Creative Operations Australia 2026
First Sessions Announced
We are delighted to announce the first sessions!
If you are interested in speaking at the event, please contact Victoria Rose at VictoriaR@henrystewart.co.uk
Getting Real About What AI Can and Can’t Do for Creative Operations
Learning from Losing with AI
Context
AI is moving quickly from experimentation to expectation inside creative and marketing teams. But behind the headlines, many of the most useful lessons are coming not from flawless success stories, but from the pilots that stalled, the tools that under-delivered, the workflows that proved harder to automate than expected, and the moments where human judgement remained essential.
This Panel
Takes a practical and honest look at what Creative Operations teams are learning from real AI adoption:
- Where AI is genuinely improving speed, scale, consistency and production efficiency
- Where it still creates risk, rework or false confidence
- How leaders can make better decisions about which use cases to pursue, pause or stop
The Focus
- Not hype or theoretical futures
- Rather what happens when AI meets the realities of creative quality, brand governance, approvals, rights, team capability, change fatigue and operational accountability
- Frank lessons from practitioners who have tested AI in real creative, marketing and production environments. Including what failed, what surprised them, what they would do differently, and how those lessons are shaping more mature approaches to AI-enabled Creative Operations
Covering
- Where AI is delivering real value in Creative Operations today, and where expectations are ahead of capability
- Common reasons AI pilots fail, stall or fail to scale
- How to choose the right use cases across briefing, ideation, versioning, localisation, QA, workflow automation and production
- The operational, legal, brand and cultural guardrails needed before scaling AI
- How Creative Operations leaders can balance efficiency gains with creative quality and meaningful human work
- What “good” looks like when moving from experimentation to governed adoption
Delivering
- A clearer view of what AI can and cannot currently do for Creative Operations
- Practical lessons from real-world AI experiments, including failures and false starts
- A sharper framework for selecting, governing and scaling AI use cases
- Confidence to have more honest internal conversations about AI investment, risk, capability and change
Moderator: Aaron Michie, Director of Global Marketing Operations and Strategic Programs, Foxtel/DAZN
Panelists
Julie Poulter, Executive Creative Director, Moose Toys
Via Tendon, Senior Leader, Blue Agency, Bupa
Ash Ryan, Digital Campaign & Creative Manager, JB Hi-Fi
Rosie Cotela, Head of Creative Production and Events, IsAlbi
A Survival Guide for Creative Leaders Swimming Upstream
Taste Won’t Save You
Context
As AI, automation and restructuring reshape the value of creative work, the most visible parts of what creative teams do, speed, volume, versioning and output, are becoming the easiest to optimise, automate and devalue. The deeper threat is not AI itself. It is the long-standing tendency to reduce creative labour in the process of production. And creative value is tough to measure but easy to cost.
This candid, practical talk describes how creative leaders can swim upstream: away from low-complexity output and toward the spaces where creative judgment has greater organisational value.
Describing, frameworks, relationships and strategic moves required to reposition a creative function
Covering, building trust, sponsorship, cross-functional alliances, clearer decision systems, and better language to support the value creative teams create.
For creative, design and operations leaders
- Who feel the ground shifting and want more agency in the future of their teams and careers.
- It’s not about resisting AI, worshipping the idea of taste, or hoping the work will speak for itself.
- It is about building the conditions in which creative judgment can be seen, trusted, and acted on before execution even begins.
Mike Kevan, Design Team Lead, Coles Group
Adapting by Design
Creative Operations in a Changing Workplace
Happening Now:
- In-house creative teams are under more pressure than ever
- Offshoring is eroding headcount
- AI is reshaping what's possible
- The push to democratise content creation is straining brand governance like never before
Response
- How a lean Knight Frank national creative team navigated all the issues
- How the team used a platform migration as the catalyst for a broader Creative Operations transformation
From stakeholder strategy to workflow redesign, this is a practical account of what it takes to future-proof an in-house function when the ground keeps shifting.
Katy Davis, Partner, Head of Creative Services, Knight Frank
Daring to Keep It Simple
The Risk
Everyone's daring to be different with new tools, AI, and endless optimisation. But chase that too hard, and you build systems with more admin, more upkeep, and more stress than they remove. Risking losing the humans meant to use them, along the way.
How We’ve Kept It Simple
The journey of building The Corner Shop, 7-Eleven Australia's in-house creative agency, from the ground up - and the unglamorous discipline of intentionally staying simple, when the world’s your oyster.
This isn’t about being anti-tools or anti-ambition. This is a story about choosing simple over shiny, resisting the urge to optimise endlessly, and building workflows people actually want to use.
Delivering
- How to identify the tools that matter to you
- How to understand whether a workflow makes work easier for the human doing it, or whether it’s just more noise
Tom Walters, Creative Operations Lead, The Corner Shop, 7Eleven