Showpony leads the night at 48th Annual AADC Awards, taking home Gold Chair and nine wins

Last night, the South Australian creative community gathered around the table for the 48th Annual AADC Awards, this year themed ‘Family Dinner’. The sold-out affair brought over 330 of South Australia’s creative community, current and emerging, together in Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s Grainger Studio to recognise and celebrate the best of the state’s work from the last 18 months.

Collectively, the industry set the competition aside for the night and celebrated what they’ve built together; the craft, the campaigns and the community that makes South Australia’s industry what it is. While rivalries drive our industry, it’s passion that unites it — and last night glasses were raised to both.

The silver watering can is awarded by the presidents each year for outstanding contribution above and beyond the call of duty to the advertising industry in South Australia. This year, Senior Creative Andy Scott of Showpony was recognised with the iconic trophy, receiving a standing ovation honouring his significant contribution to the local creative communications industry over the past 30 years.

Says Co-President Paul Kitching: “He is not the most outspoken person in the room, but when he speaks, you know that what he says is worth listening to. The ultimate quiet achiever. Someone who has not only filled our eyes and ears with clever copywriting and creative gems for decades – but recently opened our ears and minds to the lives of so many others in our creative industry through his podcast, CLICK.”

The Gold Chair, signifying the pinnacle of advertising excellence, was awarded to Showpony for the integrated campaign, “Sucks To Be You”. The campaign —which picked up a total of 7 awards on the night— delivered for South Australia Police, focused on the less life changing, but deeply uncool impact of losing your license and featured everything from digital videos made to look like native content, radio spots that flipped nursery rhymes into dark comic warnings, and eye-catching outdoor executions.

The Rita Siow Design Chair, named in the honour of the late Rita Siow, celebrates the most outstanding design entry of the year and was awarded to Voice®‘s packaging for Elseworld. The perpetual trophy was originally designed by the Voice® team, and from this morning sits proudly on their studio’s cabinet. The packaging project is an expedition into uncharted territory, a divergence from the ordinary and was a crowd favourite within the Design Jury.

The Master’s Chair for best in Craft went to Sean Kane of Fuller for his exceptional, custom-crafted typeface developed as part of Adelaide Football Club’s rebrand, also developed by Fuller. Built as a modern superfamily, the typeface flexes from narrow to wide, upright to italic — delivering clarity and presence across broadcast, screens, social and merch.

The Chair for Good was introduced in 2022 to highlight creative work that drives social change. This year, NATION’s work for Wildlife Crime Detection Hub took home the Chair for their “Easier to Detect” campaign.

This impactful campaign shows a series of animal smugglers being exposed with WCRH’s technology with an echidna posed as a travel pillow, a cockatoo’s feathers on display from a suitcase and a backpack resembling a koala at security. Each image makes it clear that the WCRH’s work is revealing animal trafficking, so smugglers can be caught red-handed, and stopped. The campaign successfully reframed wildlife crime as a mainstream issue that enabled the Wildlife Crime Detection Hub to increase public engagement, philanthropic donations and government funding.

A full tally of all the night’s Award and major award winners:

Showpony / 9 (plus the Gold Chair)
Fuller / 2 (plus the Master’s Chair)
Studio Landmark / 2
Simple / 2
NATION / 2 (plus the Chair for Good)
StudioBand® / 2
Voice® / 1 (plus the Rita Siow Design Chair)
Parallax / 1
Cornershop / 1
Seeingsounds / 1
The Audio Embassy / 1

The night also celebrated the future of the industry with the Student Awards, with Student of the Year being awarded to Jin Xin Kwok. Jin impressed the Jury with his work awarded across multiple projects, including his “Cannonball Bath Bomb” entry in the Idea category, which earned him the night’s top award.

A full tally of the night’s Student winners:

Jin Xin Kwok / 4 Awards
Hayley Reissen / 1 Award
Benjamin Anstey & Haylee Cook / 2 Awards
Tobias Heithersay / 1 Award

Finalist, award and major award entries can be seen in the gallery here https://aadc.awardsplatform.com/gallery.

The AADC would like to acknowledge the continued and generous support of its sponsors and volunteers who make not only the Awards program, but all of the Club’s ambitious agenda possible across the year.