through human creativity, trust, and real-world connection.”

Ideas + Inspiration

Kaylen McNamara, VaynerX Chief Business Officer

“We’ve had the “barbell of relevance” concept for a couple of months, and this was our first time taking it for a true spin. Marketers are feeling really stuck. They understand last year it was about, ‘Is this AI thing gonna stick.’ I think this year it is full acceptance, beyond the pilots, into scaling. Now, it’s the fear of losing the humanity of the brand and AI slop. What’s really resonating is this experiential layer that’s solving for two things: It’s an attention grabber and it’s also giving them the humanity that they’re craving.”

Jenny Kelly, Head of Content + AI, Deloitte Digital

“At a Female Quotient panel, Pepsi’s CMO shared the advice she gives her daughter: “If you see it, you can be it.” While this wasn’t about AI or agents, it struck me as deeply relevant as we navigate what comes next for brands, consumers, and our own roles in this transformation.”

Monica Penagos, Senior Director Transformation, Procter & Gamble

“There were so many insights. One that made me pause was Coach on Gen Z: Storytelling stops being a broadcast and becomes an invitation. The brand sets the world — the values, the aesthetic, the tension — and then gets out of the way. The best thing a brand can do is give people something worth remixing. Our job is to be the brief (a very brief, brief) not the execution.”

Scott Morris, CMO, Sprout Social

“I went to a session [Snap’s] Grace Kao did at the Palais in the Rotonde Theater, and it was really good. I loved a couple things that she said. She was asked, ‘Which channels should marketers not pay attention to anymore?’ And she said, ‘It’s actually not about that, it’s more about reimagining how you use the channels that you have,’ and I like that. I actually wrote it down, because it really hit home for me.”

Dr. Marcus Collins, Award-Winning Marketer & Best-Selling Author

“I spent the week talking about the importance of understanding what your brand stands for. AI can scale your message, but it can't manufacture meaning. Consumers can measure the distance between what a brand says and who it actually is, which means the back of house has to match the front of house. Your culture has to be true to your story, because the story alone isn't enough."

Postcards from Cannes

Jim Squires CMO, Reddit

“Delis are having a moment. But more importantly, it’s about this diversity of ideas and the conversation that often happens at the deli when you’re there, and so what we really highlighted [in the Reddit Deli at Cannes] was the different communities that are there, and the idea that it’s all about real people. So, it’s a fun way to bring it to life. It’s real people, real conversations about all the biggest, most interesting categories out there.”

Update: 3 days after the festival, Reddit launched it’s People Are the Best campaign

Amber Venz Box, Co-Founder & President, LTK

“Cannes is really Creator Cannes this year. And then there is mainline Cannes, girl Cannes and bro Cannes. They’re distinctly different experiences and cultures.”

Colin Rocker, Creator & Founder, Career Colin

“There’s no longer just one Cannes Lions anymore. We’re seeing a split between corporate Cannes Lions — these are the CMOs, the marketers, the Omnicom, Publicis, WPP people — talking about DSPs and ROAZ and celebrating the work that’s on display in the basement of that convention center. And there’s creator Cannes Lions, these are the people at the Epidemic Sound Villa that are going to the Stan workshop on content creation.”

Brittany Hennessy, VP Social Intelligence Evangelism, Sprout Social

“A lot of the best panels have been in random places, somebody’s hotel lobby, some random alley. Because you are not on the giant stage, you can have real conversations. I actually have not been into the Palais at all so far, but I have been making sure to go to every dinner where you can’t wear a name tag. I love that trend, because it’s not, ‘Oh, let me look at the titles and see who I want to meet.’ It’s, ‘I have to meet you and I have to learn something about you and then decide if we want to continue the conversation.’ Those types of experiences are the best.”

Tyler Denk, CEO Beehiiv

“The biggest thing I’ve noticed on the Croisette is that creators are at the center of almost every conversation here in Cannes. Watching that play out has only reinforced something I’ve known to be true and is fundamental to beehiiv: people want to hear from the people building something, not just the brand behind it. That’s why I’m such a believer in founder-led storytelling and why I am so transparent about how we are building this company. It’s the same reason creators are winning. Trust has become one of the most valuable forms of distribution.”

Jayde Powell, Founder The Em Dash Co.

“Bayshel Lewis got to meet Oprah, and it was really great to witness that. He was already on Oprah’s podcast, and he went viral because he was making all these funny faces, and then he got turned into a meme. So I love that he got to have the in-person experience of meeting Oprah, after the fact. I say that because I don’t think other industry events and conferences give you the potential to meet influential people of that caliber.”

Christina Le, Head of Marketing at Slate
“I really loved Manychats’ postcard activation of cards that they would mail home for you. That was so cute, and the extra touch of having a ledge where you could stick your phone on top, so you could record yourself writing the message. I think the whole touch of nostalgia and analog is trending right now and gives it a little personalized touch. What’s more personalized than writing a little note to yourself or your loved ones?”

