On The Call Canva’s latest acquisition. One Nation’s breakthrough.
Mar 27, 2026
James Hennessey, Ideas Editor at Capital Brief who covers tech and startups, and John McDooling, Editor-in-Chief at Capital Brief with political and market expertise. They unpack Canva’s $30M Doohly buy and its push to stitch digital design into physical advertising. They explore Canva’s acquisition spree, its AI workflow strategy, Figma’s market woes, and One Nation’s surprising surge in South Australia.
AI Snips
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Transcript
Episode notes
Canva Wants End To End Marketing Control
- Canva is building an end-to-end marketing stack that stretches from asset creation to physical-world display.
- Acquiring Doohly lets Canva move users from designing in Canva to deploying ads on digital out-of-home screens in Australia and the UK.
Acquisitions As AI Defence Strategy
- Canva's acquisition spree is a defensive strategy against AI disruption by owning the full marketing plumbing rather than any single best model.
- Magic Brief, Leonardo AI and others cover creation, evaluation, analytics and optimization to lock customers into one platform.
Sell The Workflow Not Just The Feature
- Offer an integrated workflow to beat specialist competitors by reducing vendor sprawl for customers.
- James notes CFOs prefer one platform handling creation, testing, analytics and deployment to 25 separate tools.