Unilever, Amazon and Telstra join humAIn 2026 as full programme is released
Senior marketing and communications leaders join the Sydney conference to tackle brand discovery, consumer trust and the skills needed to lead marketing through AI disruption.
Sydney, 18 September 2026: Senior marketing and communications leaders from Unilever, Amazon and Telstra are the latest additions to humAIn 2026, as the independent conference on AI, marketing and creativity releases its full programme.
Taking place in Sydney on 13 October, with workshops on 14 October, humAIn brings the people responsible for major brands into the discussion about how AI is changing marketing: where to invest, what to automate, which skills to develop, and how to earn customers’ trust when machines increasingly shape their choices.
Newly announced speakers include Kate Westgate, Head of Marketing for Home Care at Unilever ANZ; Megan Ormsby, who leads communications for Amazon Devices & Services; and Oren Fixler, Head of External Channels & Media at Telstra.
They join a programme that includes previously announced speaker Lucinda Barlow, Head of International Marketing at Uber, alongside marketing leaders, creative practitioners, technologists and founders.
The full programme puts commercial experience in conversation with behavioural science, neurology and UN Women. It asks what makes AI recommend one brand over another, whose version of reality AI reproduces, what the CMO’s job becomes by 2030, and whether greater productivity could come at the expense of human capability.
Day one follows a single stream, establishing a shared understanding and language for decisions that increasingly cross marketing, creative, technology and leadership teams. On day two, delegates can select their workshops to develop practical skills.
Amazon and Telstra: winning in the answer economy
What separates the brands AI knows from the brands it recommends?
In The Machine in the Middle: Winning in the Answer Economy, Celia Harding, founder of LEOPRD, will premiere findings from the second edition of its Reputation to Revenue Report, drawing on more than 200,000 AI responses across 27 brands, eight platforms and two markets.
Harding is then joined by Amazon’s Megan Ormsby, Telstra’s Oren Fixler and Herd MSL Chief Strategy Officer Stu Wragg to examine how established brands earn visibility and trust in AI answers. The panel will explore whether PR is becoming a performance channel, whose voices influence AI recommendations, and what happens when a company’s marketing claims, reputation and customer experience collide inside the model.
Unilever and UN Women: whose reality does AI reproduce?
AI generates the statistically probable. That does not necessarily make it an accurate reflection of the people a brand serves.
In Who Does AI Think We Are?, Unilever’s Kate Westgate joins Sam Turley, Invention Lead at Mindshare and WPP representative on the Unstereotype Alliance, and Annie Konieczny, Australia National Chapter Lead of the Unstereotype Alliance at UN Women.
The session examines how bias enters AI-generated work and what marketers can do about it. Drawing on Dove’s work with local talent, it will feature the first public Australian reveal of the Unstereotype Alliance’s 3Cs framework, launched at Cannes.
Delegates will receive a prompt guide developed by Mindshare to help identify gaps in data, reasoning and bias in large language model outputs.
The CMO of 2030: who leads, and what skills will they need?
As AI takes on more research, production, media buying and personalisation, how does the marketing leader’s role change?
The Future CMO: Who, or What, Leads Marketing in 2030? brings together Bronwyn Heys, CMO of Zambrero; Aaron Michie, Director, Global Marketing Operations & Strategic Programs at DAZN Media; and Louise Cummins, CEO and co-founder of the Australian Centre for AI in Marketing (ACAM) and former CMO of World Vision Australia.
Moderated by Joana Barros, founder of JO+CO and former CMO of Temple & Webster, the discussion draws on ACAM’s benchmark research to examine the skills needed to lead teams of people and AI, measure returns from an expanding technology stack, and decide what to build, buy or entrust to agencies.
The panel also tackles accountability: who owns AI visibility and personalisation when the work spans product, PR, customer service, technology and marketing?
AI adoption: faster output, stronger people?
Lou Compagnone, Director of AI at Datacom, has stood up more than 90 AI tools inside a large business. In Why AI Transformations Fail, she examines why some take hold while others stall or are rejected—and why successful adoption is an organisational design challenge as much as a technology one.
