Our founder and CEO, Phil Ohren, has been invited to judge the MFA Awards 2026. It’s a privilege that feels like a natural fit. Phil’s built his career on a simple principle: the best media works because it’s built with craft and intention, not noise.
What are the Media Federation of Australia (MFA) Awards 2026?
The Media Federation of Australia runs the MFA Awards. Since 1999, they’ve been Australia’s go-to test for media effectiveness. This year marks the 27th edition.
The MFA matters because it asks the one question that actually counts: did it work? Not did it look clever, not did it win gold for creativity, but did the campaign move something real. That’s what separates the MFA from the field. They’re backed by agencies that represent more than 90% of Australian media billings, so the weight of the industry sits behind the verdict.
The black-tie gala is on 24 September at Randwick Racecourse in Sydney. The Grand Prix winner will be announced there. Last year it went to Clemenger BBDO for Samsung.
Who is Phil Ohren?
Phil founded Intender in 2020 with a goal to make advertising useful rather than annoying. The core idea was simple: connect brands with people at the moment they’re actually in the market, using behavioural signals across paid, search, owned and earned channels. Instead of chasing reach and interrupting people, we focus on the ones who are looking.
He came to this from more than two decades in search and performance. He led the FAST Search team at Mindshare, worked with brands including Youi, Hallmark, EnergyAustralia, Westfield and Stockland, and has become one of the louder voices on intent marketing and the shift toward generative engine optimisation. At conferences like SMX and the Growth Marketing Summit, he’s the person pushing the room to ask: how do we make media that works harder and wastes less?
He’s been recognised across the industry as a B&T 30 Under 30 winner, Mindshare APAC’s Purple Person of the Year, and a regular speaker on the growth marketing circuit. The core thread through all of it: turning complex business problems into measurable results.
How the MFA Awards are judged
The authority of the MFA comes from the people doing the judging. For 2026, in-person judging returned for the first time since before Covid. More than 130 media and marketing leaders showed up. Over half of them were client-side CMOs.
The process is deliberately rigorous. Independent auditing. Blind voting. Proof that the media contribution was real. A panel of Signature Judges drawn from senior marketers also selects finalists in categories like Innovation that aren’t open to entries. MFA Awards Co-Chair Catherine Rushton of This is Flow noted that bringing judges together in person lifted both the energy and the rigour of the deliberation.
Finalists are selected against a high bar. What tends to separate them year on year is consistent: bold thinking, strategic excellence, and measurable impact.
The 2026 finalists and categories
The awards span more than 20 categories across Outcomes, Execution, Channel Excellence, and People, Planet & Culture. There are dedicated channels for search, social, screens, outdoor, audio and retailer-owned media. This year adds a new category for Best Use of Creators/Influencers.
The finalist list reads as a who’s who of Australian media. Clemenger BBDO’s Lifeblood Blood Supply campaign for Australian Red Cross Lifeblood is shortlisted across Behaviour Change, Best Integrated Campaign and Best Use of Outdoor. Mindshare’s Rexona campaign for Unilever earned four nominations. EssenceMediacom is in Best Use of Social and Best Use of Retailer Owned Media for Mars. OMD’s Reaction Time road-safety campaign for NSW Government is in Best Use of Social. Avenue C is recognised in Agency Talent & Culture for its Show We Care campaign with MND Australia.
The awards have a long track record of spotlighting campaigns that change behaviour for the better, from government health initiatives encouraging STI testing through to disaster preparedness and community work. It all rolls up to the same rallying cry the industry uses: We Are The Changers.
Phil’s role: Judging the craft categories
Phil will be reviewing two categories that say a lot about where great media comes from: Best Use of Search and Best Use of Small Budget.
Best Use of Search rewards teams who treat search as a strategic channel, not a checkbox. They connect what people are actually looking for to a real business or human problem. Finalists include Charles Sturt University and the University of New England, both tackling the challenge of turning intent into enrolments.
Best Use of Small Budget is the purest test of the lot. Strip away a big media spend and what’s left is pure thinking. The strongest teams use bold ideas to turn a constraint into leverage.
Here’s what Phil will be looking for:
- Clever use of data. Not data for the sake of a slide, but data used to find an angle nobody else spotted.
- Sharp positioning. A single-minded idea you could repeat back in one sentence.
- Big thinking under real constraints. Tight budgets, tight timelines, narrow audiences. And campaigns that still find room to be ambitious.
And, most importantly, clear evidence that the people behind the campaign genuinely care about it. As Phil puts it, judges aren’t swayed by adjectives. They’re swayed by movement: in awareness, in behaviour, in sales, in whatever metric the campaign set out to shift.
It’s an honour to have Intender represented on the 2026 judging panel. It’s a reminder of what we care about most: media that earns its place by delivering real, measurable results.
Congratulations to every finalist named this year. We’re looking forward to seeing what you’ve made.
