Australian pet-food disruptor Lyka has pulled off a very savvy hire. In late October 2025, multiple outlets confirmed that Cam (Cameron) Luby, currently Head of Marketing at Optus, will leave the telco to join Lyka as the company’s first Chief Marketing Officer in early 2026, with most reports pointing to a January start.

Luby has spent more than three years at Optus, stepping into the head of marketing role in early 2025 and leading marketing across both the consumer and enterprise businesses, including brand, product and performance marketing.

At Lyka, he’ll take on a newly created CMO role that founder and CEO Anna Podolsky has described as “a defining moment” as the business prepares to scale its next chapter and cement Lyka as a household name while reshaping how Australians think about pet health.

Lyka’s growth story

Lyka launched in 2018 and specialises in fresh, tailored dog meals, prepared in its own facilities and delivered direct to customers. The company has already produced close to 100 million fresh meals for dogs across Australia, supported by autonomous factories in Sydney and Melbourne and a dedicated software and martech stack.

The pandemic-era pet boom and a broader shift away from ultra-processed kibble have fuelled rapid growth. Lyka has been visible in TVCs, out-of-home campaigns and even ABC’s Gruen, and it has picked up design awards for its branding and communication.

Why this appointment matters for loyalty and customer behaviour

From a loyaltyandcustomers.com lens, this move is almost the perfect “tier 2 brand, tier 1 marketer” story.

On one side, you have a subscription-friendly DTC product with strong emotional resonance (pets, health, care) and repeat-purchase baked in. On the other, you have a marketer who has run big-budget, data-rich marketing at Optus and previously spent nine years at Google, plus agency stints at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Naked, Mindshare and UM.

My read is that Lyka is gearing up to move from “beloved niche disruptor” into something closer to mainstream household brand with a loyalty spine. With Luby in the CMO chair, expect to see:

• a tighter connection between brand storytelling and performance
• more sophisticated lifecycle and retention marketing around subscription and reorder behaviour
• and bolder, more distinctive creative that keeps Lyka top of mind in a now-crowded “premium pet” shelf.

For your readers, this is a textbook example of how a fast-growth challenger uses a heavyweight marketing hire not just to advertise more, but to build a brand-plus-loyalty engine around a very simple customer promise: real food, healthier pets, less guilt.