Henry Ong is a marketing powerhouse, a creative storyteller, and a champion for the Asian and Pacific Islander communities. Over the last 14 years, he has worked at Disney, Marvel and now Universal Pictures, leading unmissable end-to-end 360 campaigns, crafting brand and marketing strategy, driving integrated marketing activations and producing digital content.

Henry headlines the 2025 New Zealand Brand Summit, sharing his incredible experience and inspiring us all to think bigger.

• Unlocking creativity and creating strong emotional bonds with your customers
• Harnessing the power of brands in the entertainment industry
• Combining creative with technology to empower marketing
• Supporting digital equity and helping the next generation dream bigger

About Susan

As Tourism Australia's Chief Marketing Officer, Susan Coghill leads the organisation's global marketing strategy with visionary direction and proven results. Her exceptional talent for blending 
effectiveness with world-class creativity has revolutionized destination marketing standards worldwide. Susan's portfolio showcases iconic, award-winning campaigns that have captured hearts globally, including the immersive "Come and Say G'day" campaign, the breakthrough "Dundee" Super Bowl activation in the US market, and the influential domestic "Holiday Here This Year" initiative. Throughout her tenure at Tourism Australia, Susan has earned prestigious industry recognition, securing positions on Campaign Asia's CMO Power List and B&T's CMO Power List, while also being named AWARD CMO of the Year and earning a place among the exclusive CMO50.

Co-presenting with Julie Spedding, Creative Director, YoungShand & Sue Kipling, Chief Strategy Officer, YoungShand

Join Piers Bebbington, GM Marketing at Bendon, with YoungShand’s Chief Strategy Officer, Sue Kipling, and Creative Director, Julie Spedding, as they explore the exciting journey of revitalising the Bendon brand. In this conversation, they'll share how a bold strategic platform – Bra Better – helped transform Bendon into a culturally relevant brand. From reshaping the brand approach to evolving its social voice, this session will uncover the creative and strategic steps taken to elevate Bendon’s identity and connect with today’s multi-dimensional consumer.

• Building a strong brand platform that drives cultural relevance
• Elevating the customer experience through an omni-channel approach that puts the customer at the forefront
• Modernising the brand’s social presence to speak to today’s audience
• The power of collaboration between strategy, creativity, and client

About Piers

What will brands look like in 2035? To maintain a competitive edge, brands must continually innovate and evolve in response to potential future scenarios – without losing the core brand promise.  

A lot of people have perspectives on what lies ahead. Futurists, trend forecasters, fortune tellers, sci-fi authors... but what about everyday New Zealanders? The ones that buy our products and use our services. What are their hopes for the future? What kind of innovations do they value? 

In this presentation, you'll be one of the first to hear the findings of the next major research project from TRA. Colleen Ryan will share a peek into the weird, wonderful, and unique ideas that consumers have about the future – and what it means for brands. 

About Colleen

Colleen Ryan is recognised in the international research industry for her notable contributions to innovation in research. Together with Wendy Gordon, she co-founded The Research Business International (TRBI), lauded for its pioneering role in the methodologies of insight gathering and application, and creating the boutique research category in the UK.

Over the last decade, Colleen has played a pivotal role at TRA as a partner, steering thought leadership and innovation strategies within TRA's operations across Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland.

Her expertise is extensive and multifaceted, encompassing brand strategy, cultural sociology, cognitive psychology, behavioural science, applying these disciplines to continuous innovation in research and its application to marketing.

Co-presenting with Catherine Harris, CEO, TBWA\Group NZ

“ANZ produced a combination of quality long-term brand building, as well as short-term products, activations and promotion that we very rarely see anywhere“ – Mark Ritson

In the cut-throat world of banking, customers are quick to shop around, and a strong brand is critical to win and lose.

Despite being the largest bank ANZ historically suffered from having the weakest brand. A turnaround takes strategic brand planning, creative risks and a long-term commitment.

To stand out from the pack, ANZ launched a new brand platform – ‘We Do How’ – in 2021, empowering Kiwis with the practical tools and know-how to improve their financial situation.

To put this promise in the context of everyday Kiwi life, and tell product stories with emotion, they created the Sharma family, which in a few short years has become ANZ’s most recognisable brand asset. They also refreshed their sponsorship strategy, jumping on board the inaugural season of Auckland FC and launching some innovative campaign activations.

ANZ General Manager Marketing, Matthew Pickering, joins us to share this brand turnaround, leading to the ‘Brand of the Year’ recognition at the 2024 YouTube NZ Marketing Awards. Matthew will be joined by Catherine Harris, CEO of TBWA NZ.

