News Australia wrapped up its national tour as the final leg of the Frontiers series arrived at Hotel Sorrento in Victoria.
A fresh cohort of marketers and brands gathered to engage with insights from Leigh Lavery, general manager of The Growth Distillery.
Lavery delivered a timely message: brands must connect with consumers through their deepest passions to navigate a world filled with economic and social uncertainty.
This market anxiety compounding under the rapid rise of artificial intelligence makes the timing crucial. While automated platforms promise scale, the ultimate competitive advantage in modern marketing remains remarkably human.
The Victorian consortium event served as a definitive wrap-up moment, forcing a hard pivot in how the room viewed audience engagement.
The gathering successfully shifted the industry conversation away from clinical data metrics and firmly toward the commercial potential of human interests.
By building on research from The Growth Distillery, including insights from “The Power of Passion” and “Fuel for Fandom,” attendees stepped away from their screens to unpack an overcrowded media market.
The coastal offsite provided a rare opportunity for these marketing leaders to engage in completely unencumbered ideation.
Lou Barrett kicks off the event in Victoria. Image: supplied
Bouncing ideas beyond the brief
The true value of the Frontiers format lies in its physical environment. Elizabeth Bisset, strategy and partnerships manager for retail media at Priceline Pharmacy, explained that standard virtual meetings simply cannot replicate the momentum of a physical room.
“You’re bringing so many different people into the one space,” Bisset said. “And then it’s that bouncing off of each other. We just kept adding layers, which you lose, you know, when people have unmuting and muting issues!” Bisset noted that physically leaving the office forced a vital cognitive shift, keeping everyone fully focused on the collective problem. “No one was picking their phone up. Or walking out the door. Everyone was fully present.”
Katja Tait, head of marketing for leisure at RACV, shared this perspective, asserting that true strategic breakthroughs demand physical proximity. “The collaboration and the ideation, the likes of which happened today, has to happen in person,” Tait observed. “It enables us to have really open conversations and just flows a lot more naturally and organically.”
Finding passion in non-lifestyle categories
One of the biggest hurdles for ‘utility’ type brands is figuring out how to play in the passion economy. When a business doesn’t sell high-end luxury or pure entertainment, connecting with fanatical consumer behaviour can feel like a stretch.
Tait admitted that this dynamic provided a key revelation during the Frontiers sessions. “For brands that aren’t necessarily in a pure lifestyle space, it can be difficult to see how passion can come to play,” Tait said. “But actually, a lot of the great examples and research and stimulus that we got today really showed that there is the opportunity to find passion for anything.”
For RACV, this insight changes how the brand plans to deploy its storytelling across different generations. “I think how we can use content to just drive greater emotional connection in people’s lives. That’s what I’m really excited about off the back of today,” Tait explained.
Luke Simpson, martech strategy and enablement leader at Energy Australia, also experienced a clear breakthrough regarding how an energy utilities can relate to a consumer’s wider world. “The passions section was very interesting as far as linking to our customer base passions outside of their relationship simply to energy,” Simpson said. “I think that was a bit of an aha moment because we’re so invested in our company and our solutions in energy, not necessarily more broadly about our customers’ hobbies.”
Prioritizing business outcomes over vanity metrics
As corporate budgets face intense scrutiny, the consensus across the Sorrento tables was clear: the industry requires fewer reports and more collaboration. Marketers want long-term platform value, not fleeting digital impressions.
Simpson issued a direct challenge to media providers and agency partners regarding how they define campaign success. “From a media standpoint, it’s less about reach,” Simpson stated. “I don’t care about the clicks and views. It’s about the business outcome and what customer problem are we trying to solve?”
Simpson champions the collaborative workshop model and noted that the Frontiers setup allowed his team to identify deep strategic territories rather than settling for a short-lived marketing push. “We’ve got some really nice territories out of here that we can build a long-term partnership with, versus a flash in the pan campaign,” Simpson said.
The real value of stepping away
A clear takeaway from the Victorian consortium is that true alignment requires time, space, and a shared foundation.
By allowing creative minds to debate without the pressure of an immediate sales pitch, the Frontiers format delivered genuine value.
Marketers left the coast with solid strategies and a clear blueprint for turning audience passion into enduring business growth.