Category: News

Get serious! The award-winning game, Triple R Guest Central, helps Red Robin International, Inc. achieve its objectives: creating exceptional, customized experiences for its guests and helping servers feel better, do better, and earn more tips.

San Francisco, California, Thursday, July 2, 2015 – SweetRush and Red Robin took home the Silver Award, the top honor in the corporate category, at the Serious Play Awards sponsored by the Serious Games Association.

Triple R Guest Central is an engaging, compelling, and fun iPad application that uses diverse, real-world scenarios to train servers on Red Robin’s approach to customer service.

“Gamification is the buzz in the corporate world of Learning & Development and for good reason: When done right, it works and is highly effective. We use game aesthetics and mechanics to engage people, motivate action, and promote learning. Triple R Guest Central demonstrates a perfect merger of our instructional and gaming disciplines,” said Arturo Schwartzberg, SweetRush Co-founder and Chairman.

Find out more about SweetRush’s approach to serious games, simulations and gamification at our website.

About the Serious Play Awards
The Serious Play Awards recognize outstanding examples of titles that deliver a high quality of engagement and learning opportunities for students, employees, or other education or training situations.

About SweetRush
Dream for a moment that you have the expertise and tools to positively impact the lives of others. You can affect mindsets and behavior. You can help a business grow, change, prosper, and thrive. The passionate pursuit of this expertise and development of these tools has been at the heart of the success SweetRush has experienced collaborating with clients who share the same dream.

SweetRush’s focus on team culture and mastery of performance improvement is reflected in a near-zero turnover of teammates, loyal clients, a 14-year track record of success, and a remarkable portfolio. Our work with clients has earned us gold awards from our peers and high ranking on the top training industry lists.

Every solution we deliver is infused with creativity. Instructional creativity allows us to discover effective and unique solutions to our clients’ challenges. Artistic creativity spurs us to create visually exciting, engaging user experiences. Technical creativity allows us to embrace new capabilities and platforms as they emerge, such as gamification and mobile delivery. We apply the creative lens to all things, from project management to how we treat our teammates, clients, and the planet.

We are over 100 people strong and have been in business since 2001. Our deliverables span from analysis and curriculum mapping to the creation of blended training products, including live and virtual classroom and the full gamut of custom-developed e-learning modalities.

Dream with us, and together let’s make a positive impact!

Training Industry Inc. announces the 2015 Top 20 list, in which SweetRush is recognized for the quality of its clients and portfolio, as well as its industry visibility, innovation, and impact.

 

SAN FRANCISCO, Ca., May 21, 2015 – SweetRush Inc., a performance improvement company creating effective and engaging learning solutions that make a positive impact on businesses and their employees, has been added to the prestigious Top 20 Content Development Companies List on TrainingIndustry.com.
View the 2015 Top 20 Content Development Companies.
“This year’s Top 20 Content Development companies are finding unique and effective ways to design learning programs to support employee, partner, and customer development across all industries,” said Doug Harward, chief executive officer, Training Industry, Inc.

“We are deeply honored to have been selected by TrainingIndustry.com, and to be associated with such an outstanding group of industry leaders,” said Arturo Schwartzberg, chairman and co-founder, SweetRush Inc.

“The Top 20 Content Development list serves as a source of innovation and new ideas every year,” said Ken Taylor, president, Training Industry, Inc. “The companies on this year’s list continue to create superior and engaging content for all modalities.”

TrainingIndustry.com announced its Top 20 Content Development Companies List as part of its mission to continually monitor the training marketplace for the best providers of training services and technologies.

This year the Top 20 Content Development Companies list was based on the following criteria:

• • Industry visibility, innovation and impact
• • Capability to develop and deliver multiple types of content
• • Company size and growth potential
• • Depth and breadth of subject matter expertise
• • Quality of clients
• • Geographic reach

About SweetRush
At SweetRush we help organizations improve employee performance by teaching knowledge and skills and, ultimately, changing behavior. Through analysis, we get to the heart of the business drivers and what is important to learners, and then design learning solutions and communications that meet our clients’ objectives. Our learning solutions are typically blended, and we excel at the intersection of instructional, visual, and technical creativity, which results in effective and interactive training, and a high ROI for our clients. Our work leverages our expertise in gamification, simulations, and mobile applications.

