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What You’ll Learn
Casey French, marketing and PR director at CASSCOMM discusses how branding goes beyond a logo to include community engagement, co-branding, locally produced video and creative mascots, like their superhero, “Gigabolt.”
Guest Speaker
Casey FrenchShow 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: What are some of the key elements of branding your telco, and how can video play a role? That’s what we’re going to be talking about on this episode of The StoryConnect Podcast. My name is Andy Johns, your host with Pioneer, and I’m joined on this episode by Casey French, who is the marketing and PR director at CASSCOMM. Casey, thanks so much for joining me.
Casey French: Thanks for having me, Andy. I appreciate it.
Andy Johns: Now Casey and I met, Casey has been around the industry quite a while, but he and I, somehow, just first met at the NTCA Sales and Marketing Conference in New Orleans this past year, and I got to know a little bit about what all they’re doing at CASSCOMM And then I saw Casey, where you had presented on branding recently at the Illinois Broadband and Telecommunications Association Conference. So thank you for taking the time to share a little bit of the insights with us today.
Casey French: Absolutely, yeah. I’m glad you reached out. I’m glad we connected at the marketing conference earlier this year. So, I’m hoping some of these branding things that we do on a normal basis is something that somebody else can use or branch off other ideas.
Andy Johns: Yeah. Yeah, I like it. Let’s get into it. So we’re going to talk a little bit about co-branding. They’ve got at CASSCOMM, they have a superhero, kind of mascot named Gigabolt that we’ll talk about. They’re doing a lot on the video side, both with their own branding with and also helping other folks in their community use video to do their brand. But let’s dive into kind of the basics first. Let’s walk before we run. When you’re sharing with the group and anytime when you present at a group like one of the statewide conferences like you did, you’ve always got different folks in the room. You’ve got some marketing and communications folks who get it, and then you have some other folks in other departments who branding maybe a little bit of a mystery. A lot of folks on on that side maybe think that branding is, you know, when they think of branding, they’re just thinking about the logo. But it goes, and it looks like from your presentation, you and I are on the same page where branding goes. It goes way beyond that.
Casey French: Yes. When I first kind of got into this department, then my mind, that’s where, you know, branding was just your logo, your brand, you know? It is what it is. But as I’ve been in this department in the industry for now, almost 15 years, it’s deeper than that, right? It’s connecting with your residents, connecting with your customers. Whether that be putting your brand on the local little league team, putting your brand on signs in the community, showing them that you’re not just here to take their money and do the service. You’re part of it. So, you know, you help those not-for-profits, or you help those young groups that are trying to keep the the young crowd going. So I strive on putting our brain literally on everything that I can do.
Andy Johns: Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s super important. And that’s kind of the way that I’ve characterized branding is exactly what you said, that it’s – branding is the piece that kind of goes beyond the transaction. Just like you’re saying, where it’s not a transactional relationship, it’s beyond that. One of the things that I’ve seen that you guys use when you are working with those groups, when you are out in the community, is you guys have developed, I believe his name is Gigabolt –
Casey French: Yeah. Yep.
Andy Johns: Is the superhero? And tell us a little bit about that and which kind of audiences y’all use Gigabolt to help represent the brand.
Casey French: Okay. Yeah. So earlier this year, I had the, I was toying around with AI, trying to just see what, and I’ll give you the deep detail. Alright. So I was trying to say, o”O, I wonder what a bald guy with a beard would look like as a superhero with a Cass’s logo on.
Andy Johns: Can’t imagine if YouTube viewers are gonna know why you were thinking about that guy. The audio won’t.
Casey French: [inaudible] right?
Andy Johns: Yeah.
Casey French: But I kind of ran with it. I was like, well, that’s not the vision that we probably want to do. Even though I’ve done the PR stuff all the time, the voice for the radio ads, everything else. But we wanted to maybe hit on such a younger thing. So our Gigabolt is a superhero character that bases off our broadband, which is now our key element of service. So Gigabolt is our new superhero that we’re using this summer for promotional pieces and parade themes and things like that. And he is based off a younger, exciting fireball. Basically, we’ll say a kid that is a superhero. It’s got wild hair. He’s got, you would see it as like ski goggles, blue ski goggles. We worked with a third party that helped put that together for me that made it come to life. So we use it in a lot of newspaper ads, postcards, posters, billboards. I got it on all our billboards in our areas. That’s the focus that we’re doing this summer. I’m excited about it. We’ve done. And with the branding thing, we threw it on t-shirts, CASSCOMM t-shirts with his chest logo is our t shirt logo. Cool wristbands that have, you know, the sweat bands that are blue and pink for the kids and girls, things like that. So he’s promoting also the speed you need as a superhero theme. So I’m excited about it. It’s taken off. It’s, as you can see on the social media things that we use, it’s everywhere.
