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What You’ll Learn
From cross-branding and tournaments to a local college team sporting the utility’s name on its arena, Michigan’s Midwest Energy & Communications plugs directly into a high-bandwidth internet subscriber audience. Candy Riem shares how Team Midwest turned an esports sponsorship into an effective broadband marketing story.
Guest Speaker
Candy Riem
Show Notes
Transcripts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Intro: StoryConnect, a Pioneer podcast, helps you discover ideas to shape your stories and connect with your community. Love this episode? Follow StoryConnect on your favorite podcast platform and YouTube so you don’t miss your next great idea.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Fiber Cup Champions – how Team Midwest scores with esports sponsorships. That’s what we’ll be talking about on this episode of The StoryConnect Podcast. Hi, I’m your host, Megan McKoy-Noe, one of the storytellers here at Pioneer Utility Resources. And I am joined by Candy Riem, vice president of marketing and customer solutions at Midwest Energy and Communications. And y’all serve communities in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio. And we’re podcasting together from another state entirely. We’re at the Calix ConneXions Conference, so we like to say any background noise you hear is ambiance or somebody very excited at the slots. Candy, thank you so much for joining us.
Candy Riem: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Megan McKoy-Noe: This is going to be exciting. Now, when it comes to innovation, and you’ve spoken at Calix before on innovation, Team Midwest is doing a lot to score with your high bandwidth internet subscribers.
Candy Riem: We are.
Megan McKoy-Noe: It is a lot of fun to watch y’all. So talk to me a little bit about esports.
Candy Riem: Sure. So several years ago, I was at a conference like this, and it might have actually been this one and –
Megan McKoy-Noe: They blend after a while.
Candy Riem: It really does. I had heard that a co-op was sponsoring an esports tournament, and I’m like, wow, that is really innovative. And, you know, that’s what you come here for is you kind of beg, borrow and steal ideas, share.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Mhm.
Candy Riem: So I came back to the team and started talking about it. And lo and behold, we had quite a few subject matter experts on staff.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Gaming experts. I’m married to a gaming expert.
Candy Riem: Yes.
Megan McKoy-Noe: That’s nice.
Candy Riem: That’s fun.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah.
Candy Riem: So they really took hold of this. And all I had to do was bring the idea back. We found that we had a local college that had an arena, and they needed a sponsor.
Megan McKoy-Noe: And I should say that’s the, you’re sponsoring the Southwestern Michigan College Roadrunners, which the name, it just that makes me happy.
Candy Riem: So fun.
Megan McKoy-Noe: And the arena is now called the Midwest Energy and Communications Esports Arena.
Candy Riem: It is.
Megan McKoy-Noe: It has a nice ring to it, I feel.
Candy Riem: So it gave us a great opportunity to connect with kids that are going to be, you know, in five years, our customers, our employees, community leaders. And really showcase what we can do for them through, you know, through fiber, through connections.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah. No, I mean, it’s a really powerful way to reach them. Having an idea is great. We all hear wonderful ideas when we’re at events like this, but then you have to make it real, which, you know, sometimes I still feel like a kid, and I have all these ideas, and I’m holding my breath hoping that folks think, oh yeah, no, we can do that. How did you make it a reality? You had, you identified champions for your esports program at the utility. But, what was the next step?
Candy Riem: I’m right there with you. Like I come back, and I have like 50 ideas. And while I’m at the conference, I’m messaging my team, and they’re always like, oh my gosh, please stop going to conferences.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Stay in the office. Don’t be inspired. Stop.
Candy Riem: Oh my gosh. But so I come back and like I said, we had so many people on staff that lived this every day. And we thought, okay, let’s reach out to Southwestern Michigan College. We know they have this arena. This will work. And really putting it in the hands of those people that understand it made it 100% possible for us. It was so much easier than I thought it was going to be. You know, a lot of times, like I said, you come back, and you’ve got all of these great ideas, but this one, because staff embraced it. And what we did is we started a group within the staff and we said, here’s what we want to do. How do we make this happen? And they ran with it. So just by engaging our tech support, our customer service. So we put out an email to all of the staff and we said, who’s interested? This is something that we want to do, who can help us make this come to fruition. And it was, we actually had to scale back the number of people because so many people wanted to be involved.
