AME’s award-winning Grand Jury members have a world-wide reputation for innovation, creative excellence, strategic prowess, and the ability to deliver distinctive and effective results for global brands.

The AME Awards honors not just campaigns that are creative, but campaigns that hit the bullseye for brands, triumphing in both creativity and effectiveness and AME’s Grand Jury are the genius minds behind many of AME’s award-winning entries.

2020 AME Grand Jury member Jamie Scott is Managing Director for Showpony. He is an economist with a fascination for consumer behavior. 25 years in advertising hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm for the cryptic crossword that is a creative strategy.His eighteen years as Managing Director has provided a variety of great opportunities from launching iconic brand Budweiser in Australia and filming with Sapporo Beer in Japan, to writing strategies for Bridgestone, Bendigo Bank and national sporting franchise, Adelaide Football Club. Showpony is now a leading creative agency with offices in Melbourne and Adelaide and a shelf full of awards from here and overseas that’s built a reputation for creativity and effectiveness.

AME Awards: Why are effectiveness competitions like the AME Awards important?

Jamie Scott: Creatives in the advertising industry are commercial artists. We have a commercial responsibility to our clients that means unless we effect change positively, we’ve failed creatively. I love that the AME Awards celebrate creative success - great ideas that work.

AME Awards: Tell us about your process of creating and delivering effective results.

Jamie Scott: Effectiveness is the result of two equally important parts. One is finding that perfect insight that calls out people's own behaviour and attitudes and helps them reflect on it. Typically, those insights come from research, but sometimes the real understanding requires a real experience. In a number of cases we’ve found gold by immersing the strategists and creatives in the client’s life for a day or two, like riding shotgun with paramedics for example. This is where the truth lives. 

The other part of course, is the idea that captures the viewers’ attention and wraps them up in a narrative while the insight is being delivered. Ads are like tiny fables and insights are the moral.

AME Awards: What makes you share you time and energy to participate on the AME Grand Jury and what do you hope to learn?

Jamie Scott: First and foremost, I believe in the importance of creative effectiveness and the need to celebrate ideas that work, so it’s a privilege to read case studies from all over the world that showcase brilliant creative thinking and the associated results. I enjoy learning about new approaches to problem solving, the clever use of media (particularly social media), and how cultural shifts can impact on the way we communicate. It’s also fascinating to compare approaches to advertising in a small country like Australia with countries with big populations like China, Indonesia and Japan.

AME Awards: What is your favorite most effective ad and why does it hit the bullseye for the brand?

Jamie Scott: McCann Health Tokyo earned 3 AME Gold Awards for “Washable Book” for Save the Soap Project. ANGFA, a Japanese health and hygiene company was inspired to help take the Japanese sales of their germicidal soap and ‘gift’ the same amount to the children of Cambodia - where handwashing is not a part of the culture. The campaign employed a low-tech innovation that transformed reading into physical learning and inspired behavioral change to prevent disease. Results include 1.5 billion media impressions in 3 weeks and 18 times more bars of soap gifted that projected.

This is a very special campaign that achieves its twin goals. Cause related marketing done perfectly, building brand and delivering positive outcomes for the cause.

I also love Fearless Girl, because it demonstrates how cause related marketing can become a part of the social fabric.

AME Awards: What campaign or campaigns are you most proud of and how did it move the needle for the brand?

Jamie Scott: Showpony once did a campaign with SA Healt to promote immunisation of Aboriginal babies in South Australia. Our simple but clever solution helped raise the immunisation rate in Aboriginal one-year olds across the state by 21%, surpassing the immunisation rates of non-aboriginal children. It’s an amazing outcome and one that we’re incredibly proud of. https://www.showpony.com.au/case-study/aboriginal-immunisation