Andy Johns: Yeah, I saw even some of the staff looks like some of the employees were wearing shirts that had the same kind of stripes on it, same lines. So you guys are in deep. I like it.
Casey French: Yeah. We try to help the girls up front promote, the customer service girls, promote him and wear the shirts, and we’ll, you know, put them out there.
Andy Johns: And that’s interesting. That gets into another thing that I want to talk about, because a lot of folks would be a little afraid, you know, you got the CASSCOMM name, and that’s the mothership, the main focus, the main brand. But you guys, I know in addition Gigabolt, you’ve been out there quite a bit with the NTCA Smart Rural Community logo, the symbol. It looks kind of like that on the button. You guys have co-branded that quite a bit as well on some of your stuff, which I’ve seen other providers do as well. But, you know, are there some times when you go just CASSCOMM? Are there some times when you want to include some of those secondary elements like Gigabolt or like the Smart Rural Community? And how do you kind of decide, you know, when you’re going to co-brand and when it’s going to be just the mothership?
Casey French: Yeah. For sure. So when we got in to help start launching the SCR logo and the co-branding with that. At first I kind of just kept it, I’ll put it here in there occasionally, you know. But since I’ve gotten so deep into this SRC brand and showing our communities how valuable it is, I try to put it literally on everything, you know.
Andy Johns: Okay.
Casey French: It’s as big as our logo, right? If they’re a Smart Rural Community and we’re provider, it makes it even better to say, “Hey, we’re here. We’re reliable. Oh, and you’re a Smart Rural Community,” you know. And what does that mean? That means you can work from home. That means somebody may come to town over the weekend, and they need high speed internet, or I’m looking to move to this area, but I don’t know if it’s right for me. Or you know, most of, we have family of 5 or 6 and 2 or 3 are gamers. So I need something to be able to keep the lag or keep, you know what I’m saying? Like, so I try to put that logo on almost anything now. It goes on our billboards. It goes with our mailers. It goes with even back to the Gigabolt. He’s on our, the logo is on there with that. So you know it’s almost like one of those fun puzzles where “Oh, where’s the logo hidden in this ad?” But, you know, it’s bigger, but it’s there somewhere. It’s either in the top corner, or it’s – so I try to include it everywhere.
Andy Johns: Nice. Now, you guys are in an interesting position. You know, of all the folks that we talked to, there’s not many that their company goes all the way back to 1898. You know, you’re one of the older telecom companies, I think, that we’ve ever had represented on the podcast. So, and obviously technology has changed quite a bit. You guys have done like you mentioned earlier, broadband is the main focus now. You guys also still have a pretty vibrant video product offering as I understand it. As the technology has changed, you know, and it is nice that it’s CASSCOMM. It’s not Cass Telephone or something that is tied to it. How has the brand changed as technology has changed? Or has it?
Casey French: Sure. When we, so it dates back to that many over 100 year, 125 years and over. So when we first [started], you know, [it was] Cass Telephone. Way back when, you know, when we had old pictures of it just being telephone lines all over the place, and that was our go to. And then in ’68, we decided to jump on and do the TV version. You know, so then Cass Cable TV. Right, because you got to hit each niche as we go. And that took off, and that was huge up until the life of internet in ’98 is when we decided to start doing that, right. So that’s when they decided to switch from all that and just keep it and set Cass Communication instead of Cass Cable TV and stuff. You know, all these different name brands, this CASSCOMM focus focus on the go to. And even when I started before that, you know, the telephone and TV, and telephone were way up here. And the internet was low, right? People didn’t know for sure where it was going to be, how low it was. And at 54K, I think, or, you know, just crazy.
Andy Johns: Oh, yeah.
Casey French: We had so many thousands, 20,000+ TV subscribers, you know, and now it’s just down. But we still got a strong, we still got a good feel of TV subscribers. You know, we’re still over 6,000. So that’s a way that we help promote that. We can do advertising. We can help other businesses brand their logo on our networks at a cheaper rate. You know, if they don’t want to do print ads or mail ads or things like that.