About Matt

In 2025, the rules of brand visibility are being rewritten. Search isn’t just typed - it’s spoken, shown, and generated. AI agents like Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Deepseek, and OpenAI are fast becoming the new gatekeepers between people and the brands they choose. They decide which answers to serve, whose products to recommend, and which brands are worth talking about.

For New Zealand marketers, this is both a wake-up call and a once-in-a-generation opportunity. In an AI-driven discovery landscape, your brand has to be ready for two audiences: humans and machines. This means rethinking how your brand is structured, described, and distributed so it’s not just seen - but surfaced, trusted, and preferred.

Whether you’re marketing milk, microchips, or mountain bike trails, this session will arm you with the strategic and creative tools you need to keep your brand discoverable, desirable, and defensible in the new AI-powered marketplace.

Our panel will unpack:

• Cracking the AI discovery code – How to make your brand easy for intelligent agents to find, understand, and recommend.
• Preparing for the open agentic web – What’s coming next as AI becomes the default interface for search, shopping, and decision-making.
• Personalisation vs. fragmentation – How to deliver tailored experiences without losing your brand’s consistency or core story.
• Tracking your brand in AI ecosystems – New approaches to analytics, attribution, and measuring AI-driven referrals and mentions.
• Creativity, relevance, and trust – The three non-negotiables for brand success in an AI-first world.

About Hannah

Hannah partners with New Zealand's most sophisticated advertisers to leverage Google AI as a multiplier for solid performance strategy and expertise. She works closely with marketing leaders to unlock opportunities for profitable growth through measurement and insights, media and personalisation, creative and content, and people and process. 

With experience working across tech, agencies, and start-ups across APAC, Hannah is a firm believer in the power of people + AI to balance insight with action, create new value, and achieve more together. 

About Adam

Adam is one of Australia's leading creative strategists, and a consumer psychologist. Adam began work life as a criminal psychologist, before becoming a cool hunter (and completing his masters in psychology in ‘Identifying the Underlying Constructs of Cool People’) and then co-founding Naked Communications APAC. Naked was a wild trip and became one of Australia’s most audacious and successful agencies, embracing a strategically focused behavioural change model. Following that, Adam co-founded Thinkerbell - where they practices 'Measured Magic' - bringing together marketing science and hardcore creativity. After just 3 years Thinkerbell was officially recognised as Mumbrella’s 2021 Creative, Full Service, and PR Agency of the Year - the first time one agency has won all three awards, and is the 2021 B&T PR Agency of The Year
 
In other news Adam is also the author of two books “The Advertising Effect” (Oxford), and 'Stop Listening to the Customer' (Wiley). Adam co-hosts the potentially multi-awarding winning podcast ‘Black T-Shirts’, and is a regular media commentator on Sunrise and The Project (and served his time on the panel of Gruen for 6 years). Adam is married to Anna and has two sons Asterix and Arturo (like the Kardashians but with an ‘A’).

Co-presenting with Matthew Pickering, General Manager Marketing, ANZ New Zealand

“ANZ produced a combination of quality long-term brand building, as well as short-term products, activations and promotion that we very rarely see anywhere“ – Mark Ritson

In the cut-throat world of banking, customers are quick to shop around, and a strong brand is critical to win and lose.

Despite being the largest bank ANZ historically suffered from having the weakest brand. A turnaround takes strategic brand planning, creative risks and a long-term commitment.

To stand out from the pack, ANZ launched a new brand platform – ‘We Do How’ – in 2021, empowering Kiwis with the practical tools and know-how to improve their financial situation.

To put this promise in the context of everyday Kiwi life, and tell product stories with emotion, they created the Sharma family, which in a few short years has become ANZ’s most recognisable brand asset. They also refreshed their sponsorship strategy, jumping on board the inaugural season of Auckland FC and launching some innovative campaign activations.

ANZ General Manager Marketing, Matthew Pickering, joins us to share this brand turnaround, leading to the ‘Brand of the Year’ recognition at the 2024 YouTube NZ Marketing Awards. Matthew will be joined by Catherine Harris, CEO of TBWA NZ.

About Catherine

Over the past 15 years, Catherine has led high-profile local, regional and global accounts in New Zealand, the UK and Australia. She has delivered highly effective, innovative and award-winning work across the Automotive, Spirits, Banking, FMCG, Services, Retail, Transport and Electronics sectors. She has a wholly integrated perspective on marketing with experience beyond advertising, including leading digital business, PR roles and in-house media and customer marketing solutions. In her most recent transformation role, Catherine focussed on how agencies and talent can transform to better capitalize on the role of creativity to improve outcomes influenced by technology.

