While conducting research on approaches to building fiber optic networks, Powell, Wyoming came to my attention. Powell’s fiber network is financed with municipal bonds and leased to a private sector provider. This approach uses the financial strength of the local government, but does not require the city to be engaged in day to day operations. As with all of the approaches, it will be interesting to see how this strategy works over the long term – only time will tell.
As communities consider broadband development strategies, technologies and financing, it can get kind of stressful. These are big decisions, made even more difficult by threats of lawsuits and uncertainties. I applaud Scott Mangold, the Mayor of Powell, for his sense of humor in dealing with some of these stressful decisions. You can see below how Mayor Mangold considers the critical issues of branding and marketing! The mayor is seeking input so feel free to send him your ideas. I am working on a few of my own ideas,,, how about POWnet?
Message from the Mayor
I got to meet some media people the other day. No, not newspaper or radio employees, the down-home folksy types that give you a tilt of their caps as you go by, but downright big city campaign people.
Well, not entirely big city. It’s a group out of Utah that is putting together the campaign for our fiber to the home project. They are bigwigs, though. They’ve worked on campaigns for big name brands which they quickly name-dropped.
“Ever hear of Norbest Turkey? We did their campaign.”
“Why, yes I have. Tasted them, even bowled them.”
“How about Sunkist? You heard of them?”
“I believe so. Even though I live in a cave in Wyoming, Sunkist seems to be a name brand I recall. Some of them are orange in color, correct?”
The name of the company is Research Enhanced Design or RED for very short. A successful company with two members of their staff holding doctorates from BYU. (the team that always beats Wyoming in football) RED showed us diagrams, graphs, test papers, and other literature that showed how they were going to market our product.
I expected more Madison Avenue lingo.
“Let’s put her up the flagpole and see who salutes it!”
“Let’s put her on the 5:15 to Newark and see where it gets off!”
“Let’s slap her on the butt and see which way she bucks!”
No glitzy, wink-wink, ‘how are ya, baby’ lingo from this ad group. Just normal matter-of-fact straight speak that evaluates the community and comes up with a solution.
I didn’t offer my campaign slogans at our initial meeting but I have a few ideas.
“The Powell Fiber Optic System. Still Fighting Terrorists!”
No, that’s no good.
“The Powell Fiber Optic System. We Like Bunnies!”
It does have that friendly bunny thing but it doesn’t really send the right message.
“The Powell Fiber Optic System. Less Calories!”
Now, I really don’t know if that is true or not so we can’t really use that. Plus, we are not really going to call it ‘The Powell Fiber Optic System’. We need to come up with a name and that is part of their job, as well. I’m sure they’re willing to take suggestions, though. If you have a thought for a name, write me at mayormangold@cityofpowell.com and I will pass it on to them. Try to think of a name that speaks of Powell and what this means to the city.
The team already dismissed my names. ‘Optimus Prime, ‘Corvette Stingray’, and ‘Internet Thingy’ all got curious looks from the experts.
They didn’t even want to put it up the flagpole.