How Can the Smart Rural Community Designation Differentiate Your Brand?

What You’ll Learn

Podcasts recorded live at StoryConnect are sponsored by Meridian Cooperative. After receiving NTCA’s Smart Rural Community designation, LightStream co-branded it with their own brand everywhere to underscore the value of their service.

Recorded LIVE at StoryConnect 2023.

Guest Speaker

Tim Gilford

Show Notes

Transcripts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Intro: A production of Pioneer Utility Resources. StoryConnect, helping communicators discover ideas to shape their stories and connect with their customers.

Andy Johns: How can the Smart Rural Community differentiate your service? That’s what we’ll be talking about on this episode of StoryConnect: The Podcast. My name is Andy Johns, your host with Pioneer. I’m joined today by Tim Gilford, who is the director of marketing and sales for LightStream. Tim, thanks for joining me.

Tim Gilford: Thanks for having me.

Andy Johns: I’m also joined today by a live studio audience here at StoryConnect. Wonderful. Well, Tim, we’re excited to talk about this topic with you. So let’s go ahead and jump in. So tell us a little bit about LightStream and the process of getting this important designation.

Tim Gilford: LightStream is located in Buffalo, Indiana, northwest part of that, between Indianapolis and Chicago. Fairly small provider, telco founded in 1954. With that, we embraced Smart Rural Community as a member of NTCA. Goes back a few years. Their initiative that they have going on we really felt resonated for what we do, what we provide and thought that would be beneficial for our communities.

Andy Johns: I should say I had it written in gigantic letters in my notes to say that this episode is sponsored by Meridian Cooperative. We are happy to have them sponsoring our live podcasts here at StoryConnect, and we can give Meridian a round of applause. Okay, Tim. So what is involved in being a Smart Rural Community? Your application in the process had a lot to do with health care.

Tim Gilford: It did. And there’s two different pieces because you can be a Smart Rural Community. You can get those designations. Where LightStream is very fortunate in 2020, we were a recipient of this award here that for you listening, can’t see.

Andy Johns: We can describe it. It’s clear. Angular. It has a logo on it.

Tim Gilford: It does. All of those things are accurate. So we were a Showcase Award winner in 2020 that was announced in early 2021. One of four to receive a Showcase Award. Super proud of it. The application part of that was quite lengthy, but well worth it. One that we are proud of for the serving community that we contribute to and what goes with that. Some of the big pillars of Smart Rural Community is agriculture, education, health care, medical, workforce development, economic opportunities. And I hope you all are shaking your heads like, “Yeah, that sounds all pretty great, right?” So we embrace that a lot and really rolled with the designation, and then we’re super proud of the Showcase Award.

Andy Johns: Very cool. And some of the things you were telling me right before we started, telehealth, when you’re talking about those pillars, for you all in particular, and I know some of the folks have different areas where they’ve concentrated, but telehealth played a big role there, especially the timing of when all this was happening for you all.

Tim Gilford: It was. The timing of it was slightly coincidental, but all the while, when you set the foundation for it, it all comes together, I guess, the way you plan for it, to some extent. So we started our fiber build several years ago by going to two separate hospitals, one to the north, one to the south. And it was a big pillar of our application, and what we were able to do, you know, as we are at StoryConnect right now, one of the beginning sessions was talking about the why. And nonetheless, with this, it was a reminder of why and why we do this and how broadband impacts this. So one of those is Pulaski Memorial Hospital that we serve, and this is their quote, not mine. “LightStream has significantly improved the hospital’s ability to provide the highest quality of care to our patients in the communities that we serve.” And –.

Andy Johns: That’s a winning quote.

Tim Gilford: It is. But more so than that, we took a deeper dive and we said, “Okay, we all like to say that we’re improving our communities, but how did you do it?” In that question of like, why did you do it? One of them, they mentioned, was cloud backup. So they are able to efficiently and securely provide a backup offsite for all their mission critical systems. They also opened up two additional rural health clinics. So not just even in the community that that they particularly reside in and serve, they opened up two other rural health clinics in the surrounding area to help an even broader scope of everything. They were able to increase their diagnostic imaging. So sometimes you send those off to larger providers for different reasons. They were able to do it. And then lastly, during COVID, they were very easily able to spin up telemedicine to better improve that community in that time.

