Bonfire

Reaching the right doctor, in the right country, before the right event, is not a straightforward process.

Rural Health West is a not-for-profit organisation that has been supporting the recruitment of doctors to regional Western Australia for more than 30 years, working collaboratively with government agencies and private organisations at local, state and national levels.

In November 2025, they attended The Doctor's Job Fair in London and Dublin, the largest event of its kind for medical employers seeking to attract overseas doctors. To make the most of their presence, Rural Health West needed to reach UK and Irish GPs before the event and encourage them to engage with the team at the fair.

With just $800 in media budget and a highly specific audience to reach, the campaign needed to connect with the right doctors at the right time. A single, targeted Meta lead-generation ad opened with a single direct question: "Are you a GP thinking about relocating to Western Australia?" The creative offered two pathways. Doctors who could attend the fair in person, and those exploring relocation more broadly.

From October to November 2025, the results were clear:

- 1 confirmed UK doctor relocating to Western Australia
- $20.89 cost per qualified lead from UK and Irish GPs
- $2.82 cost per click from targeted international audiences
- 37 additional leads still being pursued

For Rural Health West, that first result means one more doctor in a community that needed one.

Read the full case study: https://www.bonfire.com.au/case-study/rural-health-west/

This morning, our kitchen turned into a bakehouse.

The Bonfire team came together once again for Australia's Biggest Morning Tea to support Cancer Council WA. More than 10 dishes made it to the table, from sausage rolls and caramel slices to madalenas and chicken pot pie.

Hayley White, Account Director, took the crown with her chicken pot pie, with Bronagh Spence, Content Manager, a very close second for her sausage rolls.

We have supported Australia's Biggest Morning Tea since 2013. This year, we raised over $1,000 in donations and shared personal stories with each other that reminded us why this cause keeps showing up in our calendar.

Thank you to everyone who baked, donated and showed up.

What a night at the 2026 Campaign Brief WA Oasis Ball.

We're so proud to have been named finalists for Digital Agency of the Year, and to be celebrating Rob Di Giovanni as a finalist for Marketing Manager of the Year.

Congratulations to all the winners, finalists and nominees. WA’s creative and digital community continues to set a high standard, and it’s a privilege to be part of it.

A special thanks to the Oasis Ball committee, Campaign Brief WA, and everyone who helped support The Salvation Army Australia through this year’s event.

Our Account Coordinator, Campbell McAullay, and Account Director, Will Bal, recently headed out to Bellevue to visit OTR Tyres Wheels Axles.

Time on-site gives us a better understanding of the people, products and processes behind the organisations we work with. It helps us see the business from the inside, ask better questions and bring sharper context back to our work.

Thank you to Nathan McGregor and the OTR Tyres Wheels Axles team for welcoming us and showing us around.

Chelsea has returned from San Francisco after attending Google Honours, and Day 2 of the Summit brought plenty of practical insights.

A major theme from Day 2 was the rapid blending of AI, Search, and Commerce. Chelsea learned how the evolution of search and AI is closing the gap between discovery and decision, which is raising the bar for performance marketers to personalise and make the customer journey more seamless.

As Chelsea put it, “The future of commerce is becoming more agentic. Brands need to think about how they show up when AI is mediating the consideration journey." Another key takeaway from Day 2 is that better lead-generation outcomes depend on higher signal quality, clearer conversion definitions, and closer business alignment. Platform automation is only as useful as the goal definition behind it.”

For clients, this means adapting to new AI-driven environments and ensuring that your first-party data, landing pages, and conversion goals are set up to provide clear, relevant signals to feed quality leads.

If your team is thinking through what that means for your strategy, creative or Search, we’re always happy to have a conversation.

We hosted two masterclasses this week with our Senior Performance Media Specialist, Brodie McMaster, who flew over from our Bonfire Melbourne office to present The 7 Deadly Sins of Scaling: What Holds Advertising Back.

Brodie unpacked the patterns and biases that limit the effectiveness of paid media campaigns and shared practical ways to identify, challenge and improve them.

The seven sins, as explored by Brodie:

- Worshipping the Winner. Blind investment in the highest-performing channel.
- The Myth of Linear Scale. Scaling paid media looks more like a goldmine than a freeway.
- Chasing Cheap. Cheap leads can become expensive customers.
- Random Acts of Testing. Test with intent, not impulse.
- The ROAS Trap. Strong performance requires more context than a single metric.
- Blaming the Traffic. Campaigns rarely fail because of one channel alone.
- You’re Not the Target Audience. Incorrect assumptions can derail your strategy.

Thank you to everyone who attended this week and learnt about how to build stronger and more sustainable paid media strategies.

If you'd like support with Paid Media, reach out to Alex Gavalas, Evan Dela-Grammaticas or Nicholas Willitts.

Friction is everywhere in marketing.

- The form field that asks too much.
- The ad that lands a second too late.
- The search result your customer never sees.

That’s why we’re proud to partner with for its ninth year at , happening 25th and 26th August.

Over two days, we’ll hear from some of the sharpest minds in the industry, learn practical frameworks we can use straight away, and catch up with people working through the same problems from different angles.

We’re also looking forward to seeing our own Account Director, Will Bal, take the stage on Day One.

Your ticket includes:

- Two full days at , Perth
- Keynotes and concurrent deep-dive sessions
- Sundowners with people who understand the work
- coffee all day
- Practical frameworks you can use on Monday morning after State of Social

Tickets are available until 30 June:

$775 General (One Day)

$995 All Access (Two Day)

Use **BONFIRE50** for $50 off your ticket.

Need a bigger discount for your team? Send us a message and we’ll help.

https://bit.ly/4ti1KFC

Chelsea is back from San Francisco after attending Google Honours, where she joined fellow winners from across Australia and New Zealand at Google HQ.

Day 1 left her with one clear takeaway. AI is now shaping the environment marketers operate in, and that shift is already changing how people search, discover and make decisions.

Across the sessions, the strongest themes were Search becoming more intelligent, discovery and decision moving closer together, and the standard for relevance rising fast.

As Chelsea put it, “One line that stuck with me was that the best ads are just answers. Simple, but it captures a pretty fundamental shift in how this ecosystem is being rebuilt.”

It is a strong reminder that better performance now depends on being more useful, more relevant and more closely aligned to what people actually need.

If your team is thinking through what that means for strategy, creative or Search, we’re always happy to have a conversation.

Most bad advertising advice doesn’t sound bad.

It sounds practical. Efficient. Like something intelligent that would be suggested in a meeting

“Put more budget into what’s working.”

“If it’s cheaper, it’s more efficient.”

“The platform will figure it out.”

These ideas can sound perfectly reasonable in the moment. Then they quietly waste budget, distort results and make growth harder than it needs to be.

At our upcoming Bonfire masterclass, Senior Performance Media Specialist Brodie McMaster is flying over from our Bonfire Melbourne office to unpack The 7 Deadly Sins of Scaling: the paid media habits, assumptions and rules that can send businesses down the wrong path.

Expect a sharp, commercially grounded session on what gets in the way of better advertising performance, how to spot the difference between surface-level efficiency and real business value, and what smarter scaling decisions look like in practice.

If you’re a marketer, business owner or decision-maker looking to get more from your advertising, register your interest for Thursday, May 7th. Limited spots available.

Register here: https://on.bonfire.com.au/event-the-7-deadly-sins-of-scaling-bonfire