Sperry Wins Major Marketing Awards
By Joann Jordan
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Jeanne Sperry
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Explore, the interactive game Sperry created for Shaw Industries |
Kennesaw State University Associate Professor of
Art Jeanne Sperry’s work with Shaw Industries recently received two platinum awards and one honorable mention in the 2007 Hermes Creative Awards competition. Sperry, who teaches graphic design at KSU, also works as a consultant, collaborating with writer and trainer Lynne Peer of Peer Resource Group. Together they have worked the last several years with the Shaw Learning Academy, a program of Shaw Industries in Dalton, Ga. Sperry produced the graphics for an extensive branding campaign, an interactive board game, and other projects for Shaw Learning Academy.
Shaw received the platinum awards for the branding project and for an interactive board game called EXPLORE the flooring industry! The game includes 850 flooring-related questions and scenarios about product knowledge, sales skills, history and color. The game can be played by individuals or teams and is intended to add competition and excitement to the learning process for retail sales associates. Shaw Learning Academy also won an honorable mention for an e-newsletter called “New Floor You.” The e-newsletter contains Shaw Industries flooring information, as well as articles on sales strategies and technical topics.
“It’s very unusual for a company to win three awards,” said Sperry. “Shaw has a strong commitment to the value of training and strong standards and it’s wonderful to work with Dani Brock and the team at Shaw Learning Academy.”
Sperry definitely sees the value of working in the field that she is teaching. “If I am asking students to be prepared for the real world, I should be doing what I am teaching them. Graphic design changes constantly and it’s important to keep abreast of what’s needed in the marketplace, what media people are thinking and doing and what is demanded of them by their companies. I think I provide students a really strong sense of what it will be like in the world of work.”
Sperry has had her own company, Cherokeered, for more than 25 years and has been teaching for 12 years. She loves graphic design and also loves teaching. “I enjoy it when the light bulb clicks and I see a student transformed. It’s rewarding to watch students moving from not being able to do something to grasping a concept, because then they start to be powerful,” she said. “I am really teaching thinking and problem solving. That’s the real joy—to see students take an idea and create a design or illustration that provides a solution.”
The Hermes Creative Awards is an international competition overseen by the Association for Marketing and Communication Professionals. Their mission is to honor excellence in the industry and recognize hard work, creativity and generosity.
Shaw Learning Academy is a comprehensive resource for developing and educating employees, customers and suppliers of Shaw Industries. Shaw Industries is recognized by Training Magazine as one of its top 125 training companies because of their dedication to achieving business objectives through training staff, customers and vendors.