SweetRush is about 100 people strong, has been in business since 2001, and, similar to most companies in the industry, is comprised of instructional designers (of various flavors), multimedia designers, engineers, project and program managers, and solution architects. However, beyond the similarities, we like to promote that we are different, as we say, in a good way. We do not have salespeople, and the moment you touch us, you will be in the hands of one of our solution architects, a consultative expert. We have a truly remarkable and committed team and a unique culture that is validated by our near-zero turnover. Our culture is based on caring: caring about each other, our clients, and the planet. For more information about our company please visit www.sweetrush.com. We’d be honored to work together, so please reach out.

About Training Industry
TrainingIndustry.com spotlights the latest news, articles, case studies and best practices within the training industry. Our focus is to help dedicated businesses and training professionals get the information, insight and tools needed to more effectively manage the business of learning.

A video that won the hearts and minds of sales associates captures the judges’ attention to win Silver in the training video category.

SAN FRANCISCO, Ca., Jun 23, 2015 – SweetRush Inc. was honored with the Silver Award in the training video category for the 2015 Stevie Awards® for our collaboration with Bridgestone Americas on the Consumer Tire Education Program Motivational video.

Finalists were chosen by scores of business professionals nationwide during first-round judging in April and May. Members of several specialized judging committees will determine Stevie Award placements from among the Finalists during final judging, to take place later this month.

“Heightened use of multimedia such as 3D, avatars, animation, and video are keeping learners engaged and making our jobs a lot more interesting and creative. We love this work and are of course thrilled to be recognized by our peers for the outstanding work our team is delivering,” stated Arturo Schwartzberg, SweetRush’s chairman and co-founder.

More than 3,300 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories.

“So many fascinating and inspiring stories of success were submitted to the ABAs this year,” said Stevie® Awards president and founder Michael Gallagher. “We congratulate all of our 2015 Finalists on their achievements.”

The Stevie® Awards are a division of the American Business Awards, which are considered the nation’s preeminent business awards program. All organizations operating in the U.S.A. are eligible to submit nominations – public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small.

About SweetRush
Dream for a moment that you have the expertise and tools to positively impact the lives of others. You can affect mindsets and behavior. You can help a business grow, change, prosper, and thrive. The passionate pursuit of this expertise and development of these tools has been at the heart of the success SweetRush has experienced collaborating with clients who share the same dream.

SweetRush’s focus on team culture and mastery of performance improvement is reflected in a near-zero turnover of teammates, loyal clients, a 14-year track record of success, and a remarkable portfolio. Our work with clients has earned us gold awards from our peers and high ranking on the top training industry lists.

Every solution we deliver is infused with creativity. Instructional creativity allows us to discover effective and unique solutions to our clients’ challenges. Artistic creativity spurs us to create visually exciting, engaging user experiences. Technical creativity allows us to embrace new capabilities and platforms as they emerge, such as gamification and mobile delivery. We apply the creative lens to all things, from project management to how we treat our teammates, clients, and the planet.

We are over 100 people strong and have been in business since 2001. Our deliverables span from analysis and curriculum mapping to the creation of blended training products, including live and virtual classroom and the full gamut of custom-developed e-learning modalities.

Dream with us, and together let’s make a positive impact!

Inclusion on the first annual list confirms SweetRush’s best-in-class custom gamification and game-based learning solutions.

Training Industry has announced its Top 20 Gamification Companies List of organizations supporting corporate learning and development with gamification services/technologies, and SweetRush has earned its place on the list.

Doug Harward, Training Industry Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer, explains, “These Top 20 companies provide creative gaming tools to improve and reinforce corporate learning. The gamification segment has become a critical component in many training companies’ portfolios, and these select companies showcase the best of that market.”

For more than 13 years SweetRush has been creating custom courses enhanced with gamification elements; unique, memorable classroom experiences with team and multi-player games; multimedia-rich, scenario-based mobile app games for iPad and tablet delivery; custom, “gamified” learning portals; and serious games – complex, branching simulations reaching the highest cognitive levels and teaching sophisticated concepts.

Arturo Schwartzberg, SweetRush’s Chairman, stated, “We are all about changing behavior to improve business prospects, and gamification is an awesome way for us to engage audiences and enhance the effects of our work. We are psyched to be recognized by Trainingindustry.com for the many years of research and development we’ve put into these efforts. Game on!”

To produce a wide array of successful gamified learning solutions, two ingredients are required: a trusting and collaborative client and a highly integrated vendor team of gamification-savvy IDs, creative directors, engineers, and multi-media artists. SweetRush is blessed to have a deep gamification bench, led by Creative Director John Carlos Lozano and Senior Instructional Designer Cindy McCabe.

About Training Industry, Inc.

