The Conversation Starts Here

Welcome to “Ward to the Wise,” our new blog, dedicated to generously sharing our knowledge and expertise with you. In each edition, we intend to embolden you to cause communication that drives better results in every aspect of your business, the essence of the Ward brand:

Each quarter in “Ward to the Wise,” we will focus on a specific topic about which clients tend to have many questions. Each series will provide counsel, insight and practical tips for Causing Communication to work well in your organization, with your management, employees and external stakeholders.

We begin with a series on branding, in celebration of the launch of our new, shortened company name – Ward – and our own brand refresh and new website. Starting next week and continuing through April, we will explore the “Seven Reasons Brands Fail,” followed through the rest of 2014 by series on media relations, internal communications and digital media. Each edition will be authored by Ward professionals who will share their working knowledge of trends and best practices you can apply to your thinking and execution.

As we delve into the branding topic, it’s useful to understand that before you can effectively brand your company or your products and services, you must be truthful with yourself about your strengths, weaknesses, vision, mission and goals – and be willing to take actions that will enable your team to deliver on a distinguishing brand promise.

We did that here at Ward and discovered we needed an adjustment in how we communicate who and what we are. You see, Ward has evolved into a firm with a track record for helping clients cause business results through strategic communication. Yet, our company messages still reflected the firm’s origin as a traditional marketing and public relations firm. Our branding did not reflect who we became over the last two and a half decades, and what we’ve achieved out of our willingness to forgo self-imposed limits on the types of strategies we deploy on a client’s behalf.

As professional communicators, we believe – and witness firsthand – that companies that engage in conversation with their customers, shareholders, employees and the community are more financially and operationally successful. They tend to produce more revenue, less turnover, higher productivity, happier employees and more satisfied customers.

We believe conversation – weighted toward listening, followed by the authentic, transparent exchange of information, opinions and ideas – is an incredibly powerful thing, and we hope to start one with you … here.

We invite you to share your wisdom here too – with comments, requests for specific topics you want to learn more about, and as a guest author if you are so moved.

It’s exciting to have our “talk match our walk.” It’s energizing and empowering, and reminds us what we love about our work and the many intelligent, passionate and excellent communicators and business leaders we are privileged to work alongside every day.

We are Ward, and it’s our privilege to cause communication, both internal and external, that causes intended results, for you.

Thank you for visiting our new website, and Ward to the Wise. We look forward to “conversing” with you here in the days ahead.