---

📝 ICYMI CANNES RECAP

Thanks to the audience of marketers and creators who joined the closing “final takeaway” panel on Creator Beach today — I did some real-time crowd-sourcing to understand what mattered most to them.

And if there was one consistent theme everyone agreed on, it was the downplaying of AI. Talking about AI last year may have felt innovative, but this year the focus has shifted to the balance between tools and algorithms and human creativity.

Analog, experiential, and tactile were terms that kept coming up. People aren’t necessarily anti-AI, but in every panel or conversation I participated in this week, there was a shared recognition: AI is no longer the one-size-fits-all solution it was promised to be.

The message is clear: it’s a tool, not a replacement for humans.

[photo taken on stage three hours ago with me, JT Barnett, Eugene Healey and Sedge Beswick — I really am writing this in real time]

Best activation: Pinterest got a lot of votes in an informal poll. My interactive dessert tasting — shaped by personal aesthetic and Pinterest Predicts trends — was amazing, so… yeah! Secondary honors go to Female Quotient Lounge for consistently amazing, female-friendly programming and the UTA space for plentiful seating, a cool breeze and endless cold drinks.

Who should be here: Hands down, marketers and social media managers. The access to platform people, ideas and inspiration is incredible. But the expense guarantees it’ll continue to be exclusive to executives for a while.

Cannes MVP: Olandria seemed like one of the more inspiring people everyone wanted to meet this year — personifying the creator industry: incredible hustle, ambition and work ethic.

Who Cannes isn’t for (yet): There seemed to be 2 tiers of creators: VIP macros and B2B creators (who benefited from all of the tech sponsors). There didn’t seem to be as many opportunities for micro lifestyle creators just yet.

What I would do differently: More small dinners. One-on-one meetings. And attending more sessions beyond my own. I spent so much time talking, I wish I had heard more from other experts.

Best parts of Cannes Lions (might be a me thing): The swag was elite — not the type of stuff you usually get at tech conferences. Yahoo and Hashtag Paid gave luxury beauty products, TikTok let you create custom perfume, Meta gave out artisanal Florian candy and Adobe gave Ladurée macarons. And almost everyone I know in the creator economy space was there, leading to spontaneous catch-ups with Lindsey Gamble, Andrea Casanova, Jayde Powell, Lissette Calveiro, Tyler Chou, Molly Tracy, Amber Venz Box, the women of The Publish Press and so many, many more.

Best parts of Cannes (probably everyone else): There were so many official and unofficial concerts: Tiësto, Ludacris, Miguel, Zara Larson, etc.

What surprised me: Almost everyone on Creator Beach or at the platform activations is American. We traveled thousands of miles… to talk to each other. There was a small but mighty contingent of British and Australian marketers (eg. Rachael Higgins, Ashleen Narula, Joel Marlinarson, Eugene Healey). And Adobe did host a special event for 50 regional French creators — but I’m surprised we didn’t see more diversity.

If I’m a creator: I would look for ad-tech brands and more traditional agencies that aren’t social- or creator-first. They want to be culturally relevant and would benefit from your creator insights and attendance at events. Everybody wants to partner with Spotify or Netflix. The opportunities are with the unsexy brands.

If I’m a brand: I’m hosting lead-up events to Cannes with preferred creators and ambassadors to help them prepare. Establish those ties early. I’m looking at innovative expressions of creativity, like Manychat’s postcard booth (you don’t need a multi-million dollar build-out). Another option could be a Love Island watch-party (no one did this, big miss!). And I’m thinking about how my activation creates impact on the ground with advertisers and creators but also how I create value for people at home, beyond simply sparking FOMO.

Thank you to the people and organizations who invited me to be a part of their panel conversations and intimate gatherings:

• VaynerX: The Barbell of Relevance: Why the AI Era Rewards Extremes

• Barbarian: The Future Belongs to Adaptive Brands

• Brands & Culture: Culturally Disruptive by Nature, The Brands That Are Built to Move Culture Forward

• Cannes Lions Ambassadors: Final Cut: Key Takeaways from the Festival

• Adobe Express dinner

• Yahoo dinner

• Viral Nation dinner

• Casey Lewis and Day One Agency dinner

• Substack (sorry I missed breakfast!)

---

👀 ICYMI: JUST THE HEADLINES

• Earlier this month, I explored: Why Everyone You Know Is Headed to Cannes Lions This Summer - ICYMI

• Forbes timed the launch of its Top Creators 2026 list to Cannes - Forbes

• Forbes launched Forbes Creator, a new network of storytellers across social media, video, podcasts and live experiences covering the creator economy - Forbes

• Gen X holds the highest purchasing power of any generation, outspending all others in key categories like housing, clothing, and entertainment - Sociallyin

Thanks for reading! There’s so much more I could say about Cannes but this is already too long. Let me know if you have questions and keep an eye on my LinkedIn and Instagram for more insights!