TrainingIndustry.com spotlights the latest news, articles, case studies, and best practices within the training industry. Their focus is on helping dedicated business and training professionals get the information, insight, and tools needed to more effectively manage the business of learning.

Selection to this year’s Top 20 Gamification Companies List was based on the following criteria:

• Features and capabilities of the gamification products/services.

• Company size and growth potential.

• Quality and number of clients/users.

• Awards, recognition, and competitive differentiation.

The award highlights SweetRush’s ability to fully leverage all technology-based modalities in the creation of highly engaging and effective learning solutions.

SweetRush, together with its client Bridgestone Tires, received the esteemed Learning in Practice Gold Award for Blended Technology from Chief Learning Officer magazine. The award showcases how SweetRush embraced Bridgestone’s challenge of winning the hearts and minds of sales associates employed by independent distributors of Bridgestone Tire’s products. To achieve this goal, SweetRush engaged the effort from an up-front analysis of the demographic and the challenge, through to delivery of an innovative curriculum that integrates e-learning, mobile, gamification, 3D, animation, and interactive portal design.

To maximize the efficacy of the content, motivate associates to take the courses (which could not be mandatory), and increase engagement, SweetRush developed education-based marketing, creating a new brand, a communication strategy, and an extensive curriculum of engaging courses. One interesting example of education-based marketing is this two-minute, fully 3D animated, motivational video that can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/1s3xZYr.

The project has been extremely successful, impacting approximately 128,000 learners.

SweetRush CEO Andrei Hedstrom commented, “Our client partners at Bridgestone understand how to collaborate with world-class advertising, marketing, and learning teams to keep their business vibrant. We are grateful to have been integrated into their team, and this award is further proof that the contributions of next-generation training and development firms are not only important but also a differentiator.”

SweetRush is honored to be recognized by its peers on the CLO Learning in Practice awards committee.

The award was presented at the CLO Learning in Practice Dinner at the Fall 2014 CLO Symposium on Sunday, October 5 at the Park Hyatt Aviara, Carlsbad, California.

About the Learning in Practice Blended Technology Award

For more than 10 years, the Chief Learning Officer Learning In Practice awards has recognized “learning leaders who demonstrate excellence in the design and delivery of employee development programs through a combination of qualities such as leadership, vision, business acumen, and strategic alignment.”

The Gold, Silver and Bronze awards are given annually to practitioners and providers. The Excellence in Blended Technology Award recognizes vendors “that have deployed a rich mix of technology tools in support of a client’s learning program that delivers engaging learning combining multiple modalities, such as e-learning, mobile devices, social collaboration tools, and games.”

SweetRush is happy to share that we have been featured in the Environmental Leader 2013 Insider Knowledge Report. The report features short stories of lessons learned from 120 corporate sustainability leaders — from large brands such as Anheuser-Busch, Nokia, and General Motors — to smaller businesses such as us! Our story is in the Strategy & Leadership section as an example of launching a corporate social responsibility (CSR) program in a smaller B2B company. We’ve reprinted our submission below, but you can also check it and other stories out by downloading the full report HERE.

Good Things come in all sizes.

Many CSR success stories come from large, public companies and focus on their energy savings or employee engagement stories. Less often do you hear success stories from the little guys: the smaller B2B vendors who also care about doing good in their businesses, but who have fewer resources and no public pressure. SweetRush is one such company, and we have succeeded by turning our existing skills toward CSR projects. We hope that the story of the birth of our sustainability initiative helps inspire other small businesses to find their own ways to do good things for people, planet, and profit.

The Birth of Good Things.

Five years ago, while working at an environmental NGO, I (Brooking) met Andrei Hedstrom, CEO of a small, private, learning and training company. With a new baby girl in his life, Andrei became deeply concerned about the future of her planet. When we met, he was a keen student of sustainability, and had started scoping ways to green his own business. We stayed in touch after this professional encounter, chatting periodically about sustainability and business management. One day, he called me for a chat, and a new clarity emerged in the conversation: it was time. SweetRush was ready for its sustainability transformation. Andrei hired me to guide this transformation of the organization’s identity in November 2011. A year later, SweetRush had a healthy baby of its own: the Good Things Initiative (GTI).

Right timing.

Four factors stand out as contributing to the successful implementation of SweetRush’s new program in 2012.

1) SweetRush is no stranger to change. The company began in 2001 with a focus on B2B marketing, and has evolved to become a leading vendor for custom content, project management, and consulting services in the e-learning industry. During the recession, we went completely virtual to save on office expenses. Our employees adapted so well that we’ve stayed virtual by popular demand!

