Gybe Fortnight: Brisbane isn't the cheap alternative it used to be

Welcome to this edition of Gybe Fortnight - our round-up of what's moving in the marketing, digital and sales market, the roles and talent we're working with, and the headlines worth your attention.

Market overview

Hiring managers keep passing on candidates with strong international experience, defaulting to "local market experience" as a proxy for fit. The irony is that these candidates have often delivered at a scale most local roles never ask for.

Insight of the fortnight: what SEEK's chief economist is telling us about the Brisbane job market

SEEK's Chief Economist Blair Chapman ran his latest Economist Insights webinar this week, and a few things in there felt directly relevant to what we're seeing on the ground with Brisbane marketing talent. Here's what stood out.

• Brisbane isn't the cheap alternative it used to be. For years the pitch to candidates was straightforward: yes, the salary's lower, but your dollar goes further up here. That gap has closed a lot - house prices in Brisbane are now only around $300,000 behind Sydney, and unit prices are barely $25,000 apart, with take-home pay for a lot of common roles not varying much between cities either. If you're weighing up a Brisbane role against an interstate one, don't assume the cost of living difference will do the heavy lifting anymore. And on the hiring side, "we're in Brisbane, we don't need to pay Sydney rates" is getting harder to justify.
• Jobs are plentiful here, but candidates aren't. Job ad volumes in Queensland are well above pre-COVID levels, more so than Sydney or Melbourne, but applications per ad haven't gone up nearly as much here as elsewhere, with fewer people relocating to Queensland than in the post-COVID boom years. Brisbane employers have more roles open, but a shallower pool applying for each one - if it's felt like it's taking longer to fill a role or you're getting fewer quality applications than you'd expect, this data backs that up.
• People are staying put, and that has knock-on effects. Job switching nationally is at its lowest rate ever recorded, and Chapman's read is that it isn't really about redundancies, it's more that people are sitting tight given the uncertainty around interest rates, cost of living and, increasingly, AI. Degree-qualified professionals are job hugging the hardest right now, largely out of nervousness about being first out the door in a restructure. Less churn means less fresh thinking coming in and fewer openings created, and candidates who are switching right now are doing so for genuinely strong reasons worth remembering in interviews.
• AI is reshaping early career marketing roles, not wiping out marketing jobs. A Danish labour market study and SEEK's own local data point to the same pattern: AI isn't causing mass job losses, it's changing what gets created in the first place. Where AI can largely do the task, hiring for early career positions is going down, mainly in smaller businesses. Where AI boosts what a junior can produce rather than replacing them, hiring is actually increasing - junior content or execution roles are more exposed, while roles built around strategy, campaign thinking and client relationships are holding up better or even growing.
• The big picture. The labour market is losing a bit of momentum, higher costs and uncertainty are weighing on households and businesses, and mobility is slowing down. The upside: with retirements and natural churn, there's still an estimated 1.2 million roles expected to open up across the economy over the next year - a typical level, just not the boom conditions of the last couple of years.

The bottom line: for Brisbane's marketing scene, that translates to a market with plenty of roles on offer, but tighter competition for good candidates, and a growing case for treating Brisbane packages closer to Sydney benchmarks than we might have a couple of years back.

Jobs in market

• Product Lead, Digital | Containers for Change (COEX) | Brisbane City, hybrid | contract - ownership of a portfolio of digital products for Queensland's Containers for Change scheme, from discovery through to delivery, launch and continuous improvement.
• Digital Marketing Manager | Murarrie | $145k + super | 12-month contract - ownership of a sizeable digital acquisition engine, managing around $2,500 a day in paid media across Google and Meta, working closely with an experienced Head of Marketing as their unofficial 2IC.

Other roles worth knowing about right now:

• Flight Centre Travel Group - Marketing Manager, Stage and Screen, leading integrated campaigns across PR, digital, content, social and events from South Bank.
• Lorna Jane - Social Media Manager, owning the social and influencer function end to end and leading a team of four.

Interview question of the fortnight

"Tell me about a time the data told you to do the opposite of what your gut said. Who won?"

Talent worth knowing

• Performance Marketing Manager | $130k + super | available immediately, permanent or contract - 13+ years in ad operations, programmatic and SEM, most recently as an Advertising Operations Manager in entertainment and gaming, having automated end-to-end ad ops and reporting to cut workload by 40% and negotiated programmatic deals that lowered CPMs by 20-50%.
• Content Producer, Videographer & Editor | $100k + super | 2 weeks' notice, permanent or contract - 9 years across sporting and racing content, having led the first content series championing LGBTQ+ and First Nations participants in Australian racing and piloted Australian and world-first FPV drone fly-throughs.
• Website Designer & Developer | $110k + super | available immediately, permanent or contract - 10+ years in web development and technical SEO, having lifted Core Web Vitals to 95+ and doubled organic traffic through a full site rebuild in financial services.

Headlines we're watching

• M+C Saatchi's private equity-backed management buyout will not proceed, following an extensive review of strategic options for its ANZ agency.
• Dozens of Olympians have criticised a highly sexualised Sydney Sweeney sports betting ad, accusing it of belittling women in sport.
• Domino's has launched a new brand platform via Bureau of Everything, giving Aussies and Kiwis permission to put everything else on hold for a Domino's.
• At the 2026 AMI Awards, Caroline Raj was named CMO of the Year and Origin Energy took out Marketing Team of the Year.
• News Australia has turned its research on AI-led search and discovery into practical guidance for marketers on how brands get surfaced and recommended by AI.

Get in touch

Whether you're hiring, exploring your next move, or just want to talk through the market, we'd love to hear from you.

• Libby Kidd: 0401 784 670 | [email protected]
• Michael Johns: 0406 210 924 | [email protected]
• Cass Barker: 0431 625 791 | [email protected]