Program
Day 1
Day 2
Day 2
10 March 2027, Brisbane Powerhouse
08:00 – 09:30
Arrive, grab a coffee, meet some new people, and check out what’s happening around the venue.
We're splitting!
Pick a stream and location
- Powerhouse Theatre
Welcome back to Content Summit Australia
Featuring: Key takeaways from Day 1
The work behind the work: Building the team behind great marketing
Former July marketing leader Zhoe Low has spent her career building brands, teams and marketing functions from the ground up, including helping take July from Australian start-up to a global name.
In this session, Zhoe gets into the work behind the work: the systems, structures and ways of working that give creativity room to thrive.
She’ll share what she’s learned about building high-performing marketing teams, turning ideas into action and keeping processes simple enough that people actually use them.
Drawing on her experience scaling brands across DTC, retail and wholesale, and into international markets, Zhoe will look at how marketing teams need to evolve as the business grows, and how to add structure without slowing good ideas down.
Presented by:
Zhoe Low
- Augathella Spiegeltent
Welcome back to Content Summit Australia
Featuring: Key takeaways from Day 1
Cheat codes: How brands win with gamers
Gaming audiences are highly advertising-aware. They can spot an inauthentic brand integration instantly, yet creators are still finding ways to make brands with no obvious connection to gaming feel at home in the space.
In this session, the panel will explore how creators use storytelling, entertainment and community insight to turn brand integrations into a natural part of the content experience.
Drawing on real-world partnerships, she’ll unpack how creators find credible connections between brands and stories, and what separates an interruption from an integration people actually want to watch.
The principles go beyond gaming, offering useful lessons for any brand trying to earn a credible role in creator content.
Panel featuring:
Richard Heath
Walkrman
Moderated by:
Vindhya Barwal
- Underground Theatre
Welcome back to Content Summit Australia
Featuring: Key takeaways from Day 1
Does anyone read anymore? What millions of reader sessions reveal about attention
Content teams are under constant pressure to go shorter and snappier, supposedly to meet shrinking attention spans. But are audiences really losing the ability to focus, or are they simply less willing to stick with content that doesn’t earn their attention?
When Shorthand analysed millions of reader sessions across reports, features, case studies and campaigns built on its platform, it found the best immersive stories keep readers engaged for five minutes or more.
Shorthand CEO Ricky Robinson shares the benchmarks for what great engagement looks like, before taking you on a tour of the brands and publishers doing it best.
You’ll come away with evidence to challenge the idea that nobody reads anymore, and inspiration for creating stories worth spending time with.
Presented by:
Ricky Robinson
- Powerhouse Theatre
Worth the wait: The case for long-term brand building
Brand is built over time. Marketing teams, unfortunately, are often measured in weeks, campaigns and quarterly results.
Amanda Gordon has spent her career building brands and businesses where the real impact compounds over years, and in this session, she’ll explore time as one of the most misunderstood measures of brand effectiveness.
She’ll look at how content and storytelling can create momentum in the short term while still contributing to something bigger, and how creators and communities can help brands build meaning that lasts.
She’ll also tackle the internal challenge of setting expectations, managing up and making the case for work whose biggest payoff may not arrive by the next reporting cycle.
Presented by:
Amanda Gordon
- Augathella Spiegeltent
TikTok clocked: What successful brands get right on TikTok
After three years at TikTok helping brands with their content strategy, Josh Bailey kept seeing the same mistakes show up again and again, alongside a handful of patterns shared by the brands consistently getting it right.
In this session, Josh pulls up real brand TikTok accounts to break down what’s holding most brands back and what the strongest performers do differently.
Spoiler: trends, music, editing tricks and employee-generated content aren’t the answer.
Josh will show you what actually separates the strong organic content from the weak, and what makes TikTok fundamentally different from every other platform.
Presented by:
Josh Bailey
- Underground Theatre
Nobody asked for this: Give them a reason to care
Your organisation has something important to say. Very cool. So does everyone else.
Audiences don’t automatically care about your product, program or cause just because it matters to you. The challenge is turning that importance into something people want to engage with.
Through Explanimate!’s Films for Good work, Travis Hunt has spent years figuring out how to do exactly that, without dumbing ideas down or coating them in empty creative glitter.
He’ll put terrible briefs and corporate waffle through a live human-translation machine, share practical creative frameworks you can take away, and show what happens when worthy messages forget they still have to compete for attention.
Presented by:
Travis Hunt
- Powerhouse Theatre
I see you but I don’t hear you: Moving beyond visibility to trust
Expertise and institutional authority don’t automatically translate into public trust anymore.
In a digital landscape shaped by misinformation, AI-generated content and competing claims, organisations like CSIRO have to show their credibility through how they communicate.
Social media is a big part of that. It’s where Australia’s national science agency explains complex ideas, responds to questions, joins conversations and builds relationships with the public over time.
