New M360 sessions announced: Harnessing Gen Z, reviving a sleepy telco, and saving the planet

Mumbrella360 is in its 15th year, and we’ve decided to reimagine the industry’s most important media and marketing conference, with new ideas, new ways of working — and four new sessions, announced today.

There are ten streams crammed with top-tier content, so you’ll have to use your organisational skills (or some savvy AI) to get the very best out of this three-day conference, spanning May 26 -28.

If you’re yet to snare your tickets to the event, make sure you get in before the earlybird deadline next Friday, March 27 at midnight —  your final chance to save $600 on the standard price.

We’ve already announced a slew of international luminaries for the lineup — Thomas Barta, CEO, Marketing Leadership Institute (Germany); Mark Pollard, CEO of Sweathead (US); Sherilyn Shackell, founder and global CEO of The Marketing Academy (UK); global CEO of Ebiquity Reuben Schreurs (Netherlands), and Maura Tuohy head of product marketing at Roblox (US) among them.

The schedule is also packed with local luminaries, such as influencer Maddy McRae, ex Seven CMO Mel Hopkins, plus chief marketers from BMW, Tennis Australia, Uber, and The Iconic. There are also speed networking sessions, master classes, and copious snacks.

Grab your tickets here and we’ll see you in May.

NEW SESSIONS:

Dawn of New Day for a Sleepy Telco Giant: Reawakening Brand Love and Disrupting the Status Quo

Wakey wakey! Australia’s number three telco is finding its voice again. Vodafone is back, with a return to its bold and disruptive best. This is not a just a marketing refresh, this is a challenger comeback, unlocking the secret sauce as the catalyst for driving renewed growth.

Bec Darley, group chief marketing officer, of TPG Telecom, will cover disruption and reinvention in a mature category, embracing truths in emotional storytelling, and harnessing the bravery to build inside out.

Bec Darley is disrupting a mature category

The Sustainability Advantage: How Marketers Can Help the Planet and Future-Proof Their Business

Pressure is mounting on businesses to address their environmental impact – from legislation, investors, consumers and all parts of their supply chain. Yet many marketers are left struggling to understand the role they can play. Where do I start? And what impact can marketing have anyway?

In this session, you’ll hear from Tracey Peters, Opella’s media and agency relations lead, taking the audience behind the scenes on Opella’s sustainability journey. In 2025, the healthcare brand became BCorp certified, requiring meaningful change across the whole organisation. But for marketing, this was only the beginning. Tracey will share the challenges Opella’s marketing team had to overcome to put this into practice – as well as the opportunities they’ve uncovered along the way.

Tracey Peters has joined the M360 lineup

You’ll also hear from Ashley Wong, chief digital and innovation officer at Opella’s media agency Hearts & Science, sharing the story behind their award-winning approach to reducing emissions, developed in collaboration with Opella. Together, Ashley and Tracey will challenge the perception that sustainability must be a trade off with performance. They will show how addressing advertising’s surprisingly significant footprint can place marketers at the heart of business transformation, providing a roadmap for decarbonisation, customer engagement and increased performance.

eBay Live: Building Live Trends

Shopping is no longer a functional or emotional task, it’s becoming fun. The rise of self-care, treat yourself culture and shopping gamification will all converge into Live Shopping. eBay has already launched Live Shopping overseas, seeing influencers taking a front foot as becoming salespeople. Tiktok are launching in Australia also, and this trend is set to explode in 2026.

eBay will have freshly launched live shopping in Australia. Tapping into fandoms and the entertainment of shopping, eBay will be experiencing the rise of this trend, live!

Multitudes of people will be tuning in everyday, and this will be growing. This session will share real-time insights eBay is experiencing in the newly launched live shopping. As they build it.

Join iProspect Australia’s national managing director Marcelle Hoyek and eBay’s head of marketing and communications Zannie Abbott to learn how live shopping is going to be the greatest innovation since online shopping.

eBay’s head of marketing and communications Zannie Abbott

Inside the Gen Z Decision Map: What Young People Actually Do When the World Gets Noisy

Gen Z is making some of the most consequential decisions of their lives, what to study, where to work, which skills to build, and how to define success, in a world that feels louder, faster and more uncertain than ever. While the industry debates AI, attention spans, and platform shifts, young people are quietly building their futures through a patchwork of Tiktok clips, Reddit threads, siblings, part-time jobs and late-night AI prompts.

To cut through the noise, Year13 will unveil new research exploring how young Australians actually navigate study, work and identity today, uncovering the real moments, emotional drivers and information pathways shaping their choices, and the surprising role that AI plays in reducing anxiety rather than replacing human connection.

Ammaleah Astruc, account executive, Ogilvy Advertising; Na’ama Crawford; information and privacy paralegal at The Cabinet Office NSW; and communications graduate Kiera Morrissey make up our unfiltered youth panel, who will respond in real time to the data: what resonates, what doesn’t, and how decision-making really feels from the inside.

The audience will then have the opportunity to directly ask these Gen Z-ers exactly what marketers and media rarely get to hear honestly: What makes a brand feel human? What feels patronising? Where do they want help, and where do they want space?

Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of the “messy middle” where trust is built, decisions are formed, and where brands can become a genuine Catalyst for Change by showing up with clarity, usefulness and humanity, not noise.

Mumbrella360 takes place on May 26-28 at Carriageworks in Sydney.