This special episode of Prompted was recorded live at Cannes Lions 2026, where Cameron Adams sat down with a rotating lineup of marketing and AI leaders at the Canva Creative Cabana: Kimberly Storin (CMO, Zoom), Sean Lyons (Chief Strategy Officer, Accenture Song), Liz Bacelar (Global Head of AI, Under Armour), and Elke Karskens (Head of International Marketing, OpenAI). Across the conversations, they dig into how AI is reshaping marketing, advertising, and brand strategy in real time. Kimberly Storin talks through Zoom's evolution from "the meetings company" into a full productivity platform, the cross-functional SWAT team she built to manage how Zoom shows up in ChatGPT and Gemini, and why "soft skills" like empathy and emotional intelligence are becoming the real hard skills of the AI era. Sean Lyons breaks down how Accenture Song blends AI-driven tools like GrowthOS with human judgment on bigger campaign bets, where taste and creative leadership still can't be automated, and why authenticity will be the top priority for audiences over the next five years. Liz Bacelar shares her experience building Under Armour's AI organization from scratch, introducing the idea of "restraint" as the real discipline behind good AI use, and unpacking why some of the flashiest AI use cases (like synthetic athletes) go over worse than others (like synthetic kids' apparel models). Elke Karskens gives a look inside OpenAI's own marketing operation, from the deliberately human, low-tech aesthetic of its recent ChatGPT campaign to how Codex has become her default creative and thinking tool, complete with a wearable mic for talking ideas straight into the model.
What if the four people setting AI strategy at some of the world's biggest brands all showed up in the same tent at Cannes — and none of them agreed on what "restraint" actually means?
This special live episode of Prompted was recorded at the Canva Creative Cabana at Cannes Lions 2026, where Cameron Adams sat down with four marketing leaders navigating AI's collision with advertising: Kimberly Storin (CMO, Zoom), Sean Lyons (Chief Strategy Officer, Accenture Song), Liz Bacelar (Global Head of AI, Under Armour), and Elke Karskens (Head of International Marketing, OpenAI).
Kimberly unpacks how Zoom is repositioning from "pandemic video app" to full productivity platform, why her team built a cross-functional SWAT unit just to track how Zoom shows up inside ChatGPT and Gemini, and why she thinks "soft skills" like empathy and emotional intelligence are quietly becoming the hardest skills marketers need. Sean breaks down where AI is actually earning its keep in creative workflows — mood boards and rapid prototyping, not final craft — and makes the case that agentic commerce is really just "search on steroids" that sends people back to brand sites rather than replacing them. Liz, building Under Armour's AI org from scratch, introduces her framework for "restraint": why she'd never greenlight a synthetic Brazilian football match but might allow synthetic kids in apparel ads, and why she's more worried about leaders declaring "we don't need designers anymore" than about AI slop itself. And Elke gives a first-hand look inside OpenAI's marketing machine. Why the brand's ad campaigns were deliberately built to feel human-made, how voice (and a lapel mic worn all day) has replaced typing as her main interface with Codex, and what OpenAI's brand-new in-chat ads platform does and doesn't allow advertisers to see.
“Everybody's using the same models and you really have to work on finding ways to build distinctiveness through the agents that you're building or through the inputs that you're putting in.” – Kimberly Storin, Zoom
“I think you need to then proceed to decreasing the power of the AI team and democratizing the AI and actually fractionalize that across the organization. And then this head of AI becomes more of a symbolic role, and heads of AI are created everywhere.” – Liz Bacelar, Under Armour
“The how has fundamentally changed, and I do find that our industry is one that has always really leaned into innovation more so than a lot of other industries which is why it's so energizing to be part of this ecosystem.” – Elke Karskens, OpenAI
“Seeing all those choices quickly, understanding which ones to do, and then really the creative leadership role becomes about making those choices on behalf of brand, on behalf of your company.” – Sean Lyons, Accenture Song
00:00 Introduction
00:51 Setting the Scene
01:43 ChatGPT: not even 3 years old, already closing in on a billion weekly users.
03:06 OpenAI's ad strategy on purpose: no robots, no blinking screens — just human, relatable moments.
04:26 “It’s definitely not business as usual” – AI as a genuine inflection point, not just another cycle
09:12 Zoom's biggest challenge: going from "the meeting app" to a full productivity platform.
11:07 Inside the Workflow
16:12 Step one of AI adoption: understand each department's maturity stage before you brief them.
20:38 Growth OS: test ideas on synthetic audiences, then validate with real people before you commit.
22:24 Ethics, Trust & the Synthetic Line
24:17 AI can generate the desert backdrop — but not the exact paint job on the car. Know where the line is.
31:24 Trust has to be the red thread through everything — brand level and product level alike.
33:24 The Agent Layer
36:13 SEO asked "is my product listed?" AEO asks "does my product fit in this recipe?"
43:20 Taste, the Flood & the Talent Question
52:45 Too much AI, like too much candy, gives you a tummy ache — and that changes behavior.
01:03:30 Cannes Hot Takes
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Cameron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themaninblue/
Kimberly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlystorin/
Sean on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanmlyons/
Liz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizbacelar/
Elke on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elke-karskens-33925115/
The State of Marketing and AI Report 2026: https://www.canva.com/marketing-ai-report/?utm_medium=organic_social&utm_source=google_youtube&utm_campaign=b2b_dg_global-gen_awareness_pro_wbr_prompted-podcast-2026&utm_content=description-link&utm_term=