Luma AI Assembles Star-Studded Jury for $1M Cannes Lions Competition

Eighteen advertising and brand leaders from Nike, HBO Max, Wieden+Kennedy, Chili’s, and others will judge The Luma Dream Brief, a global competition challenging creatives to bring their best unmade ideas to life using Luma AI.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Luma AI today announced the jury for The Luma Dream Brief, its global creative competition offering $1 million to the team that wins a 2026 Cannes Lions Gold Lion using Luma AI.

The eighteen-person jury brings together influential voices not only from modern advertising but from across brand building, entertainment, and culture more broadly. The panel includes leaders from Nike, HBO Max, Wieden+Kennedy, Chili’s, and Boston Beer, alongside Bill Oakley, writer for The Simpsons, and legendary Old Spice spokesman Isaiah Mustafah.

The jury will evaluate submissions created using Luma AI’s generative video and image platform and select finalists for formal Cannes Lions entry. To ensure eligibility, Luma will provide an official client brief and paid media support so the work runs publicly within the required timeframe - removing two of the most common barriers between ambitious creative ideas and legitimate awards consideration.

“This group of people have shaped modern brands, entertainment, and culture at the highest level,” said Caroline Ingeborn, COO of Luma AI. “These are leaders who’ve built iconic work and understand what it takes to move an industry forward. Bringing that caliber of talent together sends a clear signal: this is about redefining what world-class creative looks like in the next era.”

The official jury list includes:

Alicia Nassardeen, Head of Business Affairs, Mother
Bill Oakley, Writer, The Simpsons
Carol Dunn, Managing Director, Barking Owl
George Felix, Chief Marketing Officer, Chili’s Grill & Bar
Isaiah Mustafa, Writer/Actor
Jeff Kling, Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Das Favorite
John Deschner, Head of Brand, Maximum Effort
Jon Williams, Founder and CEO, The Liberty Guild
Katie Gurgainus, Global Director, Brand Voice, Nike
Lesya Lysyj, Chief Marketing Officer, Boston Beer
Lora Schulson, Global Chief Production Officer, 72 and Sunny
Mal Ward, Managing Director and Partner, Arts & Sciences
Melissa Cabral, Head of Strategy, Sid Lee
Michael Hagos, VP, Brand Creative, HBO Max
Richard Turley, Editorial Director, Interview Magazine
Susan Hoffman, Chief Creative Officer, Wieden+Kennedy
Tara Lawall, Chief Creative Officer and Partner, Rethink

The competition is developed in collaboration with brand experience company studio DE-YAN. Its Chief Creative Officer, Jason Kreher - formerly of Wieden+Kennedy, Maximum Effort, and Accenture Song - shaped the competition around a frustration familiar to anyone who has worked in the industry - the premise that some of advertising’s best ideas never get made - not for lack of originality, but because they are perceived as too risky, expensive, or difficult to execute. By pairing that creative ambition with AI tools capable of realizing complex visuals at a fraction of traditional production cost, the competition aims to surface work that would otherwise never exist.

“I cannot wait to see what happens when we get this bench of insanely talented and also insane industry leaders into the proverbial room,” says Kreher. “There is a genuine intellectual curiosity and diversity of thought among these judges, and with the work I’ve already seen being submitted, the discourse is going to get loud and weird.”

Submissions for The Luma Dream Brief close March 22, 2026. The competition is open to creatives worldwide; all entries must be created using Luma AI. Full rules, eligibility criteria, and submission details are available at www.LumaDreamBrief.com.

About Luma AI

Luma AI is building multimodal general intelligence that can generate, understand, and operate in the physical world. Its flagship platform, Dream Machine, enables creatives everywhere to generate professional-grade video and images. In 2025, Luma released Ray3, the world’s first reasoning video model capable of creating physically accurate videos, animations, and visuals. Luma’s models are used by leading entertainment studios, advertising agencies, and technology partners worldwide, including Adobe and AWS, and are available via subscription or API. The company is backed by HUMAIN, Andreessen Horowitz, Amazon, AMD Ventures, NVIDIA, Amplify Partners, Matrix Partners, and angels from across technology and entertainment.