Compagnone then joins Dr Patrick Aouad, a neurologist and organisational capability adviser, for The Human Dividend: What Should AI Give Back?
Their discussion asks whether AI can make people faster while leaving them less capable. Expertise develops through effort, feedback and productive friction. Remove that friction too early and people may become quicker at producing answers while losing the ability to question and improve them.
The session explores how organisations can turn time saved into stronger capability, and why wellbeing and recovery matter to successful transformation. Moderator Aleisha McCall, founder and CEO of Ultimate Edge Communications, brings her own experience of building expertise under pressure, having represented Australia and New Zealand at four World Synchronised Skating Championships.
humAIn founder and curator Cat McGinn said:
"Putting aside all the existential implications of AI as an extinction-level event for humanity, the brands on this programme are dealing with the consequences of AI now: whether a model recommends them, whether it represents their customers fairly, what their marketing teams will look like in four years. We've put them alongside a neurologist and a former elite athlete because underneath all of it is the question of how people keep getting better at their work when the machine does more of the everyday marketing tasks."
Also on the programme
Day one opens with a global keynote on intelligent brand systems from Robin Forbes, Global CEO of R/GA, and Marie Conley, R/GA’s Executive Strategy Director APAC.
In The Machine Has No Point of View, previously announced speakers Lucinda Barlow, Head of International Marketing at Uber, and Ben Cooper, founder of Brainstrust, explore why the best brands refuse the first answer a large language model gives them—and the value of creative friction and a distinctive point of view.
AiCandy co-founders Kent Boswell and Marcus Tesoriero, MC&V’s Marie-Céline Merret and Vinne Schifferstein, and Springboards founder Pip Bingemann offer different perspectives on how AI is changing creative work.
Mandie van der Merwe, Chief Creative Officer at Saatchi & Saatchi and AWARD Chair, joins Hilary Badger of Leo Burnett Australia, Ross Colebatch of Photoplay and Rhys Delios Callanan of We The People to address the industry’s emerging talent challenge: how do junior creatives learn their craft when AI takes over the tasks that used to teach it?
The AI Upfronts, co-presented by Stone & Chalk, puts founders from AdLab, Gust PR and lokol in front of investors and industry leaders.
Over lunch, delegates can join Chatham House Rule roundtables on bias, copyright and provenance, governance and consumer trust, sustainability, and the future of work.
The day closes with Fork This Industry, a debate about where AI’s productivity gains should go, featuring Bridget Cleary, CEO of BRX, and Tea Uglow, formerly of Google Creative Labs.
Day two: select your workshops
On 14 October, delegates can develop practical skills through workshops and masterclasses.
In Building for the System 3 Buyer, Matt Plant, Head of Behavioural Science and AI at Thinkerbell, explores a hybrid form of thinking in which people and AI work together. The workshop examines how everyday use of large language models is changing consumer behaviour, and how brands need to redesign the path to purchase in response.
Other workshops and masterclasses include:
- Marketing’s Fifth P: Prototype, with Tara Iwamoto of Vibe Coding Lab, on turning ideas into working prototypes without code.
- Build a Business AI Can’t Commoditise, with Julia Vargiu of SI Global, on building and defending business value.
- Screen Swap, a hands-on screen printing session with Ashlea Vallance.
Workshop places are limited.
humAIn 2026 takes place in Sydney on 13–14 October. View the full programme, book conference tickets and select your workshops at humain.au.
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Event details
humAIn runs 13 and 14 October 2026 at Stone & Chalk Tech Central, Sydney. Day one is a single-stage conference capped at 250 delegates. Day two is a workshop programme capped at 100.
Tickets start at $745 plus GST at www.humain.au, and members of ACA, IAB Australia and ACAM receive a discount at checkout.
B&T is the official media partner of humAIn 2026.
R/GA is humAIn's content partner. Stone & Chalk is ecosystem partner.
About humAIn
Established in 2023, humAIn is Australia's first specialist conference on AI in media and marketing. 2026 is its fourth edition and its first as a fully independent event, following three years under Unmade and Mumbrella.
Media contact
Cat McGinn, Founder, humAIn
cat@humain.au | +61 429 503 605
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