There is no shortage of people in adland who can spot a good idea. The trick is knowing which ideas are actually worth pursuing — and having the strategic sense to give them a fighting chance.
Agency strategists are among the best spotters of ideas anywhere in the world and the following ten (or 12) are chief among them.
As always with B&T’s Best of the Best, narrowing the field to only ten was no easy feat. There are an abundance of sharp strategic minds doing excellent work across the Australian market, and several familiar names who came very close to making the cut.
And because getting down to ten was hard. There are a number strategists we believe deserve more than a nod. Consider these the ones who came very, very, very close: Emotive’s Sebastian Revell, Havas Host’s Olly Taylor, Laura Agricola Moss from SICKDOGWOLFMAN and Lilian Sor from Princess.
We’ll also give a special shoutout to Special’s Celia Garforth. She won the Strategy award at B&T’s Women in Media but, for the sake of fairness in this list, we’ve decided to keep it focused on those strategists with a focus on Australia and New Zealand, not Garforth’s mammoth Asia remit.
Think you know a someone who deserves a spot on the list? We’re already looking for the next lot. If you know someone doing standout work, please put their name forward and have your say in who will be B&T’s Best of the Best Media Agency Strategist
So, who’s in? Here are B&T’s Best of the Best Creative Agency Strategists.
10. Alyce Gillis, strategy partner, Today The Brave
Alyce Gillis has spent 2026 proving the weight of Today The Brave’s burgeoning full-service agency model.
As head of strategy at Today the Brave, Gillis has been central to an agency proposition that brings creative, media, shopper, experiential and AI capabilities under one roof. It’s a particularly interesting setup at a time when clients are increasingly looking for fewer handovers and more holistic thinking.
That thinking has played out across a diverse portfolio of work over the past year, from CarsGuide’s ‘Get Cars’ platform and Jack Daniel’s F1 fan activation to Elanco’s ‘Dogs Are Gonna Dog’ and the agency’s work for OMG Group, where it was appointed full-service partner across brand strategy, social, paid and organic media, and trade and retail activation.
For Gillis, 2026 has also marked a step up in influence, with her promotion to strategy partner in June recognising the role she’s played in shaping both the agency’s strategic offering and its client relationships. Her remit now extends well beyond individual briefs to helping connect those capabilities into a more cohesive proposition for clients.
It’s a model that suits Gillis’ own broad strategic lens and one that puts her in an interesting position as Today the Brave continues to expand the possibilities what a modern independent agency can do.
9. Stevie Weber, CSO Droga5 & Accenture Song Aotearoa and Fabio Buresti, managing director of customer strategy, design and digital products lead, Accenture Song & Droga5 ANZ
A new face on this list, Fabio Buresti was bumped to lead Accenture Song and Droga5’s strategy after Milla McPhee departed for the ABC last year.
Stevie Weber, meanwhile, has served as the CSO for Droga5 and Accenture Song in New Zealand for the past two years.
Buresti has been part of the Droga5/The Monkeys/Accenture Interative/Accenture Song stable for the best part of 18 years and has been central to the agency’s growth and development over the past year as it further expands its offerings and proposition in market.
The development of its operations is catching the eyes of clients, too. It recently won the work for Qantas’ uber-important ‘Project Sunrise’ work and, a month ago, the Woolworths creative account. Buresti dialled in at 1am while on holiday in Italy for one of the pitching rounds for the grocer.
Weber, meanwhile, has had her hands all over some of Droga5’s recent work, including its ‘Here for First Steps to World Bests’ for ASB and in winning the University of Auckland’s creative and strategic work.
8. Leif Stromnes, chief strategy officer, Saatchi & Saatchi
Leif Stromnes is one of the most well-regarded and well-liked strategists in the country.
After spending 25 years with DDB, rising to the role of managing director, strategy and innovation, Stromnes departed the Omnicom agency and reappeared at Saatchi & Saatchi in January this year.
Since his joining, Saatchi & Saatchi has continued to produce impressive, imaginative and effective work for Toyota, in particular and a range of other clients.
For instance, its work for the Animal Welfare League, ‘AdopTok’ (or otherwise known as Fur You Feed) repurposed TikTok as a pet-adoption platform.
Instead of simply advertising animals in need of homes, the campaign used the behaviours and mechanics of TikTok to connect prospective owners with adoptable pets. The results demonstrate the potency of the idea. While the campaign was live, visits to Animal Welfare League’s adoption pages increased 2,718 per cent month on month, adoption applications rose 44.3 per cent year on year and the number of animals adopted increased nearly 20 per cent from February to March 2026. The campaign is also a three-time finalist in the 2026 Australian Effie Awards.
He is also the owner of the industry’s finest heads of hair.
7. Dave Di Veroli, partner & chief strategy officer, Akcelo
Dave Di Veroli is one of the co-founders the insurgent creative, experience and digital agency Akcelo since April 2020.
Prior to Akcelo, he spent seven years with VML and picked up a heap of awards along the way, including Cannes Lions, Clios and a Yellow D&AD Pencil.
The metal has continued to flow at Akcelo, with the agency’s culturally incisive work seeing it awarded at the Effies, B&T Awards and Cairns Crocodiles Awards.
