We say it all the time: “Worldline – Canada’s best kept telecom secret.”

So, ummm, why is that?

Why is that we have 300,000 folks across Canada using our services, yet when you ask pretty much anyone if they’ve ever heard of Worldline, the answer is, “ahhhh, nope!”?

Even the folks who work here have to spend an uncomfortable amount of time explaining to friends and family about where they work. Last month we had this in-house promotion for friends and family about the March Madness Pricing for the Unlimited High Speed Internet and Home Phone Bundle and I had to assure my brother-in-law that Worldline was “legit,” because he’d “never heard of them before.”

It’s a bit of a pain, and it is one guy’s fault really. This guy, John Stix, Worldline’s Chief Marketing Officer.

When John and Jody Schnarr founded Worldline ten years ago they launched their company in a very atypical fashion: essentially they gave away all the credit.

Their first ever telecom product was a service to provide free long distance between Kitchener and Stratford, Ontario. They couldn’t find enough people to sign up for the service to pay for it, so instead they latched onto a radio business model. Anyone who wanted to make a call would have to listen to a 30-second ad before their call went through.

A local car dealership owner, Gary Stockie, took the chance, and handed over the equivalent of the a month’s expenses, and the use of a car, and presto, the Worldline business model was born.

A local newspaper article talking about that their new company offering free calls between the two cities resulted in 4,000 customers basically overnight.

Stockie’s business went through the roof, and John and Jody parlayed that success story into free long distance call service for a whole host of companies like the Sun Media Group and Labbatt.

Tens of thousands of customers were using Worldline long distance and phone services, but they didn’t know it. They thought they were using the “Bud Phone” or “Sun Call” of the “London Free Press Call”. Worldline had more than 300 partners across the country taking all the credit for the services Worldline was providing.

Which was fine. The partners were offering all these great phone and Internet services, and Worldline could concentrate on building the best cross-country network possible and on excellent customer service, all without having to spend a dime on marketing.

Well, it worked well – up to a point, because now Worldline wants to grow faster.

Now we want to get the word out about us, not someone else. Now we want to let as many Canadians know about our great products and services because it’s great for them, and great for us.

Now we’re spending marketing dollars. Now we’re running advertising campaigns in specific markets in Canada. Now were promoting the company online and on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

We’re introducing an entire new branding strategy that shows us for what we are; the young kid on the block looking to take on Big Telecom. Here’s a sneak peek:

So look out everybody, here we come.

Canada’s best kept telecom secret no longer.