Marketing Vanguard at Cannes: Saying No Is the New Power Move ft. Mainardo de Nardis & Rani Al Hajji

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Marketing Vanguard at Cannes: Saying No Is the New Power Move ft. Mainardo de Nardis & Rani Al Hajji

The best marketers are doing less—and they don’t pay for attention.

By Jenny Rooney

The future of brands gets decided here. Join the industry’s top marketers at Brandweek for the ideas, insights, and connections shaping what’s next. Get your ticket.

Marketing Vanguard continues live from Cannes Lions as Jenny Rooney hosts a special ADWEEK House conversation with Mainardo de Nardis, global president and COO of Edelman, and Rani Al Hajji, chief growth and transformation officer of personal care at Unilever.

This conversation cuts straight to one of marketing’s biggest modern problems: Everyone has infinite opportunities, infinite channels, and infinite reasons to do more. But the best marketers are not winning by doing more. They are winning by making sharper bets and doing less for more.

This episode is part of a special vidcast series that was recorded live during Cannes Lions 2026 and presented in partnership with Edelman.

Mainardo de Nardis is the global president and COO of Edelman, with deep experience across full-service marketing, PR, digital, media, startups, adtech, martech, and global agency leadership. His perspective centers on how brands earn relevance and trust in a world where attention cannot simply be bought.

Rani Al Hajji is chief growth and transformation officer of personal care at Unilever. With more than 25 years in marketing and consumer goods, including roles at L’Oréal, Colgate and Unilever across Europe, the U.S. and China, Rani focuses on redefining how brands create connection moments that matter. In this conversation, he brings that lens to Unilever’s personal care portfolio, cultural relevance and the FIFA World Cup.

[04:21] Visibility Is Not Attention — Rani explains that the way people discover products has changed completely. It is no longer just TV or the store shelf. Discovery now happens through Instagram, communities, friends, creators and cultural conversations. That shift makes visibility a weaker goal on its own. You can be seen and still be swiped away in half a second. The sharper job is turning visibility into attention, attention into engagement and engagement into something that makes the brand matter.

[08:06] Saying No Is the New Marketing Muscle — Mainardo argues that one of the biggest changes in marketing is the shift from learning how to say yes to learning what to say no to. In the past, opportunities were limited, so the hard part was moving fast enough to take them. Now there are too many opportunities, and the danger is distraction. The advantage belongs to marketers who can choose the few big bets that matter and cut everything else before it eats time, money and focus.

[21:10] Paid Marketing Should Amplify What Is Already Working — Mainardo reframes the paid versus earned debate by changing the order. He argues that 60, 70 or even 80% of optimization value comes from the message, creative, assets and content, not simply media distribution. Paid is not wrong, but the question to ask is paid behind what? The smartest use of paid is to amplify what is already relevant, already creating attention and already showing evidence that consumers care.

[22:27] Big Ideas Need to Travel — Rani says the industry still needs big ideas, but now they have to travel. A big idea cannot stay locked inside one campaign expression. It needs to be something an Instagram influencer, a creator or a community can pick up, adapt, play with and repeat in their own voice. That is the evolution: not just the brand saying something, but others saying something about the brand in a way that still connects back to the idea.

Jenny Rooney is Chief Brand and Community Officer, leading strategy for the overall ADWEEK brand as well as the ways in which we serve and support our audiences with high-value content, products, partnerships and experiences, notably through our community programs such as Marketing Vanguard.

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