Cannes Lions 2025: Unshittifying the customer experience and the future of Duolingo

France – The 72nd edition of Cannes Lions marks a return to the French Riviera with a programme featuring major names in marketing and branding. LS:N Global is attending and will provide its members with the best insights from the stage in a daily recap.

In her talk Unshittifying CX, Yael Cesarkas, senior vice-president and executive strategy director at creative consultancy R/GA, argued that customer experience (CX) is at an all-time low – declining for a third consecutive year and hitting its lowest score since 2016 in the US, according to Forrester Research. 

She linked this decline to ‘enshittification’, Macquarie Dictionary’s 2024 word of the year, defining the deterioration of services as companies prioritise profit. Cesarkas said marketing and CX have become dangerously disconnected: while brand marketers focus on lofty mission statements and theoretical frameworks with elaborate decks, the actual customer journey is defined by real-time digital touchpoints ranging from checkout buttons to email receipts. 

CX, she warned, is stuck in the ‘optimisation basement’, dominated by KPIs such as clicks and conversions while neglecting emotional value. The result? A costly misalignment where poor CX directly affects loyalty and lifetime value. Her call to action: reconnect funnels and feelings. If every shitty experience is a brand ad, brands must show up better in the moments that matter. Read more about what your business can do against enshittification in our New Codes of Value macrotrend report. 

In the morning, the Rotonde stage was filled with attendees eager to hear a keynote from one of the hottest brands at the moment: Duolingo. The brand’s mascot, Duo, made a memorable entrance on stage, twerking in a bikini. Chief marketing officer Emmanuel Orssaud later announced that the future of the company lies in multi-channel entertainment. Duolingo plans to expand into long-form content with the launch of a game show on YouTube and an anime series featuring new characters.

‘Our brand has always grown by authentically engaging fandoms, and the anime series is part of that strategy,’ said Orssaud. ‘Looking ahead, our big dream is to build an IP as culturally powerful as Pokémon. That’s going to take years, but we’re committed.’ To transition from digital to physical spaces, Duolingo plans to double down on pop-ups, real-world activations and more merchandise and collaborations.