Grill The Marketer 2026

An unscripted Q&A with rotating guest panelists hosted by Marketing Consultant, Carma Levene.

September's instalment of Grill The Marketer will explore what's coming in the future, locally, for our industry - and to do this we've invited two guests to the hot seat(s), Cathal Mongey and Dav Tabeshfar.

Cathal represents the future being our industry's youth, a fairly linear way to think about where we're headed, and what a fantastic youth ambassador for us to Grill!
You can read his impressive bio below.

Dav represents a different future - one that forges a path as an agency/client-side hybrid with his consultancy Directer, after a solid agency career (including co-founding one) of the creative persuasion.

Let's challenge the traditional pathways, and the client-side Vs agency dichotomy, as we interrogate what our future ways of work look like locally - in a conversation lead by you, the audience - from youth looking to enter and progress in the industry, to veterans looking for a new methods of creating client success.

I'm sure you have questions.
Get your tickets and join your host Carma Levene and MC Jacqueline Baril as you shape the narrative in true Grill The Marketer style on September 24th.

About Cathal

Cathal Mongey is an unorthodox creative.

Campaign Brief's WA 2026 Supernova of the Year, who spent the beginning of his career as an account manager working with major enterprise and growth-stage clients before turning his hand to creative.

He leads the creative direction of Celtic Dog Creative, a storytelling venture launched via a successful $25,000 Kickstarter campaign, with its first children's project, 'The Adventures of Twigley' set to be published by Fremantle Press in March 2027.
Cathal recently won the Australian Young Lions competition and earned a global shortlist at Cannes.
He remains involved with the Youngbloods WA committee.

About Dav

Dav is the guy who wanders into town, fixes all your creative problems, tips his hat and rides off on a white horse. Or the number 995 bus.

Apart from a brief stint squirting jam into donuts with prisoners on day-release, he has spent his working life creating award-winning campaigns and nurturing emerging talent in creative departments.
In 2025, he left the agency he co-founded and started DIRECTER - a consultancy that works with in-house creative teams to elevate their work and their people.

He also created his own brand of ketchup and writes leftovers recipes for everything but donuts.

The Event Background

Grill The Marketer, in partnership with the Australian Marketing Institute, welcomes all marketing enthusiasts - professional marketers of all kinds, business owners and managers, marketing students - if you have marketing questions, come and ask them.

Don't have a specific question, but want to chat marketing with people who LOVE to talk about marketing?

Great! Come along.

Are you looking for a marketing role? Maybe we can introduce you to your new boss. It's happened countless times.

Our community is generous with their time and skills and believe that when it comes to marketing, the better you do, the better we all do. That's why so many awesome projects and collabs have been born from this event. We LOVE connecting our networks.

We don't enjoy events with pitches, boring pressos and gimmicks, so this is the only rule of Grill The Marketer.
We'll be directed by your questions. What would go for a bundle in consulting fees or training dollars, comes to you in this fun package for less than your Tuesday night Uber Eats order.

Some of our previous guests include; Lue Whelan, John Linton, Stephen Ellis, Leigh Wood, Tess Palmyre, Zeina Khodr, Tim Woodsmith, Matt Oakley, Nikki Atack, Kate Kirwin, Hannah Muirhead, Amber Martin, Alison Balch, David "DG" Gardiner, Kelly Townson, Seva Mozhaev (@sevspics), Cory Gale, Callum Mackenzie, and Brittany Garbutt.

No matter the guest or topic, we bring you the most interesting people willing to put themselves out there to answer whatever you throw at them.

You'll love the informal format and awesome community vibe while we help you explore your marketing curiosity with passion and the odd tangent.

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Cost: $55+bf (includes pizza)

Date: Multiple

Where: The Court | Verdict Bar (upstairs)

Time: 5.30pm - 9pm

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More info?

Come along, grab yourself a drink at the bar and mingle. Our crew's super welcoming and friendly so you'll be totally fine to rock up by yourself.

Our MC will let you know when it's time to start. We'll introduce ourselves, outline the event, and intro your marketing question answer-ers.

If you're called on to ask your question, please say your name and the business/industry your question relates to and we'll do our best to tailor our answers to you specifically.

Once we’re done feel free to hang around for drinks and to chat more about marketing 🙂

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Grill The Marketer came about from talking to marketing event attendees who really just wanted their questions answered without the fluff and sales agenda.

Grill The Marketer is presented in partnership with the Australian Marketing Institute, and affords those who hold the Certified Practicing Marketer (CPM) certification to collect points towards maintaining your CPM status.

We provide membership ticket pricing for PADC & ACA members and a student discount, contact us for more info.

Want to make sure we answer your specific question? Send them in advance to hey@themarketer.news