Megan McKoy-Noe: I mean, Candy, you’re inviting them to play games at work.
Candy Riem: I know, I know.
Megan McKoy-Noe: What were you thinking? Of course, they all want to be involved with this.
Candy Riem: And it was a little bit harder of a sell to leadership because they, some of them didn’t even know what esports were, and that’s what they thought. They were like, oh, you’re just playing games. I’m like, no, we are connecting. We are connecting our community. Three years in –
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah.
Candy Riem: Everyone knows what it is. Obviously, the college puts it out there for us. And, it’s an engaging time. We have parents there. We have aunts and uncles there. We have grandparents there. And they come, and they spend the day, and then they talk about it, and they share it on social. So it really is that connection.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah. Oh, I love that. So now I know across Michigan, which is where the college is pulling participants, you have 160-164ish high schools that are feeding into this. How many people do you end up having at one of these esports events?
Candy Riem: So teams. We limited to 16 teams, and there are three students on each team. But we could have, I don’t know, 400 or 500 people. Not only there, but we stream it on Twitch.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Of course, you do.
Candy Riem: So they’re able to engage that way if they can’t make it to the college. So our engagement gets a bigger reach than just the people that are at the college that day, right?
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah, it’s a whole event. Folks love watching people play.
Candy Riem: They do.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Which is again, not my, I like watching myself read. So, that’s different.
Candy Riem: So I want to, I liken it to like, I watch HGTV. I watch Food Network.
Megan McKoy-Noe: That’s a really nice way to explain it.
Candy Riem: It’s the same thing, you know.
Megan McKoy-Noe: You’re just watching folks play and getting ideas for your own game.
Candy Riem: Plus, we have games there, and so kids are there. They’re playing other games. They’re watching this game. So it’s a bigger engagement. We have board games.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Oh, I love that because so often when folks are doing this, we imagine they’re just at home playing and gaming. But it really is more of a community event than you might think.
Candy Riem: It’s like a football game. I mean, and we go watch football, right?
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah.
Candy Riem: People love to watch people gaming.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Yeah. So for folks that haven’t participated in one or seen one of these before, you have it every fall, and we’ve already talked about the size of that event. But you also, I wouldn’t say you bribe. There are prizes though.
Candy Riem: Absolutely. Yes.
Megan McKoy-Noe: So it’s not just playing for the joy of playing. It’s also getting prizes. And they include a donation for the school with the winning team. You also have Steam Decks for each teammate that wins. So you’ll have to tell me a little bit about what a Steam Deck is, because I just imagine like a Best Buy gift card. And then gift cards for players, if they’re in second place or third place. So what kind of budget does this mean? And what is the Steam Deck? What gets kids to participate?
Candy Riem: So the budget is actually relatively small.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Okay.
Candy Riem: You know, since we partner with the college, they already have all of the PCs set up so they can game there. So what we do is we offer a donation to the school. Which, you know, is an engagement with the school. Each child gets a Steam Deck, and I say, child, they’re not really children anymore. They’re young adults, honestly.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Tweens.
Candy Riem: Yes. Yeah.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Okay.
Candy Riem: Yeah. So that’s just a playing station. So it’s like a PlayStation or, you know, a Wii. It’s just the new and better ones. But the –
Megan McKoy-Noe: The latest technology for their playing needs.
Candy Riem: Yeah.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Excellent.
Candy Riem: What’s really nice, though, is we’ve engaged with Calix, and they actually help sponsor. So they pay for the Steam Decks. Now, the Steam Decks aren’t terribly expensive, but that allows us to put more money into what we found after the first year is, we need pizza at the end of the night because these kids are hungry.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Always set money aside for pizza.
Candy Riem: Yes.
Megan McKoy-Noe: I love this that you’re sharing these insights with us. And I also love leveraging partnerships. I think that’s really important. You might be surprised the partners that are out there that would step up to help with an event like this.
Candy Riem: All you have to do is ask. So I reached out to my rep. It was very easy. So honestly, I think our budget is less than $5,000 to do everything.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Oh, that’s amazing.
Candy Riem: Now, to be able to have a community event where we touch so many people for something like that.
