The Status Quota - Is there Merit in Merit?

Adam graduated university with degrees in commerce and clinical psychology. Adam first worked in a maximum security prison, before making the natural move to marketing consultancy, Added Value. He completed his Psychology Thesis in 'Identifying the underlying constructs of cool people', and for a short while was a global cool hunter. He then joined Saatchi & Saatchi as a Strategic Planner across alcohol, FMCG, and automotive. During this time he invented a board game 'The Analyst'. Translated into three languages (still selling well in the Benelux countries).

Adam then co-founded Naked Communications, APAC in 2004. Naked harnesses a behavioural change model, focusing on building brands whilst changing behaviour, and is one of Australia’s most awarded agencies, winning agency of the year across various disciplines. After selling and leaving Naked Adam became an equity partner at Cummins&Partners.

He is a panelist on TV shows The Gruen Transfer / Planet, Sky and Ten News, and others. He's a regular on ABC radio with James O'Loghlin Sunday Nights, and writes for The Australian, B&T, Encore and others. His comments and articles have also appeared in publications including TIME, Fast Company, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, and Adage. Adam is an in-demand keynote speaker.

Adam's work has won awards at all of the worlds major shows including Gold in 2012 at the Cannes Lions, The Effies, Clio's, and ADMA (Grand Prix). He's also won at D&AD, London Internal Awards, One Show, New York Festival, AIMIA, IAB and others. He has also been awarded: Adnews’ 40 under 40 (2010) Mumbrella's 7 Top Strategists (2011) Australian Creative's Power 20 (2012) Encore Magazine's Power 100 (2012) Australian Creative's Power 20 (2013) and Winner of The WARC Global Prize for Innovation (2013).

Carolyn has nearly 20 years’ experience in the Advertising Industry, working primarily as a Strategic Planning Director for global advertising agencies including Havas, DDB & STW Communications.

She is well recognised as a thought leader within the creative industry and is most recognised from her appearances as a regular panellist on ABC programs 'Gruen Planet' and 'The Gruen Transfer'. She also appears on other shows such as The Today Show, Sunrise, and ABCNews24 as an expert in advertising and creative persuasion. She is also featured as a contributor in ‘The Gruen Transfer’ book on advertising. Carolyn's client experience crosses various industries including automotive, healthcare & pharmaceutical, beauty, luxury goods, FMCG, consumer electronics and retail. Her ability to adapt her thinking to the situation at hand is one of the key reasons she remains in demand as a strategist for both large organisations and SMEs alike.

Carolyn is also highly regarded as a professional speaker and workshop facilitator, having signed with Saxton Speakers Bureau in 2009. She is regularly interviewed in the mainstream media in regards to topics related to advertising, brand and communication strategy, and has appeared numerous times in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph, news.com.au, yahoo7.com.au and The Australian. Carolyn is also an accomplished writer, and has written articles, opinion pieces and reviews that have appeared in Drum Media and Design Federation, as well as industry publications such as Adnews.

In addition to her industry experience, Carolyn has an Executive MBA from the University of Technology Sydney and a BA in Communications from the University of Western Sydney. She has also repeatedly featured as a guest lecturer at AdSchool, and has worked as a trainer for the Australian Pharmaceutical Marketing & Research Group (APMRG) on numerous occasions.  

She is currently a member of the board of Family Planning NSW, and is also a Brand Ambassador for Bright Employment – offering refugees the opportunity to find meaningful employment.

With almost 30 years’ experience in marketing, advertising & business strategy around the world, Linda has wide-ranging expertise across categories & industries, from Government & not-for-profit, through Retail, FMCG, Pharmaceutical, Financial Services, Automotive, Travel & Tourism to Publishing, to mention just a few.

At All About Eve – the consultancy she established close to 15 years ago – her team unpack insight into gender differences impacting women. Uniquely examining both the conscious and subconscious, Linda has developed an actionable insight & strategy approach to allow her consultancy to truly claim they know this target and her clients to use this intelligence to go beyond surface knowledge of their audience to really understand, communicate more effectively and develop campaigns that build brand/customer bonds.