Andy Johns: Yeah, that ad insertion piece of it. That’s something where I wanted to head next, because you guys have done quite a bit with video when it comes to branding. So let’s talk first about what you guys are doing for CASSCOMM, and then we can get into what you guys are doing for, you know, for some of the other communities in the area. But what in your mind, having done a few of them, what are some of the keys to translating the brand over to a video spot or a video ad? And I guess these are well, we should probably get into some of the basics. So when you’re talking about the video pieces to establish and represent the brand, you’re talking everything from 15 seconds to 2 minutes?
Casey French: Yeah. Yep. So we’ll try to do it separately or differently. As you mentioned 15 to 30 second ads that we’ll just run on the networks that we provide services to. Right. So, in that case, we’ll put together, whether it be a, get an actor in here, or we’ll even try to get employees to show that we’re a local company, and we reliable service for there within 24 hours to help, you know, build our brand so people know. And then one of the positives to it is that people see that, and they know that tech. You know, will film the techs that are in their area, and they’ll see it on. And it’s a feel good, like, “Oh, I know them. They’re, I just saw them at the grocery store last week.” And it’s a good feel for that to get our brand out there so people see it as well. And along with offering, you know, the TV services or internet, or that’s that guy on that screen doing the commercial, playing the video game. That’s, I know that little kid. He was at the pool yesterday or.
Andy Johns: Sure.
Casey French: You know, so that’s a good thing that we use in our branding to try to get the locals in there for the advertising too. So not only are you focusing on our brand, but we’re also promoting a high speed promo that we have going on.
Andy Johns: Yeah. And what all, because, I mean, I think most folks would say stock video has its place for some things, but you guys have made the decision to, I mean, it’s an investment to get that local content because you feel like it’s part of your brand. What else is involved in doing that? I mean, do you guys have a studio? What kind of, you know, we don’t have to get too nerdy on the gear, but what kind of what kind of investment or what kind of things does it take to be able to get that, you know, that local footage?
Casey French: Yeah. That’s a great question. We do have our, so we have our own production studio. We have a guy that’s been with us for over 20 years that’s filmed commercials for businesses or ourselves. And he’s got his own green room or whatnot. And, you know, and then one of the good things he’s got in the last couple of years is a drone certification. So whether we need to film some stuff that are higher up or, you know, drone footage is is popular now. So we wanted to be in that ballpark also. Ao and he’s got all the high tech cameras. He’s got everything that you would need to film. Like I said, he’s been doing this for 20 years, so. He’s always got the stuff that makes it good, and his quality of product has always been key.
Andy Johns: It’s amazing what now you can do with a $700 drone, $1,200 drone that you used to would have had to rent a helicopter for. I mean, all kinds of stuff. It’s wild –
Casey French: Yeah.
Andy Johns: What’s available. And one interesting thing to get into kind of here towards the end, you guys, since you have that capability in-house, I think it’s kind of a cool idea. You guys are actually offering to use some of those resources to help businesses and other folks in the community, right?
Casey French: Yeah. Yes. One of the things that on that production side of it helps is we, you know, being local, we know some of these mom and pop shops need help advertising or need help getting their brand out. So we help produce it. We’ll write it, we’ll produce it. We’ll, you know, we’ll do the cheap advertising on our TV systems and, or they can use it elsewhere. You know, some of these people are young and savvy for social media, but maybe they need a good quality video set of just off their phone. So, you know, we always let them use it however they want. The good thing about that, and if it’s an auto, you know, a car dealership or something, they’re a co-brand, so they just partner with us and send it over. So it’s good to connect with them and help them get some more advertising out there.
Andy Johns: Sure. And I imagine that helps offset some of the cost and justify having some of that equipment and having some of that capability that you guys are using to promote CASSCOMM. Sounds like a pretty smart way to do that.
Casey French: Yep. And it’s as we move on, and as we know that TV services and commercials are harder to use, you know, or people skip now that they’re streaming. So that’s why we’ve kind of advanced to well, let’s hit it on social media or digital presence. And you know, if they want to use it on YouTube video, they can use it wherever they want. So give them access to just put it wherever on Google ads, etc., you know what I mean? So you got to be able to find another way to help them, since TV services aren’t as good as they used to be in the past.
Andy Johns: But having that video, you know, video will travel. You know you can use it on so many different formats, once you get a quality video. That makes sense.
