The AI revolution promises to be the greatest disruption in the workplace for generations. A week doesn’t go by without some major claim that AI will either increase productivity significantly (often spruiked by software vendors) or that it will take a large our jobs.
Marketing is not immune to this tsunami of disruption, but just how much AI is impacting the function varies.
In fact, Australia’s leading CMOs are rather upbeat about the promise of AI and how it can free up time to focus on higher value and more strategic tasks. Some of Australia’s top advertisers are using it in the creative process, but not without humans in the driver’s seat. Meanwhile others are early on in the journey.
For B&T’s CMO Power List, presented by atn, we asked marketing chiefs how they currently use AI and the likely impact it will have on their teams.
Here is a selection of their responses.
Nicole Bardsley, Uber & Uber Eats
A year ago Uber rolled out an AI goals framework for every one of its marketers globally.The aim is to set each team member a personal goal per quarter around how they use AI. This includes all facets of how AI is integrated in workflows, whether it is using the tech to improvise productivity, playing with the tools for creative execution, using it to generate better briefs or just learning how to prompt.
Some marketers within Uber have tangible AI goals that are linked to campaign delivery.
At last year’s MFA Ex, Uber’s global marketing chief Lucinda Barlow shed light on Uber’s AI strategy in marketing, which involved ‘playing’, ‘binning’, ‘paying deep’ and ’banking time’.
Nicole Bardsley, Uber and Uber Eats ANZ marketing lead shed further light on what this means in a local context.
“Everyone in the team is using the tools at different stages in the process, in terms of campaign delivery. We’re really starting to look at where are the areas where we can optimise, either through speed to market or cost efficiencies for the future. But we’re still in the early days of that.
“We’re also looking at how we can introduce AI driven animation to bring what might have previously been a static piece of out of home to life and add animation to it. We’re looking at how we can develop a vast array of our Uber Eats bag shots that exist within our campaigns as well.
“The team are using it quite a lot with brief writing, whether it’s translating some insights or data and putting it into the voice of the customer, or helping to enhance their brief writing.”
Where it has proven really beneficial, adds Bardsley, is to develop concepts to test in research of consumers.
Uber actively encourages marketers to play with AI tools and provides training.
Bardsley believes AI will become a tool that enhances the process of bringing work to market but won’t replace the process itself.
“It either helps in the delivery of that or helps you optimise, research and learn from it. I don’t see it directly replacing the work that we do, but more being a complementary tool alongside the existing process.”
Annabel Fribence, McDonald’s
McDonald’s, another brand synonymous with great marketing and advertising, primarily uses AI to improve internal efficiencies. Marketing chief Annabel Fribence told B&T that it is deployed as a ‘copilot’ for tasks such as creating succinct summaries of long documents at breakneck speed.
“From an efficiency of operating mode perspective, we are 100 per cent using AI,” Fribence said.
“In terms of its application in creativity, we’re not there yet, but it’s a hot topic of conversation within Maccas at the moment.”
Fribence believes that the starting point is in the lower part of the funnel, such as personalisation at scale that uses real-time data feeds to optimise creative.
“That’s where I think AI plays a really brilliant role in your AB testing and optimisation of a headline, copy, colour, and so on,” she added.
“When it comes to full motion pictures and the replacement of humans with AI, we’re definitely not there yet. We really want to ensure that we continue to support the analog element of the industry.”
Given McDonald’s track record with producing some of Australia’s most effective work, such as its Very Important Purple tour (see above) to launch the Grimace shake, and award winning work, like its
Cairn Crocodiles Grand Prix winning ‘Dare to Play’ Squid Games campaign, keeping humans in control of creative ideas is not something the Golden Arches would be tempted to change anytime soon.
The way AI might shape McDonald’s marketing function is more towards the bottom end of the performance marketing funnel.
“I think it’ll definitely remove or reshape the agency and client model in terms of what’s in house versus what’s sourced externally,”she said.
“It will be more in house. I think it just changes where the emphasis is put onto our agency partners. We will continue to lean into the smarts and creativity of our partners more for strategic horsepower and creative horsepower than the engine room dispatch AB testing.”
Joanne Robinson, The Iconic
One company that has embraced AI wholeheartedly is the online fashion retailer, The Iconic.
It has embarked on a commercial transformation project to embed AI across its pricing and is using the technology to improve workflows around production.
The Iconic has also created an AI agent that sits alongside customer services representatives to respond to customer enquiries more efficiently, and it is used to The Iconic’s search function to help curate the customer experience.
“What is very relevant to my team is on the credit production side. We are starting to do whole campaigns where we use AI to generate imagery in the background or in the foreground, which can really enhance what we do creatively,” she said.
“AI really unlocks the potential to be creative but it’s always got to be done with that balance of having the human involved.
