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Trump may see diversity as a “dangerous, demeaning and immoral” practice, but it’s the opposite for the team at Optus. While Meta and Google purportedly either pulled – or were ousted – out of parading at the 2025 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Australia’s second-largest telco and 80 of its staff proudly made a second appearance at last weekend’s event. Perceived as an employee and grassroots community engagement exercise first and foremost, the Sydney World Pride partnership is one of the fewer, bigger alliances VP of consumer marketing, Cam Luby, sees as positively contributing to efforts to rebuild brand and reputation after being crowned Australia’s most distrusted brand last year. It’s also blessedly “not seen as a marketing program” internally, says Luby, even as the activation plays a key role on the journey to rebuilding trust and consideration.

After years of digital transformation, Freedom Furniture has hit the accelerator. With a fivefold increase in SKUs and a renewed focus on omnichannel strategy, the retailer needed a search solution that could keep up. Enter Coveo’s AI-powered search, a tool designed to serve up fast, relevant results in real time—without overwhelming customers with choice paralysis. The system only went live for customers just before Christmas, but early data is promising: return visits are climbing, and average order values are up. Now, as Freedom preps for the next phase—an overhaul of its marketing tech stack—Digital GM Paula Mitchell is deep in the trenches of an RFP process that could complete a five-year transformation journey. So, what’s driving this shift? And what’s next for one of Australia’s biggest home retailers? Let’s unpack it.

The British adman who packed Brad Pitt into a Levi’s ad campaign before he stormed Hollywood and created Audi’s tagline ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’, thinks the global state of business, media and communications is so dominated by “left brain rationalists” that another 60s-style creative revolution is brewing. “That’s got to happen. We are genuinely losing [public] support,” he told delegates in his Business of Creativity program in Sydney and Melbourne this week. Data was important, he ceded, but was only “knowledge, not inspiration”, pointing to his iPhone on stage: “Absolutely no data went into the creation of this product, none at all.” Telstra’s CMO Brent Smart and Publicis Groupe Chief Media Officer Imogen Hewitt were in eclectic solidarity on a panel in Sydney after Hegarty’s keynote although all three stopped short of welcoming the next “creative revolution” if it rebirthed hippy fashion.