2) Alignment with existing company culture. Before our recent rebrand, “We Care” was the SweetRush tagline. This culture of caring — for each other, clients, and community — was a deep part of SweetRush culture. Bringing in a sustainability program was easy to sell as an extension of this existing ethos.

3) CEO leadership. Andrei’s passion and the respect he holds amongst employees were crucial for acceptance of this new strategic direction. Andrei had been planting seeds for years toward a green future for SweetRush, and most of our employees’ eco-education came directly from his evangelism.

4) Alignment with business strategy. By fall of 2011, when we began pushing this initiative, most of our Fortune 500 target clients had sustainability programs in place — key for our B2B strategy. Research showed a gap in effective implementation of these programs, however — especially for employee engagement and supplier sustainability standards — and none of our competitors had acted on this gap. Even for skeptics, the case was clear for applying our expertise to clients’ sustainability programs as means of market differentiation and diversification.

So indeed, it was time: with SweetRush poised to expand its public face and differentiate itself, adding a stronger focus on both internal sustainability and client-facing corporate responsibility services simply made good business sense.

On the ground and running.

Over the course of 2012, we developed the (GTI) through three main channels:

1) Internal employee education and engagement
a. We shared content on sustainability, and CSR basics and initiative details, through internal educational memos and team conversations.
b. A special volunteering day, upgrading a schoolyard in Costa Rica, was a key team-bonding and momentum-building event for the initiative.

2) A total rebrand
a. We built a new public identity, first with Facebook and LinkedIn, then brochures, and finally launching a beautiful new website, brand, and blog in late 2012.
b. The result: a more than 400 percent increase in website hits since our Facebook launch!

3) Integration with core strategy
a. Ensuring leadership and resource commitment, particularly in marketing and business development.
b. GTI helps us test new technical skills through pro bono projects (such as a free, online, sustainability game coming in summer of 2013!).
c. A success story: We won a bid on a major client project because our CSR commitment differentiated us from the pack.

The GTI is a win-win-win: for us strategically and ethically, for our clients who get more impact from their CSR input, and for the people and planet who benefit. Good Things indeed!

SweetRush was awarded the 2012 Brandon Hall Excellence Gold Award for Best Use of Games for Learning. The game, Tick Tock Tax, is a “pub trivia”-style game, designed to engage large groups and assess their knowledge during new-hire onboarding. The award highlights SweetRush’s work on the leading edge of adult learning, creative design, and technology, where the company has focused for over 11 years.

Tick Tock Tax, which also recently won Chief Learning Officer magazine’s Learning in Practice Certificate of Merit award, addresses a challenge common to intensive, multi-week, new-hire onboarding or similar programs: How do you keep learners engaged, review and reinforce what they’ve learned, and provide opportunities for networking and team-building? SweetRush capitalized on a client willing to explore alternatives and, after rounds of brainstorming with the client, chose to leverage the concept of the pub trivia game.

The company developed a customized game that has learners use their knowledge to help their team compete for first place. The high-energy format appeals to the young audience and reinforces the concepts learned and the value of team-based problem-solving. A big plus is giving new hires an up-tempo feeling about their newly adopted employer. The game is built to be easily modifiable, and the client continues to repurpose the game for new audiences.

“As all facets of the industry-wide technology infrastructure have matured, our 10-year commitment to building a strong engineering team, complemented with an equal focus on creative design, allow our instructional designers to now leverage all the tools and possibilities that can be used to change the behavior of client’s employees, and the Tick Tock Tax project is one reflection of this,” said Arturo Schwartzberg, SweetRush chairman, and co-founder.

About SweetRush

SweetRush’s focus on team culture and craft is reflected in loyal clients, a uniquely low turnover of teammates, a 20-year track record of success, and a remarkable portfolio. Our work with clients, custom solutions for talent empowerment, and people success have earned us gold awards from our peers and high rankings on the top industry lists.

We are over 200 people strong and have been in business since 2001. Our service areas include Custom Learning (including eLearning, mobile, gamification, and virtual training), Talent Solutions (temporary talent to augment our clients’ L&D teams), XR/Immersive Tech (VR, AR, and emerging technologies), Transforming Leaders & Culture (expert coaching and consulting to create connected, unified cultures, leaders, and teams), and Good Things (amplifying the impact of nonprofits and the social impact space). Every day, we give thanks for the trust of our world-class clients. Learn more and get in touch with SweetRush at www.sweetrush.com.