Redundancy repercussions: How marketing and media execs Liana Dubois, Katie Dally, Josh Slighting and Amy de Groot navigated the five stages of grief after job loss – then tapped lateral, imaginative thinking to make their next career choices
Description
Redundancy is rife across the marketing and agency ecosystem right now. And whether you have an inkling your job could be on the line, as Liana Dubois did when management consultants entered the Nine building, or it's a complete shock – such as Josh Slighting experienced when he left a growing REA Group, or Katie Dally felt after surviving a first round of cuts at Endeavour Group only to be hit in the second set – it often triggers a professional and personal crisis of confidence and identity. Even experienced marketer Amy De Groot, who’s been made redundant twice, nearly 20 years apart, still felt the shock, upset and grief of this occupational hazard.
It’s hard to get a precise handle on the exact volume of redundancies, but cuts can be found in every pocket of the industry. A clue is in the Advertising Council of Australia’s 2025 Salary Survey, which revealed a redundancy rate of 11%, compared to the usual range of 5–7%, in the 12 months to 31 March 2025.
More overtly, Omnicom’s global CEO last week said 4000 jobs are likely to be shed by end of the year as the merged Omnicom-IPG structure is bolted into place. Up to 120 people are also being made redundant as Menulog shuts up shop in Australia. Endeavour Group is another that made marketing, experience, digital and CX redundancies this year. Dentsu flagged 8% global headcount reduction in Q2. Nine, Seven, News Corp have made hundreds of cuts. The Australian HR Institute quarterly outlook for September 25 shows redundancies are on the rise, with 27 per cent of employers planning cuts, up 3 percentage points since the June 2025 quarter.
Those are the numbers and an attempt at hard facts. But the reality is there are a bunch of marketing and advertising industry colleagues having the cope with the fallout and impact of being made redundant.
In Mi3’s latest podcast, we’re focusing on exploring the impact of the redundancy crisis through the lens of four senior marketers who have been there: Former Nine group CMO, Liana Dubois; former REA Group media lead, Josh Slighting, former Endeavour Group GM of brand, creative and operations, Katie Dally, and former Cars24 head of brand marketing, Amy de Groot.
In this very personal conversation, we humanise the experience of being made redundant to help others out there that have, or are experiencing, the repercussions of redundancy directly and indirectly. We also explore the lateral career paths that have opened up for our guests, as we share learnings and advice on how we can all make more progressive career choices.
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