Ground Swell is an agile consulting business specialising in helping brands and businesses find and unlock consumer led growth. Led by principal, Dennis Wong, we work directly with senior clients across 3 areas of offer.
THE AMBITION
Ground Swell’s simple ambition is to work with people we like on challenges important to them, making complex problems feel easy, fun and energising to solve together.
Our way of working is designed to get to better outcomes, faster. We believe that many traditional client / agency structures and ways of working are not designed to move at the speed modern businesses need, with unnecessarily complex processes that often lead to waste.
We see an opportunity in leveraging personal chemistry, experience, wisdom and instinct with a dogged focus on outcomes to find opportunity and take it into action quicker with better and stickier thinking.
HOW WE WORK
Ground Swell gets work done efficiently by identifying the right questions to solve for, being resourceful with what we already know and being disciplined around where and how we close learning gaps.
We bring the right experience to bear as needed, drawing on a network of highly experienced world class practitioners from cultural and consumer insight to data science, brand design to planning, capability development and marketing leadership.
We make sure the work gets momentum behind it by working arm in arm with teams, building thinking in rooms together, creating stories that can land big ideas that travel up, down and sideways through businesses to engage, enrol and drive action.
FOCUS
Many businesses are rich in consumer research and data, but short in the type of startling insight that can genuinely reframe opportunity and unlock growth.
Ground Swell helps businesses understand and articulate opportunities for growth by illuminating not yet seen connections across consumer desire, cultural momentum, category perceptions and brand truths.
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Insight Synthesis to simplify disparate data into stories
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Primary Research to close learning gaps
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Growth Strategy to find where the money is
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Territory development to make growth opportunities feel tangible
AREAS OF OFFER
BUILD
Most businesses understand the ‘what’, some understand the ‘why’, but very few are aligned around the ‘HOW’
Ground Swell specialises in building marketing tools that enable the ‘HOW’, working with key client and agency stakeholders to co create outcomes that teams will feel a deep sense of ownership over.
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Portfolio strategy to cover available market opportunity
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Brand architecture to drive efficiency and navigation
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Purpose and character led brand positioning to create irrational affinity,
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CVP to organise action
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Ideas and inventions that will cut through and truly deliver on growth opportunity.
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TESTIMONIALS
For over a decade Dennis, each time I have engaged Dennis he has brought passion, energy and deep insight based on a determination to make a meaningful difference. Whether it be defining brand purpose, building an innovation pipeline, solving a business problem, or creating a new business model; Dennis has been able to tap into his wealth of experience, judgement and finely tuned instinct. Above all, Dennis is always deeply invested and one of the best partners I’ve worked with. (Plus he always brings the fun!).
KINDA GRANGE - CEO, Maggie Beer Holdings
Personally I have never met or worked with a strategic brand thinker that cares more about the brands, the relationship with consumers and the people he partners with more than Dennis Wong. He is constantly curious and endlessly searching for the insight or lightbulb that will unlock and unblock brands and or process. If I look back at the best work that came to life - Dennis Wong was part of that project. Every. single. time. Would recommend - 5 stars.
ADAM BALLESTY - Former CMO, Crown Resorts, Dominos ANZ, Diageo Australia
Dennis is a rare gem in our industry. Not only is he a passionate advocate for all things marketing; he always brings a fresh perspective to solving problems and inspires all stakeholders to act on key insights. For the past 12 years, Dennis has been my go-to on everything from brand positioning, innovation ideation, cultural insights, marketing capability and brand architecture. You won’t find a more inspiring and dedicated business partner than Dennis and I am truly amazed at his unique ability to connect insights into business strategy that drives company growth.
CLARA LEE - Head of Strategy & Insights, Danone Nutricia ANZ
I have had the pleasure of working with Dennis for about 20 years. His energy and passion, combined with his deep brand and marketing expertise, enable him to collaborate, coach and inspire others to translate insight into actionable plans that drive brand and business growth. He challenges the status quo, pushing thinking further by combining consumer and cultural insight insight, strategic clarity, creativity and business understanding. Dennis makes the experience of cracking challenging issues fun and engaging, while always being focused on great business outcomes. He is a true business partner.
TRACEY FORBES - Head of Marketing Transformation, Diageo Australia
Dennis is one of the sharpest minds in the business with not only an ability to not just identify actionable insights, but a talent for articulating these into a compelling narrative that inspires and motivates. I highly recommend Dennis as a strategic business partner - working with Dennis is fun, energising, and challenges our team to pressure test our beliefs to ensure we are delivering what our customers truly want, and making the biggest commercial impact.
CHRISTINE FUNG - CMO, Goodman Fielder
In my time working with Dennis across several businesses, I have always found him to be an exceptional business partner to drive transformational change that delivers real, commercial impact. I put Dennis’s success down to his deep understanding of brands and how they interact with culture, his commercial rigour to build strategies that can scale and pay, and most of all his excellent communication and influencing skills to not only collaborate on strategic projects, but partner with clients to land them within the business, from the executive to the teams on the front lines.
DREWE LETCHFORD - Head of Gaming, Microsoft APAC
IMPACT
Getting to a good strategy is one thing, but driving strategy into action is always the hardest part.
Groundswell’s work aims bridge the gap between strategy and execution through building programs of work with teams that create alignment and ownership to translate strategic thinking into operational reality across all levels of business.
Our goal is to create and align actions to make strategy real in ways that individuals feel empowered to own in their unique roles, powering growth both top down and bottom up.
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Vision and Action Planning workshops to bring strategy to life
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EVP to reflect the brand promise internally as well as externally
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Marketing Capability to arm teams with aligned tools, skills and competencies to get things done
EXPERIENCE
Businesses & brands that Dennis has partnered with
ABOUT DENNIS
Dennis has had 25 years experience working with businesses to find and unlock brand led growth.
A former Managing Director of Added Value Australia and Managing Partner of Kantar Consulting, Dennis is an expert practitioner in insight, brand development and growth strategy. He is fluent in languages of consumer and culture, marketing and business, able to connect the dots quickly between market opportunity and what it means for brands and growth.
He gets his energy from working with teams in rooms together, breathing energy, optimism and direction into ways to break through meaty challenges through the power of insight and provocation.
Dennis has partnered with world leading businesses across sectors ranging from FMCG to Finance, Consumer health through to QSR, alcohol through to lifestyle. He is experienced right around the growth cycle, solving problems of growth strategy, brand positioning, architecture and portfolio, innovation and ideation, CVP, EVP and Marketing Capability Development.
Dennis’ style is relaxed and outgoing. He’s a keen surfer, a husband and a dad. Ground Swell is Dennis’ way of finding the flexibility and simplicity he reveres in life whilst still being able to do the work that gives him energy.