In this session, CSIRO Social Media Manager Rachel Lee will share how her team uses social to build and maintain public trust, from strategy and storytelling to audience engagement and measurement.
She’ll explore when to explain, when to engage and when to listen, how to balance authority with accessibility, and what CSIRO has learned from the things that have worked and the things that haven’t.
At the heart of it is a question every communicator should be asking: are we building an audience, or building a relationship?
Presented by:
Rachel Lee
- Augathella Spiegeltent
In harmony: How local voices can strengthen a national brand
TerryWhite Chemmart is a national brand, but its content isn’t created by one voice alone. Across a network of more than 630 community pharmacies, TerryWhite Chemmart’s content is shaped by pharmacists, pharmacy owners and store teams, each bringing their own expertise and personality to the table.
In this session, Corporate Communications Manager Lexi Vorias and Content Manager Tim Vetter will unpack how TerryWhite Chemmart approaches content across its pharmacy network, balancing consistency with local relevance, clinical credibility and creative freedom.
Drawing on examples from health campaigns, pharmacist-led storytelling, charity partnerships and store-level content, they’ll show how strong guardrails can help local teams contribute confidently while keeping the wider brand aligned.
Presented by:
Lexi Vorias
Tim Vetter
- Underground Theatre
Content coming soon!
Eavesdropping on the internet: What weird online communities can teach us about people
The internet is full of strange little communities built around incredibly specific behaviours, from eating oranges in the shower to stapling bread to trees.
But beneath the weirdness are very ordinary human needs to connect, belong and participate.
In this session, Reddit’s Hayley Saddleton and Omnicom’s Daniel Klug take a trip down some of the internet’s strangest rabbit holes, using an interview with Everybody Loves Raymond creator and Somebody Feed Phil host Phil Rosenthal as a jumping-off point for a bigger idea: the most specific details can reveal something universal.
With the audience choosing which communities to explore, they’ll show how unusual online behaviours can surface real human insights, and how those observations can lead to stronger creative hypotheses and content ideas.
Presented by:
Hayley Saddleton
Daniel Klug
12:00 – 13:00
Lunch
12:20 – 13:00
- Rooftop Terrace
Table Talks – Interactive Roundtables
The interactive roundtables give speakers and delegates a chance to decompress, ask questions, and start forming a plan for execution. Each table will host a specific topic for discussion, moderated by subject matter experts from brand and agencies.
Topics coming soon!
Presented by:
To be confirmed
- Powerhouse Theatre
Stop making campaigns. Start building worlds.
The best brands aren’t creating isolated campaigns anymore. They’re creating worlds that content can live inside.
A campaign has a beginning and an end. But when content needs to work across social, eCommerce, CRM, creators, PR and performance, you need an idea that can just keep generating, not a single hero execution chopped into 40 assets.
Monique Myintoo leads the creative function at Hommey, building ideas that need to stay recognisable while continuing to evolve across channels.
She’ll show you how to move from a campaign mindset to a creative world mindset, creating ideas that are distinctive enough to feel ownable, but expansive enough to generate new stories and moments over time.
The result is a practical way to develop stronger creative concepts, and a new lens for judging whether an idea is genuinely valuable to a modern brand team.
Presented by:
Monique Myintoo
- Augathella Spiegeltent
From consultation to creative control: First Nations co-design in practice
Bringing First Nations perspectives into the creative process can make the work stronger. But inviting people into the conversation is one thing, and giving them genuine influence over the outcome is another.
Stevi Knagge, Mununjali and Noonuccal creative and Founder & Managing Director of Ochre Strokes, has built her practice around First Nations-led storytelling. In this session, she’ll unpack the difference between consultation and genuine co-design, and what changes when First Nations people have real influence over the stories being told.
Drawing on real-world projects, Stevi will explore what meaningful co-design looks like in practice, why cultural leadership and specialist expertise matter, and how marketers, agencies and content teams can create the right conditions for genuine collaboration from the outset.
Attendees will gain practical insights to challenge conventional creative processes, strengthen partnerships and develop work that’s more considered, relevant and connected to the communities it represents.
Presented by:
Stevi Knagge
- Underground Theatre
Sound advice: Mastering the most overlooked tool in content marketing
Every day, brands obsess over colour palettes, typography, cinematography and storytelling. Yet the one sense that can reach audiences when they’re not even looking at a screen is often left until the very end, or ignored altogether.
In this session, award-winning sonic branding specialists Dan Higson and Nick West, founders of Smith & Western Sonic Branding, explore why sound has become one of the most powerful yet under-utilised tools in modern content creation. Or, as Mark Ritson put it in his recent Cannes presentation: “For a relatively modest investment, it’s an unfair advantage hiding in plain sight.”
Drawing on real-world projects for the likes of Australia’s Nation Brand (Austrade), Vodafone, Binge, McDonald’s and Chupa Chups, they’ll show how the strategic use of music, sonic logos and audio branding can build recognition, emotional connection and consistency across every piece of content a brand creates.
