Kantar celebrates growth brands at Cannes

The company said this year's awards come as artificial intelligence plays an increasing role in how consumers discover and select brands.

Kantar has announced the winners of its 2026 Blueprint for Brand Growth Awards, recognising 13 brands during a ceremony held with Microsoft at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

The awards recognise brands applying Kantar's Blueprint for Brand Growth, which is based on the company's Meaningful, Different and Salient framework. According to Kantar, the framework draws on analysis of 6.5 billion data points to identify factors associated with long-term brand growth.

AI reshapes brand building

Kantar said this year's awards come as artificial intelligence plays an increasing role in how consumers discover and select brands. The company noted that more than four in five adults have used an AI assistant during the past six months, making strong brand positioning increasingly important for both human audiences and AI-powered discovery.

Paul Zwillenberg, CEO, Kantar: "AI has changed how brands create, and it's established a new dynamic between people, brands and machines. But the power of brand endures. If anything, it matters more, because when every person has access to the same technology, you have to work harder to build meaning and difference to stand out.

"Every brand we recognised tonight has done something specific: they have acted on real human signals to inform their marketing decisions and growth their brand. This year's winners demonstrate what the reality of effective brand building looks like in a rapidly changing context, setting a new benchmark for brand growth in the age of AI."

ChatGPT receives top brand award

ChatGPT received the Most Meaningfully Different Brand award after recording the highest Meaningful Difference score in Kantar's research. The company said the AI platform has climbed the BrandZ Most Valuable Brands ranking faster than almost any other brand over the past two decades, while launching its first brand campaign and establishing an advertising platform within six months.

Other winners recognised creative effectiveness, innovation, customer experience, sustainability and marketing performance across a range of industries.

2026 Blueprint for Brand Growth Award winners

Category	Winner
Most Effective Creative Content	Heinz
Most Effective Creator-Led Content	CeraVe (L'Oréal)
Most Progressive Ad	Prada Paradigme (L'Oréal)
Most Effective Campaign	Electronic Arts – Apex Legends
Consumer Ad Platform of the Year	Amazon
Most Innovative Ad Platform	TikTok
Meaningfully Different Innovation (Non-FMCG)	McDonald's
Meaningfully Different Innovation (FMCG)	Cadbury Australia
Sustainable Brand of the Year	Ecover
Meaningfully Different Experience of the Year	Octopus Energy
Meaningfully Different Breakthrough Brand	Tecate
Disruptor Brand of the Year	Lidl
Most Meaningfully Different Brand	ChatGPT