In this op-ed, Australian marketing, data, and technology consultancy Luiton’s founder and CEO Chris Maxwell reflects on his time at the ANA In-House Agency Conference in Huntington Beach, where hundreds of in-house leaders have gathered to discuss the future of the model. Maxwell explores three key themes Australian marketers should be paying attention to: why the best in-house teams are moving upstream to shape business strategy, how AI is proving most valuable, and why attracting and retaining creative talent has become the sector’s most competitive challenge.
Part two of the US tour swapped downtown Manhattan for a Pacific-facing resort in Huntington Beach, where around 300 in-house leaders gathered for the ANA In-House Agency Conference.
And we weren’t just there to watch: myself and Tom Opie from Treasury Wine Estates’ Splash took to the main stage to bring a bit of APAC to the world, telling the story of how an Australian in-house agency went from a standing start to award-winner.
If New York’s Creative Operations Summit kept circling back to AI, Huntington Beach pulled the lens back to something more fundamental: creativity as a growth engine, and the expanding role in-house teams are playing in driving it.
There are three big signals worth bringing home.
In-house has moved upstream. The clearest message of the event was that in-house teams have climbed the value chain, from executing briefs to shaping strategy and driving growth. ANA’s 2026 State of In-Housing research put numbers to it: just nine per cent of teams now cite cost-saving as their main reason to exist, down from 30 per cent in 2023, while 53 per cent describe themselves as a strategic partner and 58 per cent sit in upstream strategy.
The case studies backed it up. Walmart’s creative team talked about unlocking value through transformation, expansion and monetisation, and shifting the conversation from outputs to outcomes: “efficiency over savings, re-investment over givebacks.”
Carnegie Learning’s line stuck: external agencies work on the brand; in-house agencies live it.
And Taylor Morrison CMO Stephanie McCarty, a conference highlight, made the growth case directly, with an in-housed, brand-led engine helping build a category-leading brand.
“In-housing,” she said, “was the best decision we could have made.”
AI was present, but in service of the work. Unlike New York, AI here was a supporting act rather than the headline, and the tone was constructive. Two-thirds of teams report a positive creative impact, and the framing throughout was amplify, don’t replace.
Aquent put it sharpest: when everyone has the same tools, differentiation compresses, so human creative judgment becomes the moat. What has changed is the legal weather. A standout session on AI in production walked through the new ground rules, including New York’s law requiring disclosure of AI “synthetic performers,” live since 9 June, and a cautionary tale that stuck: a real estate listing spruiking two schools that didn’t exist, generated by ChatGPT.
The real battleground is talent and culture. With the strategic argument increasingly won, the new number-one challenges are creative stagnation and burnout, people problems rather than tech ones. “HR can’t build a great creative team, it takes a great creative leader,” argued ex-Fallon, ex-Best Buy creative chief Bruce Bildsten, who made a compelling case that trust and work-life balance are how in-house teams win the war for talent.
McCarty was blunter still, defending her people in a much-shared post: internal does not mean inferior – “they’re not order-takers, they’re strategic partners, culture shapers, truth tellers.”
So what’s in it for Australian teams? More than you’d expect. The pressures are identical – move upstream, use AI well, keep your best people – and on some fronts we’re not behind at all. While parts of the US debate what belongs in-house, ANZ is leaning in, and Splash sharing the main stage was a small reminder that local in-house work is already operating at the level this conference kept describing as the future.
Maxwell’s take on the ANA In-House Excellence Awards
If the conference sessions made the case that in-house teams have grown up, the awards night proved it.
The 2026 ANA In-House Excellence Awards capped the Huntington Beach gathering, and the work on show was a long way from the “internal teams do the cheap stuff” cliché – this was strategy, craft and commercial impact, judged by a 400-strong jury of agency and client-side leaders.
Best in Show went to a genuinely great idea: “Kegchup,” from The Kitchen North America, which turned a Heinz ketchup bottle into a beer-style keg and hijacked Super Bowl game-day culture without paying for a single Super Bowl ad.
The numbers did the talking – more than a billion earned impressions, a 5,600 per cent year-on-year spike in Heinz Super Bowl conversation, and 23,000 fans signing up to order a KegChup, enough to crash the pre-sale site. Proof that a sharp in-house idea on a modest budget can out-punch a blockbuster media spend.
The Kitchen led the night with eight awards; Anheuser-Busch’s draftLine took six. On the headline honours, Target Creative was named In-House Agency of the Year, recognised as much for its culture and business impact as its output. And In-House Leader of the Year went to Kelly Warkentien, VP and Creative Director of The Agency at Wolverine Worldwide – the US footwear and apparel group behind brands like Merrell and Saucony – whose earlier conference session on building a flexible in-house “collective” had already been one of the more practical operating-model masterclasses of the week.
What struck me most was the through-line. Every winning entry was, at heart, a growth story – creativity pointed squarely at a business result.
That’s the same message that ran through every session: in-house has stopped apologising for itself and started competing on ideas.
For Australian teams, the takeaway is less about the trophies and more about the bar. The best in-house work coming out of the US right now is as good as anything the agencies are making – and increasingly, it’s winning on strategy, not just saving on cost. Worth keeping an eye on as our own awards season rolls around.
