Natalie Morley. Credit: 212°’
Adelaide has long sat in a structural middle ground for media agencies, large enough to matter commercially, but constrained by the scale of national media and the depth of senior talent available locally.
That dynamic is shifting again as agencies plug into global networks, senior talent flows in from larger markets, and artificial intelligence begins to change how core planning work is done.
At Atomic 212°'s Adelaide and Perth operations, general manager Natalie Morley is trying to build a model that draws on all three forces at once.
Since joining Publicis Groupe through its partnership structure, Atomic 212°'s Adelaide office has been repositioning from a mid-sized independent into part of a wider network, bringing in new capability, clients and senior hires from London, Melbourne and South Australia.
Morely told AdNews the shift has already changed the shape of the team and the type of experience arriving into the market.
"We've just had two go out this week," Morley said.
One of the recent hires is Fairlie Ruggles, who joins from London with senior global media experience across brands including Chanel, McDonald's and Wrigley.
Another is Andie Killeen, a well-known South Australian media leader with experience spanning agency, broadcast sales and media trading, most recently at MIQ and Seven.
Emma Flaherty is among those who have taken the opposite path, moving from Atomic 212°'s Adelaide office into the Melbourne market, an example of the internal mobility the group's Publicis backing has made possible.
Morley said the mix of Fairlie Ruggles, Andie Killeen and Emma Flaherty reflects a deliberate balance of international experience, local market depth and internal network mobility.
"Andie is really well known locally, which counterbalances bringing in someone new," she said.
The aim is to build capability in a market that has traditionally been defined by structural limits rather than scale.
South Australian clients often operate under tighter media conditions than national advertisers, with limited access to major sport integrations and free-to-air placements that dominate larger markets.
That forces a different kind of planning discipline.
"It takes people a long time in Adelaide to clock on to changes," Morley said.
"But now we've got that holding company backing, which I think will help us build more momentum."
That backing has also flowed through into client retention and new business performance.
The agency has gone through competitive reviews across three major accounts in the past 18 months and retained all of them, including long-standing relationships that span more than a decade.
The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is among recent wins, alongside infrastructure work and national accounts across the Publicis network.
But while structural change and client activity are reshaping the business externally, a more subtle shift is occurring inside the agency, how planning work is learned and executed.
AI tools are now embedded in audience planning, analysis and data interpretation, reducing tasks that once took days into minutes.
"You used to spend a week in the data," Morley said.
"You really understood who you were targeting."
"You could walk around embodying that person. But if a tool does it for you, you can come back the next day and think, 'who are you again?'"
Morley said the issue is not speed but depth, whether younger planners are building the same instinctive understanding that traditional manual processes forced over time.
That gap is already showing up in capability.
"You see it with young planners. They can't do percentages in their head the way I can, because they've never had to," she said.
Morley said younger talent often arrives highly skilled in tools but less confident in challenging ideas or pushing strategic thinking, a gap she sees as more visible in smaller markets where experience pools are tighter.
AI risks reinforcing that pattern if it replaces rather than supports judgment.
That concern is now shaping how the agency approaches training and education.
Working with a university partner, Morley pushed to shift course content away from broad marketing planning towards practical search and platform capability.
Students now complete Google certification and apply those skills on live accounts as part of their training.
The aim is to reduce the gap between education and industry expectations.
At the same time, AI is changing the economics of agency work, particularly in smaller markets like Adelaide.
Tasks that once required larger teams can now be delivered by smaller groups, with analysis and audience building increasingly driven by automated systems.
That is changing the competitive dynamic between markets.
Backed by Publicis Groupe, Atomic 212° has been able to bring in talent from larger cities while giving Adelaide-based staff access to national accounts including BMW and Tennis Australia.
The result is a more fluid talent model, smaller markets plugged into larger briefs, and local teams gaining exposure that was previously harder to access.
But the structural constraints of smaller markets remain.
Limited access to national sport, major broadcast integrations and large-scale media opportunities means strategy often has to work harder to deliver impact.
That raises the stakes as AI reduces the time spent on foundational thinking work.
"If we are taking away the repetition that builds instinct," Morley said.
"How do we make sure people are actually living it for clients, not just pulling it from a tool?"
The question now sitting across the industry is not whether AI will change agency workflows, it already has, but whether agencies are building enough depth in the people using it.
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