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Just over 12 months on from becoming a standalone B2C travel business, and equipped with a five-year strategy that aims to double transactions by 2030 to +$3.2bn, ASX-listed Webjet group this week unleashed its new brand positioning and plans to market. Not satisfied with just being Australia’s number one online travel agency (OTA) for domestic flights, the new brand campaign, ‘Go Somewhere’, reflects an ambition to become the first-choice travel companion for Australian and New Zealand consumers on all their travel needs. Mi3 speaks to Webjet’s group MD, Katrina Barry, and first-ever CMO, Oonagh Flanagan, on the customer and commercial insights it’s taken to up marketing spend by 82 per cent – and completely flip brand to performance ratios – in support of the biggest brand shake-up in the group’s 27-year history.

Telstra’s digital and loyalty chief, Jeremy Nicholas, says adopting AI to date has garnered 8-10 per cent productivity gains in the content supply chain, plus some incremental CX/EX and digital engagement improvements. But where the 30+ percentage gains will come from is tackling the “truly hard” part of AI adoption: Job change, rethinking ways of working and actually using AI to do things differently and net new growth, he says. Over at Auto & General, AI has provided several experience wins with customers and opened up previously unavailable ways of testing campaigns on the fly, along with iterative creative scale to feed the 14 channels the insurance brand is advertising through these days, says chief growth officer, Jonathan Kerr. Meanwhile, Amazon CMO Arno Lenior, has stopped worrying about AI taking his job and is leaning into what AI can do to improve marketing’s impact – but with the caveat of reverting to our uniquely human sixth sense for sniffing out an issue in consumer experiences even if the data’s not showing a blip. Beneath the noise and platitudes surrounding AI at SXSW Sydney, we look at the practical productivity implications marketing teams are finding with AI, and the cultural challenges of where to go next to get growth.

Australia’s online safety watchdog has a new target in its sights: AI companions. eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has fired warning shots at a growing cohort of AI apps that blur the line between intimacy and manipulation. Her first round of transparency notices went to four smaller operators, Mi3 has learned, but the giants like Elon Musk’s X with whom the Commissioner has a tetchy history, can expect to receive notices in short order.