Refitting a program to the market it made

NextLight is Longmont's city-owned fiber internet provider, and a client of ours since 2020. Years of always-on marketing together had carried it to a take rate of more than three-quarters, with more than two-thirds of the city on the network.

That kind of success changes the job. The people still to reach were fewer and harder to move, and not all of them knew the name. The program had lived as a linear funnel for years, awareness to consideration to conversion, and a funnel needs a wide mouth. The ad platforms had evolved too: they now rewarded broad targeting and a steady supply of creative, and customers no longer traveled in straight lines.

In late 2025 we set out a new strategy and proposed the shift from a funnel to a flywheel: attract, engage and delight, with conversion possible at any stage. Several things made the case at once. The platforms rewarded creative in volume, customers moved in loops rather than lines, each new customer was harder to reach than the last, and on a network its customers own, the two-thirds of the community already on it could add momentum instead of leaving the picture once they signed up.

Every choice was read through two lenses: what we say and why it matters, and how and where it's delivered. Messaging moved from product to positioning. Targeting went broad, and creative became the main lever: video first, in volume, launched and tested, with the weakest retired and the strongest scaled. The principles underneath were simple to say and harder to hold: meaningful stories and authentic concepts over ads made only to fill inventory; campaigns built to connect rather than sit in silos; and data informed, not data directed.

The harder half was the change itself. A program that has worked for years changes models when the people who run it believe in the new one, so we made the case, taught the thinking and gave NextLight what it needed to carry the change inside the business and across the City, starting with an interactive strategy site the whole team could read end to end: the reasoning, the framework and the roadmap in one place. NextLight's marketing lead steered it with us, and NextLight chose to change course while it was still winning.

We built the program from the ground up. The creative began wide, with four messaging themes, six idea tracks meant to push past the obvious, and eleven concepts scored on six dimensions. Production ran on two tracks. Five hero films carried the positioning, three shot live and two animated, produced with our partners at Tend Studio and cut to the lengths and ratios the placements needed. Beside them, an in-house motion track turned static work into quick-turn video, the everyday volume the model depends on.

The channels were rebuilt around the same idea. Search copy was rewritten to the way people look for internet service. Social moved to broad audiences and steady creative testing. Display turned to reminding people who had already watched. Connected TV held the top of the flywheel. Each path from an ad to a sign-up was matched to how ready someone was, from checking an address to comparing plans to getting connected, and all of it reported into one place.

Underneath it, we rebuilt the measurement. Marketing data and NextLight's own sales reports had lived in separate places; one reporting system now joins them, and for the first time the program has a single source of truth. Every figure carries a label for how it was obtained, measured, estimated or declared, so cost is only ever calculated on what was actually measured. And because everything comes from one place, the same numbers can be read at any altitude: the broad view leadership needs, the close detail the people running the ads need, over a week or over a year. It is the part of the program nobody sees, and the part that informs every other decision.

The process came with it. The program runs on regular harvests, not a fixed calendar: at each one, everything in market gets the same call, to scale it, iterate on it or retire it, and anything that stops working is replaced quickly. A piece that keeps winning stays in, and the hope is that the strongest work runs for half a year. Holding the creative accountable, and learning from what wins and what doesn't, is written into the creative strategy as a standing function. The program launched on the first of July, the date the March roadmap set.

The program now runs as a flywheel, and we shepherd it. Its first work is in rotation, and the next round of ideas is already taking shape with NextLight, drawn from what the measurement shows and from a standing review of what the first round taught. That is the model doing its job: each round starts from what the last one learned.

Media decisions follow the same logic. When a connected-TV buy came up for the rest of the year, NextLight asked whether the budget on the table was the right number or only the one available. We built the recommendation from the homes still to reach, at a frequency they could absorb, and held the remainder back rather than spend it to fill a plan. Three of the hero films lead it, so work made once keeps earning.

The first read of the new program is due in late November.

We'd keep treating the change in people's thinking as part of the build. A program that has worked for years moves to a new model when the institution behind it believes in the new one, and that takes a partner inside willing to steer.

And we'd keep reading a mature market for what it offers as well as what it asks. When most of a city is already on the network, the next customer is harder to find, and the people already reached can help find them.