Michele O’Neill
Michele O’Neill, Brand and Communications Consultant - Dangerously Modern.
Mark Carney’s brilliant address at Davos argued that the world’s economic, geopolitical and cultural systems are fracturing into something far more volatile, unpredictable and complex. Listening to him, I had a familiar jolt: this isn’t just geopolitics. It sounds like advertising and marketing too.
Our industry has undergone systemic collapse and reinvention. The old certainties I grew up with were big agencies, linear career paths, predictable funnels, rigid campaign cycles and in 2026, they’ve largely dissolved. In their place we now have fragmentation, autonomy, creator economies, collapsing attention spans, platform volatility and AI accelerating everything faster than our thinking can comfortably keep up.
And yet, paradoxically, much of the industry seems to be responding not with courage, but conformity.
Over the break I found myself unexpectedly bedridden, watching more television in two weeks than I normally do in a year. What I saw was confronting. Much of the advertising felt hollow: shock standing in for originality, safety masquerading as bravery, dutiful information delivered without emotional consequence. A handful of bright spots, notably Telstra and Uber Eats (Courier magnificent!) only highlighted how quietly low the bar has fallen.
We talk endlessly about disruption. Really?
Too many people are rushing to do AI not because they understand it, but because it feels professionally dangerous not to. Tools are rolling out faster than reflection. Dashboards are replacing observation. Automation is displacing curiosity. Efficiency is quietly replacing imagination. In the last month alone, I’ve had three senior conversations with agency leaders, all looking to acquire an AI scale-up.
In the process, something profoundly human; the messy, contradictory, emotional and beautiful, is quietly being edited out.
At 69, after more than 45 years in this industry, I’m not inclined to play it safe. I’ve lived through multiple revolutions: early technology (my first Mac really was in 1984, thank you Ogilvy Melbourne), the rise of global networks (too much time spent in London in 1990 deciding whether our titles would have Global, Worldwide or International, sigh) digital’s first wave (and my Creative Director in London 1991 adamant it wasn’t ‘a thing’) social’s chaotic adolescence, data’s alleged golden age, and now the uncritical coronation of AI. What I’m witnessing today isn’t thoughtful transformation. It’s panicked progress.
And panic rarely produces intelligence.
What we need now is courage.
Courage to ask whether optimisation is really the same as effectiveness. Courage to admit that data without interpretation is merely noise.
Courage to recognise creativity as a commercial weapon, not a decorative flourish. And courage, radical as it now feels, to accept that human emotion, in all its contradiction and cultural context, cannot be automated away.
This thinking sits behind my new consultancy, Dangerously Modern. Not modern for modern’s sake. Not innovation theatre. Not trend-chasing (how refreshing to see a slowdown in end-of-year trend reports that are rarely checked twelve months later). But modern as in intellectually restless, ethically grounded, culturally awake and commercially rigorous.
Speed without wisdom is recklessness. AI should complement human thought, not replace it. Real insight still requires watching people, not just scrolling dashboards and mistaking measurement for meaning. Don’t get me started on synthetic avatars. Or maybe do, for a later column.
In this new marketing economy, independents are thriving not because they are smaller, but because they are bolder. They take risks. They move fast. They think deeply. They privilege culture over process, clarity over compliance, judgement over protocol. It’s in their DNA.
Australia once punched well above its creative weight. In 2016, we ranked fourth globally with 71 Lions. In 2017, we took home 113, an extraordinary run for a small market. But in 2024, we fell to 11th with just 18 Lions, and the 2024 Lions Creativity Report again placed Australia at #11. Yes, there have been rebound years, seventh in 2023 and again in 2025 but the story no longer feels like sustained outperformance, it’s sporadic brilliance.
That shift matters. Does it signal a market growing more cautious? Fewer brave swings, more safe work that can be justified on a dashboard? Today, we risk becoming comfortable, polite and strategically timid. Our geography should sharpen originality, not blunt it. That’s what it used to do. Distance from global centres should provoke fresh thinking, not borrowed consensus.
This column isn’t written to provoke for sport. It’s written to challenge fashionable agreement, lazy thinking and the cult of speed. My intention is to stimulate conversation around ambition, depth and humanity to an industry increasingly mistaking velocity for value.
The greatest threat to marketing today isn’t artificial intelligence, platform volatility or economic uncertainty. It is sameness. That’s what I spent two weeks watching over Christmas.
In times of radical change, progress doesn’t come from those who break ranks fastest. It comes from those who think hardest, and who question, doubt and challenge. We have to remain stubbornly human.
In a world addicted to optimisation, the rarest and most powerful strategic advantage left may be independent thought.
And thank you, Prime Minister Carney, for a little hope amidst the chaos.
Michele O’Neill, former Group Director of Brand at Nine, now leads Dangerously Modern, a consultancy helping organisations navigate cultural relevance as markets, media and expectations shift.