Natalie DeYoung, Vice President of PR & Communications, Wingard

In an interview with Invest, Natalie DeYoung, vice president of public relations and communications for Wingard, analyzed the role that marketing and communications play in business success. She also described how the company harnesses data analytics and the experience of its staff to deliver quality campaigns.

What areas of Wingard’s marketing and communications services portfolio are in greatest demand?

We have seen a lot of growth in demand for social media and digital marketing, which follows how media consumption habits have changed. From consumer businesses to B2B brands, companies want to better understand how they can reach their customers where they are. They want to home in on how to engage customers who are important to their success, and ensure their content resonates.

We are seeing a heightened awareness of the complementary relationship between good content and a strong strategy (with budget behind it) to ensure it reaches the right people. 

Why do companies in Jacksonville need to have a story and what is the importance of branding and messaging?

Regardless of what industry you are in, you need to be able to articulate why people should care and why they should engage with your organization. That holds true from nonprofits to corporate and government entities. If your messaging, branding and communications are not doing that, you are missing an opportunity for impact.

That is what drives our team to come in every day and deliver creative ideas and solutions for our partners. If we can help a business grow through more effective marketing, then it can hire more people and bring more talent to our area. That growth will also provide more resources (time and money) to invest in our local nonprofits, and as a result those organizations can grow and give back more to the people in our community that need it most. It becomes a virtuous cycle where people and businesses commingle in a way that helps our community grow and prosper. 

Additionally, branding and communications are critical because when companies compete against organizations that do similar work, differentiating their value is the way to continue growing. Jacksonville has an expanding population and business community, as well as an evolving media landscape that includes both traditional and newer media outlets. When companies are trying to reach a hyper-local audience, their brand and message must stand out. They need to be clear about their value proposition, because otherwise they are one more message in a sea of posts that people scroll past.

What is the strategy of Wingard to stand out and differentiate itself from other advertising and marketing firms in Greater Jacksonville?

We have intentionally focused on Northeast Florida and supporting this region. A lot of our industry peers go pursue large national accounts or pick an industry to focus on once they get to a certain size. We chose not to take either route, and to intentionally focus on finding more ways to support this area. We have continuously reinvested our time, resources, people, and energy into this community.

Our vision is realized potential for our client partners, our community and our people. That means when our client partners do well, that creates an opportunity to grow the community, which in turn creates more opportunities for our staff to grow professionally. We take a lot of pride in being a company where people want to build their career, develop their skills, and stay. We have expanded our team over the last few years while maintaining a strong retention rate, thanks to marrying our commitment to this region to our company culture.

How is the company leveraging data analytics to serve its clients’ communication strategies better?

Technology is a tremendous driver of change in our industry. We leverage it to make our research and strategy development as efficient as possible. That includes looking into demographic and consumer behavior resources to understand the interests, habits, and key identifiers of target markets and consumers. Data informs our recommendations and is paired with our team’s extensive first-hand knowledge. We benefit from both pieces — qualitative and quantitative insights — throughout that input process. 

We use data to help us identify the most efficient placement for a client’s budget to reach as many people as possible based on the customers they are trying to reach. We have a program for media planning that allows us to input a client’s goals, budget, and consumer data, and it helps us populate a sample media plan that we can then tweak based on budget and priorities. On the digital marketing front, there are a lot of tools that we use to optimize a social media or digital campaign so that it reaches the right audiences.

What opportunities do new technologies such as AI bring for Wingard to improve its operations?

AI is an interesting evolution for our industry. We see the most benefit as a research tool and administrative aid. ChatGPT and other generative AI products are helpful to gather and distill information, particularly when briefing ourselves on a new industry that a client is entering or when we need to scan through a lot of information to pull out key points. We also use an AI program to gather, share, and synthesize meeting notes.

There is a lot of interest and discussion around how copyright plays into the AI conversation. We are mindful of protecting copyright and confidential information to avoid exposing partners to undue risk. If a client hires us to deliver an original design or plan, we have a responsibility to deliver an original product for them. We lean heavily on our team’s creative capabilities for design, communications, and PR, while seeking opportunities to use AI to make our team more efficient on the administrative side. 

What are some of the most important challenges that Wingard has identified in Jacksonville?

One of our current challenges is also an enormous opportunity: harnessing the population growth throughout our region (including St. Johns County, Nassau County and Clay County) to increase engagement with organizations and destinations here in Jacksonville. Newcomers are looking for ways to support nonprofits, experience the urban core, participate in public policy, and attend events. So many people are moving here without truly grasping all that Jacksonville has to offer. Part of our role at Wingard is to help these neighbors learn about their new community in a meaningful way.

The media landscape also continues to change. There is a continued evolution of legacy media, as traditional newspapers and broadcast outlets diversify their product offerings to reach audiences in new ways. We work to stay ahead of that curve and understand how their programming, needs, and audience demands are shifting so we can advise our clients appropriately.