Casey French: Absolutely. Yep.
Andy Johns: So we’ve talked about some of the video branding. We’ve talked about some of the other ways that, you know, on the marketing side that you’re doing branding. The other piece of it, I think, that’s been big for you all, it sounds like, is community events. And we do a brand survey for Pioneer every two years. And one of the things really interesting that we ask is what’s the value of some of these marketing channels now? And what do you think the value of those marketing channels will be in five years? And the last two times we’ve done the survey, the biggest jump there has been in-person events. People think the marketing that you do at in-person events is only going to get more important in the future. You guys have done quite a few of those. We talked before we started recording about the demolition derby car. Let’s talk briefly just some of the ways that you guys have found some success on, you know, representing the brand and getting the brand out there when it comes to those in-person events? What are some of the things y’all have done, and what’s worked well?
Casey French: A quick refresher on that. What we talked about was our Cass County fairs are big on helping, needing help sometimes. So we like to support those fairs, local 4-H goers and things like that. And they had a demolition derby, and they had business sponsors reach out. They reached out to the businesses for sponsorship, and they would, you know, they at first we thought, seems kind of high, but then they were like, yeah, but we’ll let, we’ll build the car for you, we’ll paint it, and then you can have a driver driving the derby. And if you’re not sure what the demolition derby [is], but it’s just cars smashing each other cars up.
Andy Johns: Sure, that’s self-explanatory, yeah.
Casey French: [inaudible] Local thing that draws a big crowd. And we’ve done it for 3 or 4 years, and we’ve had a few winners from it. And the crowd loves it. They see our logo out there and they, you know, like he said, it’s good to see fans enjoying it, and then us being a part of something that’s in the community on a regular basis.
Andy Johns: Yep. I’ve seen the pictures of a “fiber is the future” written on either the hood of the trunk of the car? I like it. What have been some other things? It looks like you all have done some golf tournaments, koozie. Are there some other things that has worked particularly well, you think, to get the brand out there? How much, you know, are you coaching up the employees who are out there representing? Any other keys that you found at some of that in-person branding opportunities?
Casey French: Yeah. Here’s another one that I was just thinking of as you were talking about it. But every year we do a, it’s basically like a minor league, but a minimum, like one A minor league team, like straight out of college or freshman, sophomore college, per se in Springfield, where we send tickets out to every customer, like a four pack so they can bring the family to the game. And we’ll host a CASSCOMM night at that local baseball park, you know. And it’ll generate not a huge crowd, but, you know, a 1,000-1,500 people there that don’t usually get to do things like that. And it’s a fun way that, you know, the people that have been doing it for a long time, they enjoy that we keep it going. And that I think that also hits on your face-to-face things that that are going to be more important down the road as we, especially with, you know, competition coming in. And in my eyes, it’s people that you see every day are in the front lines that are out and about with the customers that are going to help keep you alive.
Andy Johns: And that competition is probably not sending them baseball tickets, so good for y’all. That’s cool.
Casey French: Yeah. Absolutely not. Yeah.
Andy Johns: Last question I have for you. What advice do you have for somebody maybe who’s in your shoes, or in your shoes where you were a couple of years ago, thinking about branding as just a logo. What’s some advice that you might pass on to them if they’re listening to this thinking, you know, I really do need to do some things to move our brand beyond transactional? Where do they get started, and what advice would you have for them?
Casey French: Yeah, okay. I think is just because you think it, and you’re afraid it won’t work, I’d say try it. You got to try new things. Some things work, some things don’t. But.
Andy Johns: Sure.
Casey French: You’re going to find that one thing that does work and people love it. But mostly engagement. I’ve learned from just marketing, because I came into this fresh, and I didn’t know 15 years ago that face-to-face and talking with people, it’s key. So even if you don’t have great ideas, others have ideas that you can piggyback off of or help. But like, I think the key thing is just personable networking and being out in your communities, showing them that, you know, you really do care about the community.
Andy Johns: Excellent, I like it. I think I know of a podcast where folks can get some ideas like that to share out, so. I appreciate you bringing that up. Appreciate you taking the time to to share with us, Casey.
Casey French: Absolutely. I appreciate it, and I’m glad that we connected at the marketing conference. I look forward to future endeavors with you guys.
Andy Johns: Yeah, we’ll see you again. He is Casey French. He’s the marketing and PR director at CASSCOMM. I’m your host, Andy Johns, 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.