Bonfire Strategist Chelsea Craddock travelled to San Francisco in March 2026 after winning Agency Rockstar (5+ years) at the November 2025 Google Honours Awards, to join a select group of winners from across Australia and New Zealand at a summit focused on AI, search and the future of performance marketing.
Based at Bonfire Melbourne, Craddock is part of the Perth-headquartered agency’s growing presence as a performance media agency working with brands across Australia.
The Agency Rockstar award recognises individual excellence and innovation in performance marketing across Australia and New Zealand. Craddock was recognised for work that improved return on ad spend and purchase value by aligning campaign signals with customer value, combining CRM data, value-based bidding and Google AI tools to deliver stronger revenue and efficiency outcomes for clients.
Since returning to Bonfire as a Performance Media Manager in December 2024, Craddock has been promoted to Strategist. In the new role, she is focused on building Bonfire’s presence in Melbourne through local networking, business development, pitching to prospective clients and converting opportunities into long-term partnerships, while continuing to lead Bonfire’s Performance Media team and manage key accounts.
Craddock works from Bonfire’s Melbourne office, which opened in July 2025 as part of the Perth-headquartered agency’s east coast expansion and now supports 17 east coast clients, including No Birds and Australian Childhood Foundation.
She was among 24 Google Honours winners from Australia and New Zealand invited to the programme, which brought together Google leaders and performance marketers for two days of sessions covering AI, commerce, lead generation, reporting and Google Ads product direction.
The invitation reflects the work Bonfire continues to build through its Melbourne team as a digital marketing agency with a strong performance focus.
Craddock said the experience sharpened her view of how quickly the industry is shifting, particularly as AI reshapes how people search, discover, and make decisions.
“The strongest theme across the summit was that AI is now the operating environment, not a side conversation,” Craddock said.
“Search is still incredibly important, but it is evolving quickly. Discovery and decision are moving closer together, raising the bar for marketers to be more relevant, more useful, and more commercially clear. One of the clearest messages was that automation rewards better fundamentals, which means strong measurement, clear business goals, relevant creative and useful landing pages matter even more in an AI-driven environment.”
The Google summit also reinforced the need for marketers to connect performance more clearly to commercial outcomes, including customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value and long-term business value.
Craddock said the learnings would shape how she works with clients day to day in her role as a Strategist.
“The biggest takeaway for me was how much the standard for relevance has shifted,” Craddock said. “Search is becoming more intelligent, discovery and decision are happening closer together, and that changes what good performance looks like. For clients, that means clearer strategy, stronger signals, better creative and landing pages that answer what people actually need.”
Alex Gavalas, General Manager – Strategy at Bonfire, said: “Chelsea’s attendance at the summit reflects the calibre of talent within Bonfire and the strength of our ongoing relationship with Google. Access to this kind of thinking helps us stay close to platform developments and apply new ideas in a practical way for our clients. Her promotion to Strategist also reflects the contribution she has made since returning to Bonfire and the role she has played in building our presence in Melbourne. She has been key to our growth in the market and to strengthening relationships with east coast clients.”
In March 2026, Bonfire was named a Google Premier Partner for the 10th consecutive year. The recognition places the agency among the top 3% of Google Partners in Australia and provides access to advanced insights, specialised training and direct support from Google’s partner teams.
