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Jury

Ellie Bamford
SVP, Global Head of Media and Connections
R/GA

NEW YORK, USA // Ellie Bamford is the Global Head of Media & Connections at R/GA, Australian, New Yorker, and Ad Age's Media Planner of the Year 2022. A leading member of the LGBTQIA community, Ellie has significantly helped reframe the relationship between creative and media at R/GA since joining the company three years ago.

With 20+ years in the business of marketing, Ellie advises brands how to thrive in a connected world through media, communication, purpose and human experience. Leading R/GA's strategy, media, comms and influence practice across the global network; Ellie believes that media can change people’s experiences in a positive way. To create access and inclusivity and shed a light on bias; you must have a connected relationship between media and creative. When you operate this way as a brand, as a marketer, as an agency; Ellie knows you can make every piece of work deliver something wonderful and valuable for the human who sees it.

She has delivered on this belief and mission through progressive, award-winning media work for Reddit, Pepsi, Nike, FILA, Uber, Samsung, Spotify, Sephora, American Express and more. A Cannes Lions Media Juror, she is also known for pushing for change, and infusing diversity in her teams and the work they create for client partners. This thoughtful approach has led Ellie to be the mastermind behind some of R/GA’s human-centered work like: Changing the search experience for Sephora to push discovery of Black Beauty content. Ellie noted, “We set out to correct an overlooked error via a simple, but smart search hack. This helped shine a light on bias that exists in the everyday search experience. Because when you search for Black Beauty, you should see Black Beauty, and not a horse.” This work for Sephora and Black Beauty is a multi-show award winner, pulling in a total of 9 awards, two shortlists, and a host of merits and honorable mentions, culminating with a Silver Cannes Lion.

Ellie is also known for using savvy media thinking to help clients outsmart their competitors by delivering value and creativity to all media experiences. An example includes Reddit’s 5-second Super Bowl that was made within a week, and named by The New York Times as the “unlikely Super Bowl winner.” This Super Bowl game-changer experience led to a Cannes Lions' Grand Prix in Social Media win, contributing to R/GA’s best-ever awards performance for the media department: 12 wins, 35 shortlists, and wins in seven new categories.

Ellie is not afraid to blow up old media systems to unlock unexpected innovation. In fact, R/GA’s global media practice celebrated a 50% spike in revenue in 2021/22 as a result of Ellie’s drive and thinking to treat media as a creative discipline.