Good morning. Today, the ad industry takes it easy on day five of Cannes Lions; young people are obsessed with Blank Street Coffee’s sugary green tea; and TikTok lives to fight another 90 days.

Katie Deighton writes from Cannes Lions:

Hello from what is technically the final day of Cannes, although I don’t know a single person planning on taking meetings or working much at all today.

Last night, the Havas Cafe was pumping out remixes of Depeche Mode to a packed crowd at midnight while branded beach clubs across the road were getting deconstructed. I fear we may have reached breaking point on the guestlist situation this year. All these companies funding all this technology and harping on about the importance of real-life experiences require physical wristbands for daytime entry, and sometimes separate physical credentials for nighttime entry, leaving high-powered executives looking like 22-year-olds backpacking around Southeast Asia with a stack of bracelets up to their elbows. Give us QR codes or give us death!

Despite this travesty, and the heat, and the prices, and the mediocre food, and the fact that the Carlton Terrace has turned from the late-night spontaneous hangout spot to a roped-off quasi-nightclub, the general consensus is that it’s been a good week. Business got done, connections were made and all the AI chatter provided a focus.

As one friend put it: “We realize we cannot take Cannes for granted. So much is changing, it could always be the last great one.”

More from Cannes: Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign landed the Grand Prix in Creative Effectiveness at Cannes Lions on Thursday. [Adweek]

Michael Kassan’s new company and his old one held dueling parties at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes. [NYT]

Closed-door events are on the rise at Cannes. [Ad Age] 

Blank Street Coffee has caught a new wind by expanding its menu into sugary, TikTok-friendly green teas with youth appeal, Chavie Lieber reports. The latest is a cookies-and-cream matcha.

Blank Street’s founders realized they could hit it big with the flavored matchas two years ago after a mixologist on their London team created a blueberry drink that went viral.

Since then, Blank Street has rolled out a few new matcha drinks every season. Matcha now accounts for approximately 50% of the business.

To help its marketing team think about customers it serves, global creative director Mohammad Rabaa says his team creates fake personas with character-building mood boards around each new matcha drink, to “market it in a hyper-specific way.”

Blank Street’s strawberry-shortcake matcha persona is, for example, “an East London Girl who listens to Katseye,” Rabaa said.

Katie Deighton was joined at Journal House in Cannes by Kory Marchisotto, the CMO of E.l.f. Beauty. The company’s “So Many Dicks” campaign, which highlights the lack of gender diversity in corporate boardrooms, is shortlisted for Cannes Lions’ top Titanium prize being handed out Friday night. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

E.l.f. last month announced it was acquiring Hailey Bieber’s cosmetics and skin-care line, Rhode. What kind of integration talks have you had so far with its marketing team?

We're keeping the entire team, and they need to hire more to manage the scale that's coming on the road ahead. We feel very strongly that they're doing a great job and want them to keep doing a great job, and the way we manage that is asking, how can we help? What partners can we introduce you to? Do you need a media agency? Things like that.

What can we expect from Rhode marketing in the E.l.f. era?

What I love about what Rhode did is they carved a very unique position in beauty, this very fashion-forward lifestyle. And that is truly Hailey. So what you can expect from Rhode’s marketing is more of Hailey's lifestyle coming to life through the brand.

To what extent does all this talk of A.I. fill you with existential dread?

I don't have dread. I feel optimistic about what the tools can do from an efficiency standpoint: I use it every day, my team uses it every day. There are a lot of time savings. What we all need to do is also have rigor and discipline.

It is another tool in our toolbox, and like all tools, you have to be careful how you use it.

President Trump gave TikTok another 90-day reprieve, issuing an executive order deferring enforcement of the 2024 law requiring the Chinese-controlled video app to be sold or shut down for national security reasons, Jess Bravin writes.

The TikTok ban passed by Congress was set to take effect on Jan. 19, but Trump has issued a series of extensions that have allowed the app to continue operating, with the latest expiring on Thursday.

The 2024 statute authorizes the president to issue a one-time enforcement extension of up to 90 days if he certifies to Congress that “binding legal agreements” are in place that will lead to TikTok’s sale.

It is unclear whether that certification has been made or if other laws permit additional enforcement delays.

• An Austin startup has gotten U.S. clearance to build a “guideway” on which autonomous hybrid shuttles would ferry freight between Mexico and Texas in an effort to speed up trade.
• Private equity accounts for about half of the companies in the “shadow IPO pipeline,” setting the stage for what could be a busy second half of companies going public.
• An Israeli startup is rethinking how to tackle two of the planet’s most stubborn environmental threats—toxic algae that can lead to dead zones in oceans and rising carbon levels.
• The ad world is obsessed with low-fi, high energy industry news videos from two 27-year-old guys.

OpenAI is changing how it sells the business version of its ChatGPT chatbot amid increasingly heated competition. [WSJ] 

ASMR videos created by generative AI are horrifying. [Creative Bloq]

Bose paused search advertising in half of its U.S. ad markets to see what happens. [Adweek] 

Tesla’s robotaxi debut this weekend looks likely to underwhelm, with only about 10 cars on the road, geofencing to avoid tricky intersections and remote operators ready to take over the driving. [FT]

Waymo wants to bring its robotaxis to New York City. [WSJ]

Uber’s latest ad format lets brands offer riders discounts on rides. [BI] 

The Row, a nearly 20-year-old American luxury brand, is doing a better job of challenging the Birkin bag than Chanel. [WSJ] 

Disney is working with food delivery company Gopuff to let TV viewers order snacks through Disney+ and Hulu. [Variety] 

The next big TV sport might be pro cheerleading. [Front Office Sports] 

Correction: A Q&A with Ryan Reynolds in Tuesday’s newsletter misstated the date he became chief creative officer at MNTN. He was named CCO at the connected TV ad company in 2021.