Ad professor wins top honor at ADDY Awards

The American Advertising Federation of the Midlands honored Professor Bonnie Drewniany with the AAF Silver Medal Award at the annual ADDY Awards held at the Township Auditorium on Feb. 23.

The silver medal is the highest honor an AAF chapter can bestow. Recipients are selected based on three criteria: professional success, creative ability, contributions to the general advancement of advertising and contributions to the community.

The following comments on Drewniany's selection for this honor are reprinted with permission from the AAF of the Midlands awards program:

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. 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's 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 twelve consecutive years. (Read more>)

Drewniany is the Honorary Lifetime Board Member and Education Chair on the Board of Directors of the AAF of the Midlands. She sits on the board of the American Advertising Federation, Third District, and National Academic Committee of the AAF. 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's the curator of her own private museum of advertising 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 Snap, Crackle and Pop stand alongside more modern figures such as the California Raisins and Gidget, the Taco Bell Chihuahua. (Read more>)

Her textbook, Creative Strategy in Advertising, which she co-authored with A. Jerome Jewler, is now in its ninth edition.

Prior to joining USC, Drewniany 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 Seton 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.

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