2/25/2008

AAF of the Midlands News Alert (February 25, 2008):

Drewniany Honored with Silver Medal at AAF of the Midlands 2008 ADDY Awards!

Bonnie Drewniany became the latest to receive the American Advertising Federation's (AAF) Silver Medal Award on February 23, 2008 at the Township Auditorium in Columbia, South Carolina. The Silver Medal is the highest honor an AAF Chapter can bestow. Drewniany earned the Silver Medal for her exemplary work, creativity and dedication to the Columbia advertising community.

For over 18 years, she has helped shape the minds of the next generation of advertising professionals as an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina (USC), Columbia. She also sits on a number of academic committees and heads such projects as the Ad Bowl, Ad Bowl Symposium and the Annual Cocky Award.

Her academic research focuses on advertising's portrayal of minorities, women and older people. She has presented her findings at gatherings from Columbia to Honolulu and has been published in the Wall Street Journal as well as a number of academic publications. She also earned special recognition from the American Advertising Federation as the only professor in the nation to have had a Most Promising Minority Student for ten consecutive years.

Drewniany is the Honorary Lifetime Board Member and Education Chair on the Board of Directors for AAF of the Midlands. She sits on the Board of the American Advertising Federation, Third District and National Academic Committee of the American Advertising Federation. She's also a member of the American Academy of Advertising, a former ADDY Awards judge and advisor to the Student Advertising Federation at USC.

Additionally, she isthe curator of her own private museum of advertisng icons. She houses over 1,000 individual items in her collection, spanning a century of advertising. Classics such as the Morton Salt Girl, Mr. Peanut and Snack, Crackle and Pop stand alongside more modern figures such as the California Raisins and Gidget, the Taco Bell Chihuahua.

Drewniany's textbook, Creative Strategy in Advertising, which she co-authored with A. Jerome Jewler, is now in its ninth edition. Prior to joining the University of South Carolina, she worked as a visiting professor at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. She also taught as an adjunct at Parsons School of Design, Rutgers University and Secton Hall University.

She spent ten years with the R. H. Macy Corporation, where she was advertising copy director for the New Jersey Division. She freelanced for F. A. O. Schwartz, Fortunoff's and American Express.

Drewniany earned her MBA from Rutgers University with a concentration in marketing and her BS from Syracuse University, with a concentration in mass communications.