Embrace the chaos: Creativity expert Nicole Velik joins Mumbrella360 line-up
Embrace the chaos: Creativity expert Nicole Velik joins Mumbrella360 line-up
Attendees will learn how to unleash and deploy the glorious mess of the creative process at Mumbrella360 in May, with Nicole Velik confirmed as a speaker.
The Ideas Bodega CEO Velik will lead an interactive session at the three-day conference (26–28 May 2026) challenging delegates to rethink their relationship with order, logic and the increasingly templated nature of modern marketing.
See the full announced lineup and buy your tickets to Mumbrella360 here.
In her session, Embrace The Chaos – The Unexpected Catalyst for Breakthrough Ideas, Velik will show attendees how to “steal” ideas the right way, turn mistakes into creative breakthroughs, and use rule-breaking as a fast track to stronger, more original thinking.
Positioned as a counterpoint to over-reliance on AI and neatly packaged solutions, the session will argue that the best ideas are rarely born from tidy frameworks alone.
Instead, Velik will encourage marketers to lean into their human instincts: the messiness, discomfort and disruption that often precede genuine innovation.
Velik will join the recently announced global keynote Thomas Barta, who will present on the “Catalyst” theme that underpins this year’s conference, The Affection Economy founder Jet Swain, who will guide a session on how brand intention meets experience, and Tenet Advisory & Investments partners Bianca Meek and Genevieve Reynolds, who will share insights from interviews with some of Australia’s most senior executive women.
Meanwhile, other sessions unveiled today include We Don’t Have a Talent Shortage — We Have a Retention Problem, a panel designed to reframe the industry’s ongoing workforce debate.
Featuring Sive Buckley (Born Creators/The Aunties), Lauren Thornborough (The Village), Jacquie Alley (The Media Store), and moderated by Equality Media’s Marilla Akkermans, the session will argue that advertising’s challenge is not a lack of talent but outdated workplace design.
Marilla Akkermans of Equality Media will moderate a candid panel discussion on marketing’s talent retention problem.
The discussion will examine initiatives such as four-day full-pay weeks, inclusive wellbeing policies and profit-for-purpose models, making the case that flexibility, equity and purpose are performance drivers, not perks, and that retaining great people is about responsibility, not resilience.
Leadership itself will come under the spotlight in The Underground Reality of Marketing Leadership: A Live, Unfiltered State of the Nation, led by Wingmaven co-founders Laura Wilson and Jenn Ten Seldam.
For the second year of Wingmaven’s Marketing State of the Nation study, the pair will take their research off the page and into the room, using real-time insight tools from Vibrant Insights and The Owl Insights to turn the audience into live contributors to the 2026 data set.
Jenn Ten Seldam will help unpack Wingmaven’s Marketing State of the Nation
The session promises to surface the emotional load, pressures and private tensions shaping modern marketing leadership, including the AI-driven confidence gap, while equipping delegates with practical tools for growth and impact.
Rounding out the announcements is One Partner or Many? How CMOs Are Redesigning the Agency Services Equation, a candid discussion exploring whether brands are better served by a single lead agency or a curated roster of specialists.
The session will feature Phillip Smith (Apparent), Jennifer Sharpe (Think HQ), Margy Vary, Josh Grace, and moderator Julia Vargiu.
As marketing complexity increases and budgets tighten, the panel will unpack when consolidation makes sense, when specialist depth drives greater impact, and how agencies can evolve without losing their edge, particularly as CMOs increasingly expect partners to think and operate like insiders.
Mumbrella360 takes place from 26–28 May 2026 at Carriageworks, Sydney.
