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Luna Park Sydney’s chief, John Hughes, is on a mission to turn the art deco amusement park, visited by 1 million people a year, into Australia’s top experience destination. To do this, he’s already spent $15m on world-leading immersive experience capability and is now opening the door to creators from local musicians to major US studios to give a broader cohort of visitors reason to come and then stay longer onsite. He’s also making tough commercial decisions, bumping out punk rock bands and 40+ concerts per year, saying no to traditional conferences and hundreds of functions, and culling staff. It’s pivoted away from siloed business units it wasn’t expert in, Hughes says, to elevate and diversify the core amusement park offering in a way that appeals to price conscious consumers and the desires of today’s Instagram generation. Not everybody gets it – and early reviews have not all been positive. Yet the aim is not to create a “tech mecca”, with big money also being spent on refurbishing the Wild Mouse and honouring Luna Park’s rare art deco buildings and brand via content to ensure the future remains anchored in its 1930s roots.

At one point “the performance marketing [team’s] main KPI was actually how much investment they could deploy,” says Uber APAC marketing boss Andy Morley. “The mandate was spend, spend, spend … It was getting crazy.” But then they realised it wasn’t actually working. Then they flipped hard to brand – well above Binet & Field’s 60:40 heuristic – and powered to delivery market leader. Today Morley says both Uber’s rideshare and food business has seen no slowdown despite squeezed wallets. Now it’s driving into grocery and beyond with another brand-powered push: “Pianos delivered in one hour” is the CEO’s mission. For its rides business, removing 1 million of Australia’s second cars within five years is the target and Morley says growth – and consumer behaviour change – is rapidly underway. Uber’s moves into trains, planes and buses in the UK could signal the shape of things to come. Meanwhile Uber’s ads business is starting to motor. Drinks and entertainment advertisers in particular are tapping people on the way to bars and on their way home. Morley thinks a shift to attention over increasingly challenged reach and frequency metrics will shape both Uber’s own spend – and the media dollars it seeks from advertisers.

Chobani entered Australia in 2012 and rapidly amassed 20 per cent market share. An “astonishingly large growth” trajectory, per Roy Morgan analysis. But then growth topped out. So the company restructured, creating a multi-disciplinary growth division spanning ops, engineering, finance, insights, product, project management, marketing and packaging. The upshot is the agility to launch new products three times faster, as little as 20 weeks. Now Growth GM Olivia Dickinson is tapping into other categories, partnering with Treasury Wine Estates on an innovation session that literally ran until everyone was too hungry to keep going. She’s bidding to go beyond “sector silos” and hunting new, equally innovation-hungry brand partners.