Andy Johns: One of the things that y’all have done better than most, and part of the reason why I ask you to be up here was, was the co-branding. Y’all do a really good job with that logo being different places. Obviously, you have it on the sign. Tell us a little bit about how y’all let the community know about, well, I guess y’all are in Indiana, so “y’all” probably didn’t do it, but how “you all” did it with letting people know that you got a designation like this?

Tim Gilford: I mean, we’re in Tennessee right now. We’ll go, “y’all.”

Andy Johns: How do y’all do it?

Tim Gilford: So we do it in a variety of ways. But one of them, again, so you mentioned this road sign that some people can see in the crowd right now. That is a member of NTCA. We’re able – it’s being held up right now. Thank you, Megan. So we have these in each of the communities that we serve. So any entry point into town, the town leaders have been very, very open to having these signs. But additionally to that, we co-brand it everywhere. It is on our stationery. So I mean, it is on our letterhead, our envelopes, our business cards, our notepads. It’s on our folder that we give to every single one of our customers as a welcome packet. It is on our fleet graphics. So we have really taken the Smart Rural Community designation to what we think is a level that it should be. I guess. I’m surprised at some of the people that I do talk to that they say, “Yeah, you know, we have it.” I would encourage all of you to embrace that even more because it is a significant conversation starter. So we do co-brand it even on our apparel, so it’s always on our sleeve. We currently or we recently did a hooded sweatshirt for all of our employees this past winter that the SRC logo was front and center. Our logo was actually on the sleeve. So we’ve done it a little bit differently that way, and try to make that that much more of a conversation starter when we’re out and about in the community.

Andy Johns: Getting folks to understand all the odds and ends of the program is probably a long shot. But do you think, and I think the big thing that Smart Rural Community helps with is it lets people like that grass is always greener type folks that just think, you know, our local provider kind of is what it is. But this is a way to say like, “No, like nationally we do a good job, and we’re recognized.” Do you think folks are getting it? Do you think it helps folks understand that you guys are doing good work?

Tim Gilford: It is. And the best thing of it, at least my opinion of the best thing of it, is it’s not about us. It’s about the community that you go to. So when you talk to your mayors and your town managers and all these other constituents that are there, like you get to talk about how this is good for your community. It’s not about, in this case, LightStream and how we brand ourselves. This is about using a Smart Rural Community for them to be able to say that they are proud, that they are a Smart Rural Community. So when they’re talking to, again, those leaders and people specifically, economic development. So as you’re trying to bring a business in or an industry or whatever it may be for that expansion, you get to talk about the Smart Rural Communities, that designation, and the significance of it.

Andy Johns: Fantastic. Last thing as we wrap up here, what advice would you have for somebody, whether they already have the Smart Rural Designation, Smart Rural Dommunity designation, or whether they’re thinking about applying for it, anything in particular that you would tell them to do, or advice you have for them?

Tim Gilford: My recommendation is whatever, you’re doing, great. But consider some other ways that you can still use the SRC designation. There are a few stats out there. Our friends from Calix have provided an infographic, so a couple things like home values going up 3%. 6.4% increase in overall employment growth. Over 100% increase in work from home jobs. So when you bring infrastructure to these communities, you get the benefit of that and that much more. So embrace Smart Rural Community. Check it out. NTCA is doing some phenomenal things with that messaging and the marketing kits that come with it.

Andy Johns: He is Tim Gilford, director of marketing and sales for LightStream. I’m Andy Johns, your host with Pioneer. And until we talk again, keep telling your story.

Outro: StoryConnect is produced by Pioneer Utility Resources, a communications cooperative that is built to share your story. StoryDonnect is engineered by Lucas Smith of Lucky Sound Studio.