Wray Ward has added four accolades to its portfolio. The creative agency was recognized with awards from industry leaders PR Daily and Ragan Communications for client work and for its own agency employee communications surrounding the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The awards are:

• Honorable Mention | Wray Ward — Employee Communications Initiatives category in PR Daily’s Content Marketing Awards

• Honorable Mention | Wray Ward — Grand Prize: Best Remote Work Experience/Culture category in Ragan’s Employee Communications & Top Places to Work Award

• Honorable Mention | Huber Engineered Wood — Virtual/Augmented Reality Content category in PR Daily’s Content Marketing Awards

• Honorable Mention | Huber Engineered Wood — Specialty Campaign category of PR Daily’s Social Media & Digital Awards

The agency’s inspired marketing solutions help solve complex challenges while delivering meaningful results. Especially in times of uncertainty, the scalable, collaborative and consistent process for program development helps to nurture creativity and inspire better performing work. The recognition by PR Daily is particularly notable given the industry challenges over the past two years.

"The business impacts of COVID-19 are particularly hard for agencies like ours, where collaboration is key, and for companies like our client Huber Engineered Woods, where a robust trade show presence is critical for relationships and sales," says Wray Ward President and Chief Creative Officer Jennifer Appleby. "Our seasoned team of designers, public relations and social media professionals was able to deliver powerful support to educate and influence key target audiences and create engaging and impactful experiences."

For its employee communications and engagement plan, the agency committed to investing significant time and resources to create a collaborative virtual environment and bring its culture to life even when employees weren’t able to be in the brick-and-mortar space; this included weekly virtual Town Hall meetings that offered important information, provided inspiration and, most importantly, connected the agency’s employees through personal stories and peeks into their out-of-office lives; a continued commitment to the local community through the agency’s EmpoWWer service grant program; heightened diversity and inclusion initiatives; and, refreshed employee events and appreciation programs that showed the agency values its team members.

“Wray Ward’s culture is authentic and can be felt in many ways: It brings our core values to life; It’s how we take care of our people; It’s embodied not by what we say, but what we do,” Appleby said. “We’ve worked hard to create and fiercely protect our special culture through creativity, collaboration, trust, kindness and joy. It’s a huge honor to be recognized for our communications by some of the industry’s leading communications experts.”

Ragan and PR Daily Award programs celebrate the most successful campaigns, initiatives, people and teams in the communication, PR, marketing and employee wellbeing industries.