Cannes Briefing: Creators didn't come to Cannes for parties this year. They came for briefs.

Digiday covers the latest from marketing and media at the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. More from the series →MediaLink has spent years owning the art of wining and dining CMOs at Cannes. This year, it turned that same playbook on creators.UTA, its owner, hosted an invite-only dinner for more than 70 creators spanning sports, fashion, food, lifestyle and news. Expected guests included Olandria Carthen, Brittany Broski, David Dobrik, Keith Lee, LaurDIY, Colin & Samir, Joanna Teplin and Clea Shearer. At a festival where one company’s absence from a patch of sand can be read a dozen different ways, Cannes’ resident molehill-mountaineers will find plenty to chew on over that guestlist.

Anyway, here’s our molehill.

That dinner, like so many other things here, is reflective of how far creators have come. Brands still want their reach. Increasingly, they want their judgment too. Which means Cannes for creators of a certain vintage is starting to look like Cannes for CMOs always has: less a victory lap, more a working week of deals, positioning and pilots that need to scale.

Mel Robbins, the bestselling author and host of her namesake podcast, put it plainly: “I’m excited that brands, in particular, are recognizing the cultural dominance and impact of this format.”