Catherine has returned to the Disruption Company, where she spent seven years in London to transform the local New Zealand agency.

The power of creativity to drive innovation, the new frontiers opened up by digital and data and the personal development of our people drive her continued passion for her role at TBWA.

Co-presenting with Piers Bebbington, GM Marketing, Bendon & Julie Spedding, Creative Director, YoungShand

Join Piers Bebbington, GM Marketing at Bendon, with YoungShand’s Chief Strategy Officer, Sue Kipling, and Creative Director, Julie Spedding, as they explore the exciting journey of revitalising the Bendon brand. In this conversation, they'll share how a bold strategic platform – Bra Better – helped transform Bendon into a culturally relevant brand. From reshaping the brand approach to evolving its social voice, this session will uncover the creative and strategic steps taken to elevate Bendon’s identity and connect with today’s multi-dimensional consumer.

• Building a strong brand platform that drives cultural relevance
• Elevating the customer experience through an omni-channel approach that puts the customer at the forefront
• Modernising the brand’s social presence to speak to today’s audience
• The power of collaboration between strategy, creativity, and client

About Sue

Sue is a highly awarded brand and marketing strategist with over 20 years of industry
experience across a range of markets, including US, Canada, Europe, Africa, and NZ/AU.

She has worked at some of New Zealand’s largest agencies, including FCB and Colenso BBDO, at the top level in New York as managing director – strategy at Sullivan, and more recently spent time client side as brand strategy manager at One New Zealand. She is currently the Chief Strategy Officer at YoungShand.

Sue is curious, relishes solving complex problems and challenging norms and conventions; is passionate about innovation, and is driven to create transformative strategies that grow big brands.

About Frankie

Frankie Coulter serves as the Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Growth Marketing & Category for Goodman Fielder in New Zealand. Recognised for his impactful leadership in marketing, Frankie was awarded the 2024 Marketer of the Year at the NZ Marketing Awards, highlighting his success in upskilling his team and fostering innovative campaigns that have significantly boosted brand engagement and growth.

His work with Goodman Fielder, a leader in food manufacturing with iconic brands like Meadow Fresh and Vogel's, underscores his role in enhancing the company's market presence and strategic growth initiatives.

About Georgia

Before One NZ Georgia worked for a decade at VCCP helping the likes of T-Mobile, O2, easyJet, Google, Sonos, and Transport for London challenge the category or themselves.  She is a passionate and proud kiwi, who feels incredibly lucky to work with an awesome team every single day.

Co-presenting with Piers Bebbington, GM Marketing, Bendon & Sue Kipling, Chief Strategy Officer, YoungShand

Join Piers Bebbington, GM Marketing at Bendon, with YoungShand’s Chief Strategy Officer, Sue Kipling, and Creative Director, Julie Spedding, as they explore the exciting journey of revitalising the Bendon brand. In this conversation, they'll share how a bold strategic platform – Bra Better – helped transform Bendon into a culturally relevant brand. From reshaping the brand approach to evolving its social voice, this session will uncover the creative and strategic steps taken to elevate Bendon’s identity and connect with today’s multi-dimensional consumer.

• Building a strong brand platform that drives cultural relevance
• Elevating the customer experience through an omni-channel approach that puts the customer at the forefront
• Modernising the brand’s social presence to speak to today’s audience
• The power of collaboration between strategy, creativity, and client

About Julie

In 2025, the rules of brand visibility are being rewritten. Search isn’t just typed - it’s spoken, shown, and generated. AI agents like Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Deepseek, and OpenAI are fast becoming the new gatekeepers between people and the brands they choose. They decide which answers to serve, whose products to recommend, and which brands are worth talking about.

For New Zealand marketers, this is both a wake-up call and a once-in-a-generation opportunity. In an AI-driven discovery landscape, your brand has to be ready for two audiences: humans and machines. This means rethinking how your brand is structured, described, and distributed so it’s not just seen - but surfaced, trusted, and preferred.

Whether you’re marketing milk, microchips, or mountain bike trails, this session will arm you with the strategic and creative tools you need to keep your brand discoverable, desirable, and defensible in the new AI-powered marketplace.

Our panel will unpack:

• Cracking the AI discovery code – How to make your brand easy for intelligent agents to find, understand, and recommend.
• Preparing for the open agentic web – What’s coming next as AI becomes the default interface for search, shopping, and decision-making.
• Personalisation vs. fragmentation – How to deliver tailored experiences without losing your brand’s consistency or core story.
• Tracking your brand in AI ecosystems – New approaches to analytics, attribution, and measuring AI-driven referrals and mentions.
• Creativity, relevance, and trust – The three non-negotiables for brand success in an AI-first world.

About Tim