Seven sessions, in
their own words

“It feels like we’re flying the plane while we’re building it. We’re still serving customers, we’re still leading teams, and we’re still searching for growth.”

“Trust is not simply a journalistic virtue. It has become a strategic asset for businesses and brands.”

1. 01

   AI may increase the value of trusted information. As synthetic content and hallucinations multiply, accuracy, context and first-hand reporting become more differentiated.

2. 02

   Journalism and marketing are both in the trust business. Brand credibility increasingly depends on what people believe, not simply what they are exposed to.

3. 03

   Australia has an opportunity to lead. Bryant argued Australia can become a global exemplar for trusted information, journalism and thoughtful regulation rather than simply following what happens elsewhere.

“AI is not the enemy. It’s mathematics.”

1. 01

   Stop treating AI as a standalone technology. The real transformation comes from its convergence with robotics, medicine, spatial computing, wearables and other emerging technologies.

2. 02

   Move from attention to anticipation. The next phase of customer experience is not just responding faster, but using technology to understand what someone may need before they ask.

3. 03

   Don’t automate great humans out of the experience. Her David Jones example was perfect: the exceptional salesperson should not be replaced by AI. Give her better information and make her even better at what humans uniquely do.

“Logic isn’t there to tell you how to think from the beginning. It’s there to sense-check your dreams. Dream first.”

1. 01

   Business has the order backwards. We increasingly demand financial and logical justification before an idea is allowed to exist, which eliminates imagination before it has a chance.

2. 02

   Look for what competitors are ignoring. When everyone benchmarks the same things, everyone becomes the same. Competitive advantage often sits in an overlooked variable.

3. 03

   Different can be more valuable than better. Rather than incrementally improving what everybody already competes on, find something nobody else considers important and disproportionately invest in it.

“When the world becomes a sea of sameness, the function which is going to distinguish and differentiate a company is its marketing.”

1. 01

   Marketing has to prove its contribution to the business. Brand affinity, funnels and marketing jargon mean little to a CFO if marketers cannot demonstrate what changed commercially.

2. 02

   Marketing needs to market marketing. Define why the function exists, position it internally and make its value understood before someone else defines it for you.

3. 03

   AI could make marketing more important, not less. If AI pushes businesses toward a “sea of sameness”, psychology, emotion, culture, creativity and distinctive brand building become sources of competitive advantage.

“If there’s not a customer problem that you’re trying to solve, then what’s the point?”

1. 01

   Start with a problem worth solving. Suncorp moved from communicating recovery after disasters to helping Australians prevent and mitigate damage before it happened.

2. 02

   Long-term platforms beat disconnected campaigns. Haven grew from years of work around resilience, not a single brief or awards-season idea.

3. 03

   Purpose works when it changes the business. Resilience influenced customer experience, products, government advocacy, data strategy and commercial performance, rather than sitting in advertising alone.

“I never said I had to be 100%, but I never accepted myself being less than 100% of what I could be.”