Information Gathering:

• Market: What's going on. Trends. New developments. Competitors.
• Customers: Who they are. What their problems are. What their needs are. How product
  will impact them.
• Product: Why it's been developed. Features/benefits. Comparisons. Pricing. Sales team.

Empathy:

• Put ourselves in the shoes of the target audience.
• Base our communications strategy based on that experience.
• We want to talk "to" the target audience, not "at" them.

Magic:

• This is where the information is mixed with the empathy and transformed into
  communications.
• It's called the "art" of communication for a reason.
• Whenever possible, we make the communications interactive.