Presented by:
Dan Higson
Nick West
- Powerhouse Theatre
Content coming soon!
Stop making campaigns. Start building worlds
The best brands aren’t creating isolated campaigns anymore. They’re creating worlds that content can live inside.
A campaign has a beginning and an end. But when content needs to work across social, eCommerce, CRM, creators, PR and performance, you need an idea that can just keep generating, not a single hero execution chopped into 40 assets.
Monique Myintoo leads the creative function at Hommey, building ideas that need to stay recognisable while continuing to evolve across channels.
She’ll show you how to move from a campaign mindset to a creative world mindset, creating ideas that are distinctive enough to feel ownable, but expansive enough to generate new stories and moments over time.
The result is a practical way to develop stronger creative concepts, and a new lens for judging whether an idea is genuinely valuable to a modern brand team.
Presented by:
Monique Myintoo
- Augathella Spiegeltent
Content coming soon!
Beyond the blog: How brands can build audiences with editorial
For years, branded editorial meant publishing articles on a company blog and hoping somebody found them. But a growing number of brands are taking a different approach.
In this session, Substack will explore how brands can use editorial to build deeper relationships with their audiences, whether that means turning the expertise and personalities inside their business into compelling content or partnering with established creators who already have the audience and editorial voice.
Drawing on examples of brand-led Substacks and creator partnerships, the session will unpack what makes branded editorial worth subscribing to, where brands can add genuine value and how to decide whether to build your own publication or collaborate with someone who already knows how to reach the people you want to speak to.
Presented by:
To be confirmed
- Underground Theatre
You can’t buy relevance: How brands earn attention in the age of AI
With infinite content at our fingertips, relevance is becoming harder to fake and more important to earn.
For years, big brands could lean on reach, efficiency and media spend to stay visible. But AI is accelerating the volume of content while changing how people discover what matters to them, from social feeds and LLMs to a growing appetite for more analogue, real-world experiences.
VaynerMedia’s Shrey Khetarpal will explore why relevance is the biggest driver of growth and why brands need to win at both ends of the relevance barbell: showing up meaningfully across digital platforms while also creating experiences people value offline.
He’ll share a practical framework for earning stronger audience connection across both digital and analogue touchpoints, rather than relying on reach alone.
Presented by:
Shrey Khetarpal
14:30 – 15:00
Brain break
- Powerhouse Theatre
From base camp to brand: Lessons from marketers who started from scratch
Starting a social account from scratch in 2027 feels like the marketing equivalent of climbing Mt Everest, so imagine starting a brand.
These marketers have done exactly that. They’ve grown international retail brands from the ground up, built online communities of hundreds of thousands of people and created brands that looked established and authoritative from the very early days.
But the takeaways aren’t just for startups and new businesses. They’re a recipe for getting attention in a crowded marketplace. If you’re looking for ways to cut through the clutter in your industry, these marketers have the knowledge to help.
Panel featuring:
Zhoe Low
Alice Harris
Maddie King
Moderated by:
Stay tuned
- Augathella Spiegeltent
Creator marketing is growing up. Are brands ready to let go?
Creator marketing is becoming a bigger part of how brands get noticed, reach new audiences and make content people actually want to watch.
But it works best when creators have room to do what they do well. For brands, that can mean loosening the grip on messaging, approvals and the final execution.
In this panel, creators and marketing come together to talk about what strong partnerships actually look like, how much control brands really need to hold onto, and where things can start to fall apart.
They’ll explain how brands can loosen the reins without losing the plot, and how to find the sweet spot between creativity and consistency.
Panel featuring:
Brittanie English
Stay tuned
Stay tuned
Moderated by:
Kurt Sanders
- Underground Theatre
Bugger-all budget, maximum impact: The not-for-profit marketing playbook
What if your biggest marketing asset isn’t your budget, but your purpose?
Australian Spatial Analytics is a not-for-profit social enterprise using data to create sustainable careers for young autistic adults. Along the way, the organisation has learned how to make a big impact without a big marketing budget.
Anthony Bianco will share the practical tactics ASA has used to build its profile and amplify its mission.
He’ll also share what ASA has learned about building a neuroinclusive workplace, with practical ideas for creating environments where neurodivergent people can do their best work.
For mission-led organisations working with limited resources, Anthony’s session offers a practical playbook for making marketing work harder.
Presented by:
Anthony Bianco
15:50 – 16:30
- Powerhouse Theatre
Stay tuned!
Content coming soon.
Presented by:
Stay tuned!
16:30 – 17:00
Pre-awards ceremony cocktails in the Mosquito Foyer
17:00 – 18:30
- Powerhouse Theatre
Content Summit Awards
17:00 – Creator Awards presented by The Lord Mayor of Brisbane
17:30 – Brand and Agency Track
18:30 – 21:00
- Augathella Spiegeltent