“We as brands are all looking in this brave new world trying to work out how we get that balance right of humans alongside machines. I have a hypothesis that people will want to see the human connection brought to life even more so, and we need to be really transparent about using AI enhanced work.”
Robinson is a staunch advocate that AI will enhance the marketing function rather than rode the role of humans within it.
“There’s too many people that are worried about the fact it’s going to replace what we do. I think it will enable us to be more efficient and more effective,” she said, citing an example where it might take a couple of days to prepare data for a senior leadership team meeting when using AI tools can shorten the preparation time to a couple of hours.
“Human beings will still need to be the critical thinkers and digest all of this data and make sense of it. But there’s going to be a world where most of the time at the moment we spend either sourcing data, analysing data, sitting in meetings or answering emails can be done more efficiently and effectively using AI tools. That will allow us to be more strategic.”
Brent Smart, Telstra
One company that is definitely ahead of the AI curve is the telecommunications giant Telstra.
Its marketing chief Brent Smart, who is famous for overseeing some of the best ads in Australia, told B&T that he is not interested in how AI can make production cheaper and more efficient.
“I’m interested in how AI can make experiences better for customers. So our free calls for Santa on pay phones campaign used to be just a recorded message, but now we use AI to make it sound like a conversation (see below). Kids think that’s really cool, and that just wouldn’t be as cool an experience without AI,” the Liverpool FC fan said.
“I’m more excited about how we use AI in ways where it can bring a whole level of magic to experiences, communications and content.”
Smart said the industry is sometimes too focused on how AI can be deployed to make work faster and cheaper, but he stressed that delivering ‘efficiency’ doesn’t always equate to ‘excellence’.
He also makes the point that now is the worst AI tech will ever be and it will only continue to get better.
“Too many people are focused on what AI is now, not what it can be,” he added.
Telstra is widely regarded as a North Star of advertising excellence, not just in Australia, but globally.
As long as Smart is at the helm of marketing, Telstra will not be using machines to replace the creative chops of its marketing team and agency partners.
“I passionately believe that really beautiful human craft will become more, not less, important,” he said. “It will be the way that the best, most premium and sought after brands stand out in a world where everyone’s using AI.”
Smart said that Telstra will continue to use AI in ways that makes the marketing function better, whether that is taking some of the heavy lifting of manual tasks so that they can spend more time on higher value tasks and thinking.
“I don’t think it’s going to replace people on my team; it’s more about people who use it well are going to be in high demand,” he said.
Justine Mills, Bunnings
Bunnings uses AI in practical ways, such as automating manual tasks and speeding up processes so that their marketing team can spend more time on higher‑value work like strategy, creative thinking and collaboration.
For example, in our Marketing Studio, Adobe Firefly helps resize and adapt existing imagery so assets can be reused quickly across channels, including removing elements like people or pricing.
“The benefit is speed — less manual rework, faster turnaround, and more time for strategy and creativity,” Bunning’s marketing lead Justine Mills said.
“That’s where the real value is for us — freeing people up to do what humans do best, rather than getting stuck in repetitive execution.”
Mills believes that AI will accelerate how marketing teams operate, from decision‑making to speed‑to‑market.
“It’ll allow teams to test more, learn faster and respond in real time,”she added. “But as that happens, I believe storytelling, creativity and brand craft become even more important. Those human strengths like judgement, empathy, originality are what will truly differentiate brands.
Kedda Ghazarian, BONDS
One marketing chief that is earlier on the AI journey is Kedda Ghazarian, the head of marketing at BONDS.
Following a landmark year for the fashion brand, which launched in the US via an eye-catching Robert Irwin fronted ad, and also secured naming rights sponsor of the Australian SailGP team, Ghazarian admitted that the company is yet to truly understand how to maximise AI in its marketing and communications activities.
“All of that, we’re learning together and that’s really cool. If I can foster an environment for my team where that is really safe and exciting, then that to me is winning when it comes to AI,” she said.
“In 10 years from now there’ll be kids entering the workforce who are really skilled at this and have the ability to take it to a whole another level. That’ll be even more terrifying for me but hopefully by then I’ve learned some stuff. At the moment, I’m cautious but excited about the potential of AI.”
Ghazarian said she is less enamoured by AI applications such as changing models to AI (Irwin’s job is safe for now – see above).
She elaborated: “I love the craft of marketing. I love to make things, but I am really excited about how AI can flip a lot of those impossibilities on their head in marketing and create a sense of wonder for a consumer. It’s now about how we lean in to make AI generated content look real, but actually playing with the fact that it doesn’t actually need to be real at all.”
That may not be great news for the snakes, spiders and crocodiles that are being lined up for Irwin’s next BONDs ad, but a refreshing take for the rest of us.
