Senior marketing and communications leaders from Unilever, Amazon and Telstra are the latest additions to humAIn 2026, the independent conference on AI, marketing and creativity.
Taking place in Sydney on 13 October, with workshops on 14 October, humAIn brings the people responsible for major brands into the discussion about how AI is changing marketing: where to invest, what to automate, which skills to develop, and how to earn customers’ trust when machines increasingly shape their choices.
Newly announced speakers include Kate Westgate, head of marketing for home care at Unilever ANZ; Megan Ormsby, who leads communications for Amazon devices & services; and Oren Fixler, head of external channels & media at Telstra.
They join a programme that includes previously announced speaker Lucinda Barlow, head of international marketing at Uber, alongside marketing leaders, creative practitioners, technologists and founders.
The full programme puts commercial experience in conversation with behavioural science, neurology and UN Women. It asks what makes AI recommend one brand over another, whose version of reality AI reproduces, what the CMO’s job becomes by 2030, and whether greater productivity could come at the expense of human capability.
Day one follows a single stream, establishing a shared understanding and language for decisions that increasingly cross marketing, creative, technology and leadership teams. On day two, delegates can select their workshops to develop practical skills.
“Putting aside all the existential implications of AI as an extinction-level event for humanity, the brands on this programme are dealing with the consequences of AI now: whether a model recommends them, whether it represents their customers fairly, what their marketing teams will look like in four years. We’ve put them alongside a neurologist and a former elite athlete because underneath all of it is the question of how people keep getting better at their work when the machine does more of the everyday marketing tasks,” said humAIn founder and curator Cat McGinn.
Day one opens with a global keynote on intelligent brand systems from Robin Forbes, Global CEO of R/GA, and Marie Conley, R/GA’s Executive Strategy Director APAC.
Over lunch, delegates can join Chatham House Rule roundtables on bias, copyright and provenance, governance and consumer trust, sustainability, and the future of work.
The day closes with Fork This Industry, a debate about where AI’s productivity gains should go, featuring Bridget Cleary, CEO of BRX, and Tea Uglow, formerly of Google Creative Labs.
Day two: select your workshops. On 14 October, delegates can develop practical skills through workshops and masterclasses.
In Building for the System 3 Buyer, Matt Plant, head of behavioural science and AI at Thinkerbell, will explore a hybrid form of thinking in which people and AI work together. The workshop will examine how everyday use of large language models is changing consumer behaviour, and how brands need to redesign the path to purchase in response.
Workshop places are limited.
humAIn 2026 takes place in Sydney on 13–14 October. View the full programme, book conference tickets and select your workshops at humain.au.
