The Solstice Leadership Forum: Leadership in Full Light

June 21, 2026 | Cannes

Stay tuned for news about upcoming Forum gatherings

100+ CMOs and other C-level executives from 7-Eleven, Adobe, Alexander Wang, Amazon, Apple, AT&T, AutoNation, Bath & Body Works, Canva, Chime, Chipotle, Colgate, Church & Dwight, Diageo, Electronic Arts, e.l.f. Beauty, Federal Savings Bank, Gallo, Gap Inc., GoDaddy, Goldman Sachs, Google, HP, H&R Block, Hilton, Hyatt, Indeed, IHOP, Instacart, Intuit, Kellanova, Kickstarter, Kimberly-Clark, Kraft, Land O’Lakes, LVMH, Lyft, Marriott, Mars, Mastercard, McCormick, Michaels, Moët Hennessy, Mondelez, New Belgium Brewing, Nike, Nvidia, Papa Johns, Paramount, Peet's Coffee, PepsiCo, Petco, Pinterest, Pizza Hut, Publicis, Ralph Lauren, SC Johnson, Scholastic, SF 49ers, Stagwell, Sony Music Group, Starbucks, The Cheesecake Factory, Uber, Unilever, U.S. Bank, Vans, VaynerMedia, Virgin Voyages, and more.

Featured leaders came together to work hard and enjoy the beautiful venue, kicking off a week celebrating creativity and innovation. Brands represented included Abbott, Adobe, the Ad Council, Amazon, Audemars Piguet, Back Market, Bank of America, BetMGM, Better Help, Bucherer, Bobcat, Catalyst Brands, Chanel, Colgate, Diageo, Dropbox, e.l.f. Beauty, Electronic Arts, Eli Lilly, Essity, Federal Savings Bank, Ferragamo, GAP Inc., General Motors, Genentech, Google, Hisense, HP, Indeed, Intuit, J.M. Smucker, Kickstarter, L'Oréal, Levi's, LVMH, Marriott, Mars Petcare, Mastercard, Mercado Libre, Merck, Mondelēz, Morgan Stanley, Naterra, Novartis, Noyz, OnePay, PacSun, PayPal, Pearson, PepsiCo, Philo, Pinterest, Ro, Rehlko, SC Johnson, Sephora, SF 49ers, Sharp Home USA, Simon, Sothebys, Starbucks, Steve Madden, TJX, True Religion, UGG Decker, Unilever, Unleashed Brands, URBN, Virgin, Virgin Voyages, Yum Brands, Zillow, and Zoom.

The Forum at a Glance

On the Summer Solstice, the day when daylight reaches its peak, senior enterprise leaders convened at the stunning Château de la Croix des Gardes for an intimate, peer-level working Forum.

This wasn't a panel or a conference. It was a candid, closed-door dialogue among leaders navigating real enterprise complexity with time for depth, disagreement, and conviction.

We also welcomed a very special musical guest, Janelle Monáe, to celebrate World Music Day, and culminated the program with a unique Dinner with Friends.

Enterprise Leadership in an Era of Transformation

The CMO role is evolving rapidly, shaped by the enterprise context. In some organizations, CMOs are the strategic architects of growth; in others, they must assert their place at the table as the voice of the customer. We will explore how CMOs align with the C-Suite to drive enterprise priorities, maintain authentic customer connection in an era when AI is reshaping research and insights, and build organizational resilience amid volatility. The focus is on strengthening the CMO as both a peer to the C-Suite and a strategic integrator—ensuring marketing remains a growth engine, not a support function.

Human and Machine: Redefining Culture

As agentic AI becomes an embedded part of marketing organizations (projected to account for 20% of teams within 2-3 years) CMOs face the dual challenge of rethinking capabilities and protecting culture. We will examine how to design organizations for the future, balancing in-house, outsourced, and AI-driven work, while fostering team cultures of trust, clarity, and adaptability. It will also address the growing strain on leadership stamina and mental health, exploring how to sustain high performance without sacrificing well-being. The focus is on creating environments where human creativity, empathy, and resiliency thrive alongside machine intelligence.

Redefining Growth and Marketing Fundamentals

Marketing is being rewired from the ground up. Brand building and advertising are facing new channels, discovery models, and consumer behaviors that demand agility and reinvention. We will explore how CMOs can redefine growth in a world where advertising shifts from traditional search to AI-driven discovery, where consumers expect brands to meet them across fragmented ecosystems, and where global competition plays by vastly different rules on data and regulation. The focus is on rethinking how success is planned, measured, and delivered—ensuring marketing remains both credible to the C-Suite and indispensable to enterprise growth.

Societal Impact, Cultural Credibility, and Ethical Leadership

In an era of heightened expectation and scrutiny, marketers face a defining question: should brands play a role beyond their commercial value, and if so, when, where, and how? CMOs now sit at the intersection of trust, culture, and commerce, balancing the expectations of consumers,e mployees, and communities with the responsibility to drive growth. The challenge is not to assume that role automatically but to discern when purpose truly aligns with authenticity, enterprise value, and stakeholder trust. Leadership now requires discernment, the ability to act or to choose restraint responsibly and sustainably in a world shaped by transparency, polarization, and AI transformation.

Janelle Monáe

Serious Star Power on World Music Day

Thank you to Grammy-nominated artist Janelle Monáe and our partner YouTube for such a memorable, intimate performance on World Music Day.

Origin of the Solstice Forum

On Summer Solstice — the day when daylight reaches its peak — the most senior enterprise leaders convened at the stunning Château de la Croix des Gardes for an intimate, peer-level working Forum.

For centuries, communities gathered on the solstice to mark transition, take stock, and set intention. We leaned into that tradition by bringing leaders together at the height of illumination to vision-set, make clear-eyed decisions, and hold space for what is hard.

Leadership today operates in full view.

As expectations expand across enterprise performance, AI transformation, cultural credibility, and societal responsibility, the margin for ambiguity narrows. What we choose to prioritize and how we choose to lead is visible.

We honored that spirit gathering not only to think, but to feel. To acknowledge the societal pressures shaping our work and the cultural influence we carry.