As founder of the leading & most credited female insights consultancy in Australia & NZ, Linda is an acknowledged pioneer & expert on applied understanding of insight. She also frequently keynotes at conferences, is a sought-after commentator in the media, an editorial board member & judge and mentor to many professionals. Her dynamic style & command of her subject, as well as breadth of first-hand client/agency/consultancy experience, makes her a compelling and yet grounded-in-application expert.

Mike is an Executive with over 25 years’ experience in Brand and Communication Strategy. While leading the marketing departments of Sony, Vodafone and Seiko, The Australian Marketing Institute named him as one of the country’s 10 most effective marketers. BRW magazine went further and put him in the top 5.  He’s also worked agency-side as Executive Director of Ogilvy’s Telstra business before taking on the role of MD at Ogilvy Impact.

THiiNK is a Brand Consultancy led by Nick Souter and Mike Beckerleg. Between them, they have worked in pretty much every category and have a track record of success and awards. They are the only certified practitioners of Whole Brain® Branding and have developed an online process that creates a brand ‘profile’. This visualises the direction a successful brand strategy must take to inspire both staff and clients alike.

At age 24 Jane, along with three other partners, started an advertising agency. With zero clients, no external investment and nothing but a kitchen table and 4 laptops – Common Ventures was born.

Functioning still as an entirely independent entity, Common Ventures has been open for over 4 years and employs nearly 20 full-time staff.

Adopting an ethos of being strategically curious and creatively rebellious, every day at Common Ventures is vastly different. Testing their intelligence and sanity, Jane steps in and out of creative, strategic and business focused roles on a daily basis.

Along with her creative partner James Crawley, Jane has won a stack of creative awards, was 1 of the 5 winners from last year’s B&T ‘30 under 30’ award and has appeared on Gruen. Jane was also recently recognised as 1 of 5 finalists for the nationwide ‘Women in Media’ award, and was the youngest female member to ever take up a position on the prestigious AWARD Council.

I grew up in Canada as part of a family of advertising men and women … Mum and Dad met in an agency and all four of their kids went into the advertising business.  So you can imagine the kinds of chats that were had around the Christmas dinner table!

Like many women at the time, I started my career on the media side, but personally found it too limiting so I quickly made the move to account management where I remained for over 30 years.  I've worked in most of the big multi-national agencies and successfully managed a range of blue-chip clients. I've worked on iconic brands like Coca-Cola and Qantas, and with large FMCG businesses like Nestle, Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Colgate Palmolive. 

Having seen and experienced so much I've built up an enviable network of senior executives in the industry both agency side and client side and I'm a passionate advocate for both the power of communications and the people who work within this fabulous industry.

For the last decade I've been freelancing as a senior "suit" and in 2013, after recognizing a number of key issues that seem to hinder our ability to achieve great work as an industry, I decided it was time to rally the troops, coordinate a program and try to make a difference. Legends & Leaders was born.

Lorraine is CEO of the LOUD Communications Group; one of Australia’s leading independent agencies. She’s worked client side for brands such as McDonalds, for multinational agencies, including Leo Burnett, for a decade, and has for the past 10 years, run LOUD. 

She’s also one the most senior women in Australian advertising today and is an active supporter of diversity and inclusion for our industry. Lorraine is a director of The Communications Council, one of the initiators of the recent Gender Diversity Working Group and Chairs the Diversity and Inclusion committee.

Nick’s worked as a creative director and chairman for over 20 years in London, Tokyo and here in Sydney where he led Leo Burnett to Agency of the Year three times. His work has won many awards in different categories and markets. As a keynote speaker, he talks on brand and innovation and he’s also an author with three books published internationally. One of them, Breakthrough Thinking, forms the basis of his ‘Brain Box’ innovation program.

THiiNK is a brand consultancy led by Nick Souter and Mike Beckerleg. Between them, they have worked in pretty much every category and have a track record of success and awards. They are the only certified practitioners of Whole Brain® Branding and have developed an online process that creates a brand ‘profile’. This visualises the direction a successful brand strategy must take to inspire both staff and clients alike.