B&T’s Towards 2030 Forum Wrap-Up & Photos!

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As you can see from the picture carousel above, B&T’s inaugural Towards 2030 Forum was a belting success attracting a full house of young creatives, planners, marketers, strategists, media, PR and just about every other type of communications professional you could wish for.

Held at Sydney’s Ivy last Thursday, and sponsored by News Corp, the forum was the result of feedback from our attendees at B&T’s 30 under 30 Awards. The result was a day that saw a keynote from News Corp’s Australian CMO Tony Phillips, speed mentoring from some of the industry’s best-known and well-respected leaders and capped off with a hackathon to imagine the agency of the future helped along by even more influential industry luminaries who acted as table captains.

One of the most notable aspects of the day was the heavy skew to female attendees. We don’t know if this is reflective of the current ratio of young communications professionals or whether women are more inclined to attend such fantastic networking and development opportunities. Either way, it was encouraging to see so many young and talented women enthusiastically participating in the day.

It underscores the need for the industry as a whole to work hard to make sure advertising marketing and media transforms itself into an industry capable of retaining such talent both client and agency side as they progress in their careers and lives.

B&T will certainly play its part in championing a more diverse and inclusive industry with events like this as well as Women in Media, and we’re excited to announce the 3% Conference Australasia, which we will be bringing to Sydney for the very first time on 31 August this year.

The results of the afternoon hackathon were also worthy of a mention. We ere super impressed with how seriously all attendees went about the task of imagining the perfect agency of the future. Expertly guided then judged by the stellar cast of table captains, the young attendees were very passionate about topics of inclusion, but also profit share and a social conscience.

If half of the aspirations expressed by the participants come to fruition, the industry will be a much better place to work in the future. We can’t wait to see what next year’s event will bring.

We’re also tickled by the fancy that perhaps one or two people met over the course of the day and in years to come might well found one of the next great Australian success stories.

A special thanks to our mentors:

Tony Phillips – CMO, News Corp Australia

Georgia Suttie – new business director, Enero Group

Matt Michael – managing director, The Monkeys

Aimee Buchanan – CEO, OMD Australia

Lorraine Jokovic – CEO, The LOUD Communications Group/ director, The Communications Council

Jason Dooris – CEO, Atomic 212 Group

Jane Huxley – Former MD, Pandora Australia And New Zealand

Sean Seamer – CEO, MediaCom Australia

And to our table captains:

Cate Stuart-Robertson – managing partner, TKT Sydney

Jules Hall – founder and CEO, The Hallway

Virginia Hyland – founder, HM Comms

Mark Hollands – former CEO, NewsMediaWorks

Andrew Howie – group marketing manager, MLA

Ally Watson – co-founder, Code Like a Girl, .NET Developer, Deepend

Matt Taylor – MD, Milk Money

Dominique Hind – COO and co-founder, WiTH Collective

Fern Canning-Brook – MD, Edelman Australia

Denis Mamo – creative ringmaster, White Space Concepts

Jodie Sangster – CEO, ADMA

Rob Hall – founder and CEO, Playground XYZ

Paul Blackburn – general manager of network sales, News Corp

Ellie Rogers – head of agency, Australia and NZ – Facebook

Ashley Earnshaw – chief investment officer, Carat Australia

Lauren North – executive manager of consumer wealth marketing, Commonwealth Bank

News Corp

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