Melbourne agency offers staff cash to replace themselves with AI

The offer and what it requires

Collingwood creative agency Kill Boring Dead put an open offer to its entire team on 6 September 2026: any employee who can demonstrate that AI can genuinely replace their entire role will receive their full salary for two years, in what the agency called an open, uncapped offer.^[1] The agency suggested the successful claimant spend that time on a beach.

Marcus Willis, CEO and co-founder, framed the challenge as a way to surface automation ideas that staff would otherwise keep to themselves. "If AI can genuinely do your job, I want to know today, not in six months once someone else has worked it out. And if it happens by accident, that's not a redundancy. That's one of the most valuable skills in the building, and it's worth two years' salary on its own," Willis said.^[1]

What happened next and the business pause

Kill Boring Dead received more AI ideas in the four days after the offer went out than in the previous four months combined, Willis said, prompting the agency to begin building its own custom software across creative work, client service and internal finance reporting.^[1] No staff member has yet claimed the payout.

Willis told Mumbrella the volume of ideas led him to pause new business until the end of 2026 to focus on the software build.^[2] "I want our creatives spending ninety percent of their time being creative. Not hunting through Google Drive, not fighting timesheets, not guessing what the client actually thinks. If someone builds the thing that fixes that and hands themselves two years off in the process, on a beach, genuinely, please take me up on it," Willis said.^[1]

Kill Boring Dead, where Willis is co-founder and chief executive, launched in 2025.^[3] The agency has expanded its work with SunRice Group's ANZ portfolio, adding the SavourLife and Toscano accounts and extending its existing Always Fresh partnership for another year.^[4]