Andy Jassy, HAQM CEO and Cannes Lions “Media Person of the Year,” discusses advertising innovation and HAQM’s “Why Culture” on the Cannes Lions Main Stage

HAQM CEO Andy Jassy brought HAQM's philosophy of continuous innovation and customer obsession to the Cannes Lions main stage, later accepting the festival's "Media Person of the Year" award. In a conversation with P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard, Jassy discussed how HAQM's "Why Culture" drives innovation and explained how questioning assumptions has transformed the company’s advertising offerings.

Jassy explained the company's "Why Culture" through HAQM's decision-making framework: “We have this concept inside HAQM of one-way and two-way doors... a two-way door is a decision where if you make the wrong decision you can walk back through that door and no real harm done. A one-way door decision is, if you make a mistake it's really hard to walk back through that door... both of those constructs assume that the door is open, and the key to invention is actually figuring out how to unlock doors that are bolted shut.”

Jassy emphasized that this mindset drives HAQM's innovation across all of its businesses, including entertainment and advertising services. He said asking why and why not is, “a great way to get a locked door unbolted.”

When discussing HAQM's journey into advertising, Jassy revealed the careful considerations behind the company's expansion into this space: “For many years inside the company, we would occasionally bring up whether we should think about doing any sort of advertising in our retail marketplace, and this would spark very animated debates because we are so focused on customers and everything we do. That is the center of gravity for us.”

“If you look at Kantar consumer research, who evaluated everybody's respective advertising, they found HAQM's was the most useful and relevant, and that's not by accident, we work at it all the time,” Jassy noted. “Because if the ads are relevant, it's actually really helpful for customers. They find products they wouldn't otherwise find left to their own devices.”

This focus on relevance and performance has become a cornerstone of HAQM's advertising business.

“We're very committed, in very typical HAQM fashion, to have very detailed reporting and metrics…so that we knew they were working, and advertisers and brands could tell that they were working,” he said.

Jassy highlighted the new partnership between HAQM Ads and Roku which establishes the largest authenticated connected TV footprint in the United States: “It's really kind of a game changer for advertisers, and metrics, and performance advertising.”

Jassy said the company spent a lot of time discussing the merits of opening up Prime Video for advertising, “we knew we had a lot of people interested in it, but we wanted to do it in a way we knew would work for consumers.”

The integration of HAQM's owned and operated properties creates a unique value proposition for advertisers, he said: “For brands to be able to reach people on streaming properties and the broad scale Prime Video properties, and sports, all the way through the experience to ultimately, at the point of purchase, and on the website, it's unusual, all tied together with what I would consider very compelling audience curation and creation and measurement across the way.”

“We've added a lot of surface areas over time,” Jassy said, “but we're still relatively early with respect to what we’re going to be able to do with our full-funnel offering.”

Jassy also highlighted how HAQM is leveraging AI to enhance advertising capabilities: “I think we believe that generative AI has a chance to really make it much easier for people to create creative, it'll democratize it. We're using AI to make it easy for people to find several variants of creative and to test all sorts of examples.”

One practical example he shared was HAQM’s Video Generator, which allows you to take a still shot and then use AI to put in motion, so it feels much more natural.

“Instead of having to display a watch on a desk, you can take a still image and our AI video generator will allow you to have it appear on somebody's wrist in motion, which is just much more natural, more compelling for people who are considering the product,” Jassy said. “At the end of the day for us, it's really those trillions of signals we have across HAQM, combined with the AI capabilities to make the creative so much more dynamic and easier to create that I think is going to be the magic.”

At the heart of all these innovations is HAQM's unwavering focus on the customer, HAQM’s mission to make customers' lives easier and better every day.

“And then we'll use technology to solve problems for customers,” Jassy said. “So we try to stay very grounded, in all of our businesses, in improving customers' lives.”

This focus extends to how HAQM builds teams: “We disproportionately index in hiring builders, and we think of builders as people who like to invent and people who are divinely discontented with customer experiences…and so our builders are constantly trying to find and reinvent their customer experiences.”

As advice to leaders in the rapidly evolving media landscape, Jassy emphasized the importance of continuous learning.

“The second that you think that you know what there is to know is the second you're unwinding,” he said. “I'm perpetually blown away in how much you can learn and how much you can evolve as a team and as a leader if you're really open to learning and challenging your most closely held beliefs.”

He also spoke of the value of taking risks: “When you've had success, it is very easy to get conservative. It's easy to not want to take risks, to be conservative, to not want to wreck what you've already built, to play not to lose, and the reality is that the world is changing so fast around us. You have to always be seeking to understand what's real and to reinvent yourselves and your company and your customer experience and you have to be willing to take risks… nothing extraordinary is ever done by playing it safe.”

As Jassy accepts the "Media Person of the Year" award, his insights on innovation, advertising, and leadership reflect HAQM's continued evolution in the advertising landscape.

“While the award is for the Cannes Lions 'Media Person of the Year,' this is really a team award. I accept this award on behalf of the tens of thousands of HAQMians who work relentlessly to constantly innovate and change what's possible for customers in the technology and media spaces. We realize at HAQM that we exist, and our mission is, to make customers' lives easier and better every day. And that's what we spend all of our time thinking about… I want to thank all the HAQMian teammates I work with all the time, on their ability to think big, to be creative, to lean forward, to constantly ask, 'why can't this be better for customers?', 'how can we make this better for customers?’”

Stay tuned for the final recap of everything HAQM shared at Cannes Lions 2025. Follow along for real-time updates on Instagram and LinkedIn during the final moments of the festival celebrating the industry’s creativity.