Meet: Jordan Gray
Team member of our LGBTQIA+ Task Force
Pronouns: She/Her
Location: Asheville
Job Role: Content Strategist
Years in Industry: 15+
Hey Jordan, tell us about yourself:
I’m a multidisciplinary creative who’s worked across marketing, advertising, and design since 2008. Above all, I specialize in brand strategy and love helping clients build better brands. When I'm not working, you can find me making mediocre pottery, hosting dinner parties, or tending our 3-acre hobby farm.
How did you get into marketing?!
In high school, the literary magazine was my extracurricular of choice. As a staff member, I learned how to use the Adobe Creative Suite which led to my first job at a local print studio designing business cards and flyers. Despite studying to be an art historian, my graphic design skills enabled me to secure various marketing jobs throughout college. After graduating, while working as an assistant curator at an art gallery, I volunteered to help make promotional materials for an upcoming exhibition, and was quickly poached by the Marketing team. I never looked back.
Marketing is a tough industry, what keeps you in the field?
At the end of the day, I love being able to help people start, and grow, their businesses. The art of building a brand that resonates through the noise and then architecting a strategy for how to best reach and speak to your audience is a puzzle that my brain loves to solve.
Where do you go for inspiration?
Over the years I’ve bookmarked countless agencies, designers, writers, and brands as sources of inspiration. I also like to collect physical print pieces, books, and artwork that influence my style and approach. Lately, I’ve been obsessing over the work coming out of Studio Linear. Agencies like Pentagram, Practice, and Jane Creative are always on my watch list.
Why do you think it’s important for brands to be inclusive?
It’s more than important, it’s necessary. Brands that fail to be inclusive perpetuate white supremacy and harmful heteronormative standards that feel tone-deaf and archaic. Furthermore, only speaking to a fraction of your audience is technically unsound marketing.
What is a brand you think is doing a good job at being inclusive in their evergreen marketing?
We see great examples of this in the beauty and fashion industries with brands like Humankind and Wildfang that centralize inclusive identities and bodies through their entire product line. I’m always more skeptical of large brands, but admit that brands like Levis and Savage x Fenty are currently doing a good job with their evergreen marketing.
What do you think brands have gotten wrong when it comes to marketing to the LGBTQIA+ Community?
I think too often brands look at the concept of inclusivity as a “campaign” vs embedding it into their evergreen strategies. I often tell brands to “say less and do more.” Taking care of and supporting the community is always more impactful than a seasonal rainbow-washed product line.
Want to work with Jordan? Check out our LGBTQIA+ Marketing Services.