Wayne Congar designs, builds & changes businesses.

HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?

He combines strategy, design, and technology to define products, solve problems, and help innovative companies communicate.

WHO?

Wayne is a creative director by talent, an architect by training, a serial entrepreneur through trial and error, and a creative business strategist by trade He’s spent the last decade designing and building category-breaking businesses, and wants to hear about yours.

OK, I’M INTERESTED…

Wayne believes all great business initiatives require a mix of ingredients. A start-up’s cleverness. A big company’s strategic focus. A commitment to clarity. And something delightfully unexpected. He’s combined those elements while guiding clients across all verticals and stages in the business cycle. He’s the founder and CEO of Mayday, a full-service agency he built from the ground up to include a global staff servicing a global client list. It was acquired in 2016. With Wayne at the helm, Mayday successfully delivered more than 250 strategic, branded, content-focused and digital solutions to its clients. He is the founder of Buho, a VR/AR video production service. It was also acquired in 2016. Wayne brings a diverse set of experiences and skills to the challenges facing early-stage companies looking to get started and grow, or established organizations in need of a refresh or in pursuit of an exit.

WHO HAVE YOU WORKED WITH?

Celebrated venture-backed start-ups, Fortune 500s and everyone in between. Wayne has partnered with some of the best to deliver creative solutions that drive business results. Check out some selected partners here:

HAPPY PARTNERS

BRAD HARGREAVES

CEO, Common

“Wayne has been a partner since day one, working alongside us to build the brand, develop our voice, and translate guidelines into reality. A great collaborator in building Common’s flexible, community-driven living spaces.”

JASON QUINN

Head of Product, Trumid

“Wayne and his team were the ideal firm to help Trumid apply modern-day UX principals to an institutional trading platform. He worked seamlessly alongside our team to create a product that is simple and easy to use.”

LEE SAVAGE

Founder & CEO, Lee Savage

“Wayne was an ideal partner in the early days of my business. He understood the product, how it should be presented, and focused on delivering the creative brand and digital solutions to present my line to the marketplace.”

RAUL MENDOZA

Global Marketing, Levi's

“Wayne has been a great partner - timely, effective and creative. We truly would be steps behind the competition if it wasn’t for the ability of him and his team to bring ideas to fruition.”

SO, UH, WHAT DO YOU DO? THAT ALL DEPENDS.

START-UP

Maybe you just decided to say “Fuck it” to your full-time job and you’re ready to pursue your big idea? Maybe you’re just testing the waters and need a gut check over coffee. Let’s chat. Wayne’s worked with more than a hundred founding teams, defining their strategies, developing their brands, and helping to guide them to market. Some have gone belly-up. More than a few have grown into national brands and household names. Collectively, Wayne’s early-stage clients have raised more than a half billion dollars in venture funding. Those early-stage businesses have operated across diverse verticals, from luxury accessories to co-living housing, from corporate bond trading to language learning. What are you working towards? Need some help getting there? You may need help on product definition, brand strategy, corporate voice, visual identity, go-to-market planning, or some real talk over coffee.

Naming

What’s in a name? A lot. Brand names are the first thing customers remember. And forget.

Messaging

Your business needs a narrative, one that staff, customers, press, and investors can believe in.

Identity Design

Your brand identity is both visual and verbal. It’s the personality that makes your business worthy of love.

Product Definition

A poorly-defined product or service is the number one contributor to start-up failures. Let’s get this right.

Model Definition

OK, we have a product. Let’s define our market and how, exactly, we’re going to make money from this venture.

Marketing Collateral

Time to bring the branding, the product, and the model together into a presentation for customers and investors.

GROWTH STAGE

Your business is looking like a serious operation. You have customers, a product, you’re collecting revenue, and are looking beyond this month into next year and beyond. Now what? Is it time to fundraise to finance customer outreach? Do you need a fresh perspective on your brand? Do you need to develop a second line of revenue or invest in a new product? While your business is growing, it’s easy to forget all the great, focused decisions you made to get you here. And, it’s easy to get lost chasing after exciting - but underdeveloped - new ideas without shoring up the foundations. With growth-stage businesses, Wayne focuses on the fundamentals, with the understanding that it’s easier to hunt big game when you know bread’s already on the table at home.

Innovation Strategy

There’s more to it than waiting for a Eureka! moment. It’s a process to catch and release innovation.

Brand Refresh

You’ve outgrown the language and visuals of the brand that got you here. Let’s punch it up.

Audience

We have some customers and revenue, but do we have an outlet to express our domain expertise?

Collateral

The old decks and site aren’t doing it anymore. Let’s get those in line with your new, fresh outlook.

Corporate Charter

Your team needs to be aligned and committed to a set of common company goals. Let’s define them.

Opportunities

You’re doing something right. Let’s review what you already have in place and how we can utilize it.

ESTABLISHED BUSINESS

Your business is the real deal. It has predictable recurring revenue, there are all kinds of systems in place to track, monitor, and optimize various components of the operation. You’ve graduated beyond “ROI” and “Customer Acquisiton Costs” as conversation starters, and are frequently using terms like EBITDA during meetings concerned with the enterprise value of your operation. You may even be a public company or Fortune 500 focusing on how each of your new initiatives - campaigns, new product development, department-building - contribute to a longer-term corporate strategy. Wayne’s advised big companies like P&G on talent acquisition, Google on product release campaigns, Yahoo! on trade marketing, and Marriott on branding a new hotel collection.

Innovation Strategy

Great ideas live within your big company, you just need the right tools to mine them and put them into action.

Marketing Strategy

Big companies need to market their products like small companies, focusing on cleverness and impact.

Content Strategy

Big companies make a lot of content - how can we package it wider distribution?

New Revenue Types

Maybe that product you use internally could be an industry tool? Let’s take a look under the hood.

Exit Strategy

You’re ready to sell your business and move on to the next big thing. We can craft an disciplined approach.

Brainstorming

Sometimes you just need someone from the outside to talk to about what’s going on inside.

SOMETIMES, A GOOD QUOTE IS ALL YOU REALLY NEED.

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion. Creativity and innovation are about finding unexpected solutions to obvious problems , or finding obvious solutions to unexpected problems. We should use our creativity to provide better businesses and solutions rather than constantly trying to disrupt what people are doing. Just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you need to – restraint is something I admire. At the end of the day, it is still a battle between good vs. crap. Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business. Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it’s not random. A passionate belief in your business and personal objectives can make all the difference between success and failure - if you aren’t proud of what you’re doing why should anyone else be? A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well. Without change there is no innovation , creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable. There are no secrets to success - It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. If people like you, they’ll listen to you. If people trust you, they’ll do business with you. The first rule of any technology used in a business is automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify inefficiency. Sometime when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations. The superior man understand what is right; the inferior man understand what will sell.

YOU’RE STILL HERE?

OK, before you click contact to write me or leave, a couple last thoughts. First, it’s not just a load of salesman chat - I really am interested in your business. I feel kindred spirit with people looking to start something or build something or going through the daily war of keeping something moving forward. And, usually, I really can help. And, if I don’t think I can, I’ll be straight with you right off the bat. How about a little bit on the design of the site? My two favorite packaging designs of all time are from Malin + Goetz and Dr. Bronner’s. Both play with text as a graphical element in a way that I’ve never really seen done effectively online: it’s dense and requires you to actually read a little bit to understand the point. I’m also into the visual qualities of ancient Talmudic texts and heavy legal documents, so that probably creeped into my idea here as well.