Megan McKoy-Noe: No, when we talk about like, I got my start at an electric co-op, and the amount of money we would spend at an annual meeting, that’s a different podcast. Yes it is. But I love that you can do this affordably. Are there other community sponsors that you’ve gotten involved? Like, for instance, the pizza places nearby?
Candy Riem: That is something that we had intended to do originally, but we had the honor students come and do the pizza, and they did it as a fundraiser.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Oh my goodness, it gets better again.
Candy Riem: Yeah. You just, it’s those additional connections. And, you know, then you’ve got the honor students getting something out of it as well.
Megan McKoy-Noe: I love this. And Candy and I were talking about the other ways that y’all support students in your community before we started recording, and that again is another podcast. But I love that you’re making it a fundraiser for the honor students as well. Do you just hold the tournament every fall, or do you do it in the spring as well?
Candy Riem: No, right now we only do it in the fall, but that’s because it does take a little bit of work to kind of set up. We have talked about trying to do a little bit more, but right now the fall is enough.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Okay. And then I always wonder, you have this amazing event, and I love that you have staff champions that really led the development of it. I think that is really key. If you want to have an event like this at your utility, but I’m wondering about other cross branding opportunities where maybe a Road Runner team member could give a testimonial for y’all about the service that they get at home. Have you tried taking this message beyond the cup?
Candy Riem: You know what? That is really, really smart, and we have not done anything like that. But I love it. Now I’m coming back with more, and the event is in two weeks. So you know what? Beg, borrow, steal.
Megan McKoy-Noe: No pressure.
Candy Riem: We’re taking it back.
Megan McKoy-Noe: I mean, Pioneer is a cooperative. So we are here to wreck havoc with your team, with ideas. That is what we do here. And then how do you turn that sponsorship into an effective broadband marketing story? So the reason I heard about it is because I was combing through your news releases and seeing. I know you have it featured on your website right now because it’s the fall, and it’s coming up. How else do you tell this story?
Candy Riem: So we do weave these stories in. We’ll do, if you’re familiar with co-ops, you know, they all have a newsletter or a Country Lines magazine once a month. So we’ll talk about it there. We will talk about it in our advertising in terms of, you know, we’re doing this event. Come be part of it. And it really, it organically saturates through the community because kids are talking about it. You know, we encourage social, of course, we do the twitch. So we just try and engage on every platform that we know that they’re there.
Megan McKoy-Noe: Okay. I love that. We could talk about social frames that you guys could have so that when folks are attending, they can add that to their profiles. And oh, you could have so much fun. And you’re at three years in, so I feel like you guys are just hitting your stride with this, which I love.
Candy Riem: Yeah, you learn a lot –
Megan McKoy-Noe: You do.
Candy Riem: With your first few years.
Megan McKoy-Noe: So what haven’t we talked about? Before I let you go, what have I missed that you really think the folks, the utility pioneers, should know before they start and power up this journey?
Candy Riem: I would say don’t limit yourself. So be open to all of those different kinds of experiences. When you hear an idea, don’t think, oh, gosh, I’m not sure we could do that because I don’t. I know my team would wish I didn’t do it as much.
Megan McKoy-Noe: No, they love that you challenge them, Candy. This is good.
Candy Riem: The opportunities that come from this and the connections that you make, and it’s so fulfilling. And it’s not just for you as a marketer, but it’s fulfilling for your employees, for your community. So I think that’s the best thing out of it. Like don’t be afraid to do that next thing to try it. There are things that we have tried that haven’t worked. But this being our third year, it’s working, and we’re going to continue to do it.
Megan McKoy-Noe: I love that so much. Thank you for challenging all of our listeners to try to push themselves a little more to try. And to, I think, identify folks on staff that can pick up that idea and run with it for you too. That takes trust.
Candy Riem: It does.
Megan McKoy-Noe: But it also helps your story get stronger and stronger because you find the folks that want to cheer it from the mountaintops. So thank you for sharing your story with utility pioneers.
Candy Riem: Well, thank you for having me.
Megan McKoy-Noe: It’s so fun. I’m glad we got to do this. She is Candy Riem from Team Midwest, and I am your host, Megan McKoy-Noe at Pioneer Utility Resources. And until we talk again, keep telling your story.
Outro: StoryConnect is a production of Pioneer Utility Resources. Send questions to hello@pioneer.coop and learn more about our member-owned marketing agency at pioneer.coop.