That work has helped the agency swoop for some significant pieces of new business, too, across a variety of sectors. In the past few months alone, the agency was named Virgin Australia’s social media agency of record, global creative agency of record for Yoto and lead creative agency for Colonial First State.
One thing’s certain, Akcelo shows no sign of slowing down.
6. Fran Clayton, chief strategy officer, Ogilvy
Fran Clayton joined Ogilvy in July 2024 after spending the best part of five years as the chief strategy officer for DDB Sydney.
In that time, Clayton has tranformed the way Ogilvy works. She currently sits across four agencies within the Ogilvy network and has had a deep impact on all four. Clayton has also been instrumental in fuelling the adoption of AI in Ogilvy’s ways of working, building Ausgiest, an Australian trend super agent that feeds insights to the agency’s teams.
Her leadership on some of the biggest brands in the country including Coke, Nestle, Mondelez and ING is noteworthy, with Ogilvy continuing to deliver standout work for all four. Its recent work on perimenopause for the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing was the first of its kind in the country, too.
Clayton also sits on the board of the Advertising Council of Australia.
5. Alison Tilling, chief strategy officer Australia & New Zealand, VML
Alison Tilling has been with VML (in its various incarnations) since departing BMF as its planning director in 2018.
Now, she’s working across its health and commerce businesses as well to drive impressive work for clients resulting from sharp strategic insights.
That was evidenced nowhere better than during our Cairns Crocodiles Awards earlier this year when VML walked away from Far North Queensland with an almost literal boatload of trophies, including the coveted Grand Prix for its ‘Hidden Eye Test’ for 1001 Optometry. Its ‘Magnif-Eye’, also for 1001 Optometry, picked up a silver Cannes Lions, too.
Tilling’s work in the rejuvenated VML continues to see it pick up new clients, such as recent win Australian Super, too.
4. Christina Aventi, chief strategy officer, BMF Australia
If you asked the average person on the street to name someone from an Australian advertising agency, there’s every chance they might say ‘Christina Aventi’.
While she is a regular on the ABC’s Gruen, Aventi is just as capable of letting her work do the talking. Not least, of course, for Aldi.
BMF’s work for the supermarket is among the finest in the world. And that’s not hyperbole. Its sharp, witty executions have helped BMF be named the most effective agency in Australia back-to-back in 2024 and 2025 and in the world, being the only Australian agency to win a Global Grand Effie. BMF also came in third in the global WARC Creative Effectiveness ratings.
Praise doesn’t come much higher than that.
3. Adam Ferrier, chief thinker, Thinkerbell
We have it on good authority that Adam Ferrier was a bit cut up at only placing second last year. And, sadly, he’ll have to make do with third in 2026.
Ferrier, like Aventi, is another agency strategist who has crossed over into the real world thanks to his regular appearances on TV and his quite unique presenting style.
Ferrier has led Thinkerbell to create some of the stickiest ideas in recent memory and certainly the most fun. Its radically different AI strategy, for example, is just one of the reasons that this list would not be complete without Ferrier. Where others see the chance for efficiency and optimisation, Ferrier leads his team to create effective, infectious creative.
That approach, among many other things, has led Thinkerbell to go on an impressive run of new business, picking up Endeavour Group earlier this year and the Retail Food Group late last year.
2. Catherine King, chief strategy officer, Leo Australia
Two words: Titanium Lion.
Cath King has been the chief strategy officer of Leo Australia since 2021 (back when it was Leo Burnett) and has been instrumental in its rapid rise to one of Australia’s most respected and globally observed creative agencies.
This year, the agency won the Dan Wieden Titanium Lion in Cannes – arguably the biggest prize on offer for its ‘Haven’ for Suncorp. It comes just a few years after it won the Innovation Lion Grand Prix, too. Two Grands Prix in less than four years. That’s something many agency creatives and strategists would dream of achieving in their career, let alone half a decade. There’s also the small matter of the Australian Grand Effie in 2025.
King has been central in Suncorp’s strategic repositioning around the idea of resilience which has seen it become one of the best examples of purpose-driven, commercially effective marketing anywhere in the world.
But there’s still so much more to King and her work at Leo. She is the global strategy lead for Cathay Pacific, for instance. We could go on.
1. Bec Stambanis & Dave Hartmann, CSOs & partners, Special
But taking the joint top spot this year are Bec Stambanis and Dave Hartmann. Both serve as chief strategy officers and are partners at Special which, by our reckoning, remains perhaps the greatest creative agency in the land.
The agency’s work for Uber and Uber Eats is among the finest in the world with its sharp, culturally incisive and wickedly funny executions and runaway effectiveness. It won the Media Grand Prix in Cannes for its joint US and Australia Super Bowl campaign and a gold Direct Lion.
The agency has been winning a number of new clients, too, including Honda, for which it has already released some impressive work and KFC, for which it has radically reset the brand and taken its creative to new heights.
Special was named B&T’s Agency of the Year in 2025 on the back of its runaway commercial and creative success, in which Stambanis and Hartmann have played starring roles. Truly, there are none better.
