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AB InBev Takes Cannes Lions Creative Marketer of the Year for Second Time in Three Years
The brewer's repeat win signals sustained creative apparatus at scale—and a portfolio built for prestige adjacency.
Voyage Edge deskVoyage Edge · Huang GoodmanSource: Ad Age ↗
In plain words
AB InBev's second Creative Marketer win since 2022 reflects a **68%** in-house creative model that outperforms agency competitors and positions premium brands for lifestyle-platform expansion.
16
core brands in
47
Lions in 2025
68%
of submitted work
500+
brands globally but concentrates creative firepower on a premium…
AB InBev claimed Creative Marketer of the Year at Cannes Lions 2025, becoming the most-awarded advertiser at this year's festival and marking its second win of the title since 2022. The recognition follows a year in which the company fielded campaigns across 16 core brands in 50 markets, led creative development in-house at Draftline, and deployed category-defying executions for Corona, Stella Artois, and Budweiser.
The award accounts for total Lions won across all categories during the June festival. AB InBev secured 47 Lions in 2025, including Grands Prix in Outdoor and Brand Experience & Activation. Corona's "Pay With Plastic" ocean-cleanup initiative and Stella Artois' Wimbledon heritage integration anchored the haul. The brewer's internal creative unit, Draftline, produced 68% of submitted work, a structural shift that began in 2019 when AB InBev brought Felipe Guimaraes from Wieden+Kennedy to lead the operation.
This matters because AB InBev is executing a portfolio model other luxury-adjacent CPG companies cannot replicate at scale. The company operates 500+ brands globally but concentrates creative firepower on a premium tier—Corona, Stella Artois, Michelob Ultra—that commands 42% of its total marketing budget despite representing 31% of volume. Those brands index highest in on-premise and experiential adjacency: music festivals, tennis sponsorships, coastal sustainability narratives. The creative wins at Cannes are downstream from a 2021 strategic decision to treat these brands as lifestyle platforms, not beer lines. Draftline's headcount doubled to 320 between 2021 and 2024, with pods embedded in New York, London, and São Paulo focused exclusively on premium-tier storytelling.
The structural insight allocators should note: AB InBev is now the only global brewer maintaining an in-house creative function at this scale while outperforming agency-led competitors at the industry's most-watched awards program. Diageo, by comparison, spends 18% more on marketing annually but relies on external agencies for 91% of creative development and won 22 Lions this year. AB InBev's model compresses time, controls narrative, and reduces per-campaign cost by an estimated $1.2M on major activations. The brewer also retains full IP ownership and can redeploy creative assets across markets without renegotiation.
Watch for AB InBev to formalize Draftline as a standalone consultancy or licensing entity by Q4 2025. The company has already fielded inquiries from three hospitality groups seeking access to the creative infrastructure for experiential campaigns. Separately, expect the brewer to announce a creator-partnership framework before August, mirroring moves by Accenture Song, which acquired influencer agency Superdigital this week. AB InBev tested creator-led executions in 12 markets in 2024; early data shows 34% higher engagement than traditional media on campaigns under $500K.
The second Cannes win in three years is not decoration. It is evidence of a manufacturing company that rebuilt itself as a culture-production apparatus—and discovered that prestige in advertising translates to pricing power in hospitality, on-premise, and licensing.
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