The Process

It’s a disciplined, collaborative process, deliberately designed and incorporating a deep dive into market analytics. This leads to discoveries that lay the foundation for brand performance.

Early humans were hunter-gatherers. Sound marketing strategy starts with gathering, too, only we’re gathering insights. At Wray Ward, we also include “convening” — and the interplay between gathering and convening is critical. Combined, it’s:

1. Gathering information, understanding and insights and building a unique perspective of these items collectively. The gathering stage can include exercises such as brand immersion, audience personas and experience maps.
2. Convening and collaborating to better understand how information sheds light onto the problem and opportunity, how it drives new thinking, and how goals can be reframed or more clearly articulated. This stage produces a central, focused strategy for how a brand will achieve its desired objectives.

These steps are built to scale up or down, speed up or slow down. The process can be complex and intensive for brands that don’t have a lot of material to work with, especially if primary marketplace research is needed and/or multiple target audiences are involved.

You can’t expect to build a strong strategic foundation overnight. Trust the process, and you’ll uncover truths that become integral to the company’s operations for years to come.

The Goals

We’re always thinking in stereo, because success is equally dependent on your business goals and brand goals.

Business goals are crisply defined and measured along the way. Do you want to introduce a new product? Displace your more established competition in a high-stakes home improvement retail space? Increase your sales revenue by X%?

On the flip side, brand goals are no less critical but hinge on things such as growing customer devotion and loyalty and building strong brand connections.

No matter what’s happening in your own landscape or the goals you want to achieve, a strong strategic foundation is the key to brand performance. We have the raw material to build yours — let’s build it together.