Welcome Hailey Bui and Melissa Kinsella, to PRSay – the podcast of the Houston PRSA Chapter.
On this episode, Hailey & Melissa share about Marketing & Communications in Energy with CAMS.
Hailey Bui is a Marketing & Communications Specialist currently serving as a key member of the CAMS Marketing & Communications team. With over 5+ years of a robust professional background, Hailey is the driving force behind orchestrating the development and design of sophisticated corporate communications campaigns. Her primary objectives include elevating brand awareness and providing strategic support to the marketing and sales teams. In her current role at CAMS, Hailey formulates messaging strategies and leads the execution of targeted marketing campaigns aimed at educating external stakeholders about CAMS and its comprehensive range of services. Prior to joining CAMS, Hailey had extensive experience working with reputable B2C and B2B marketing agencies, where she managed diverse portfolios for clients across industries. Hailey's academic background includes a B.A. in Advertising and an M.A. in Mass Communications, with a specialized focus on social media behavior research.
Melissa Kinsella is the Director of Corporate Marketing Communications & Administration at CAMS. She leads the organization's communications team and develops strategic internal and external communication strategies to ensure brand identity and the company's objectives. Since joining CAMS in 2019, Melissa has directed highly effective marketing and branding campaigns utilizing the company's multi-faceted media channels. As a result of her creative approaches, CAMS received constant recognition and traffic to its digital assets, elevating the company's position as a first-in-class steward for infrastructure asset owners. With over 22 years of experience, she manages business operations and support, marketing, and communications, client relations, event management, and organizational development. Prior to CAMS, she held related positions at American Midstream, Egon Zehnder, and Valerus Field Solutions. Under Melissa's leadership, CAMS was recently named one of the Best & Brightest Companies to Work for in the Nation. Melissa holds a Bachelor of Science and Event Management degree from Indiana University.
Learn more about the PRSA Houston Chapter, our events and opportunities at
Veronica Sopher:
Hello, and welcome to PRSay. This is the official award-winning podcast of the recent chapter of Public Relations Society of America. And I'm your host, Veronica Sopher. I have the pleasure of introducing you to some of our amazing members here in our Houston chapter. And this is our opportunity to connect and get to know each other talk about trends that are happening and communications here in the Houston area, and really learn and grow from each other. So we will go ahead and get this episode kicked off. I've got two great guests. But before we do that, I want to make sure I take care of some housekeeping. So if you're listening on the podcast, make sure you hit subscribe, we don't want you to miss any episodes of prsa. And if you are watching on YouTube or Facebook, drop us some comments so my guests and I can be sure to circle back with you. So with that, I'm going to invite Melissa and Haley from CAMS on to the show. Welcome to PRSay.
Hailey Bui:
Hi, Veronica, nice to meet you.
Melissa Kinsella:
Hi, nice to meet you.
Veronica Sopher:
Likewise, I'm so glad to meet you guys. Okay, so we have Haley Bui and Melissa Kinsella from CAMS joining us. And so, ladies, I'm very excited about today's conversation. I love when we have teams that can join us and talk about the work that you guys do together. But before you guys dive into what you do at CAMS, tell us a little bit about how you got into communications and specifically energy.
Melissa Kinsella:
Okay, and then I'll go first. So I don't have your typical pathway. I'm kind of unique in that manner. My background, I've been in the workforce, I'd say since for 20, almost 30 years. And it's constantly evolving. But my background has always been project management, administrative, and government, ironically. And then when I moved to Houston, I realized that, you know, it's one of those, you're either as far as career choice, you're either, in the medical industry, you're an attorney, or you're in the energy industry. So that's kind of how my career started in the energy industry is, I moved here 10 years ago. My first company that I worked for was an energy-related company. And basically, that evolved into the role that I currently have. And so just every role that I've had, since I've moved to Houston has been unique in its own way. I wear many hats. In my current role, I actually do administrative and administrative aspect, but also the marketing communications
Veronica Sopher:
So it's exciting. Yeah, I love it. It's aspect. And it was a very unique opportunity. And I was very definitely not traditional. So you know, our members come from all walks in all spaces and all sectors. So that's very cool. drawn to it when they proposed it to me. And Haley, what about you? How did you get started in the business?
Hailey Bui:
So my story is kind of long, but I'm gonna keep it shorter. I was born in Vietnam, so originally come from Vietnam, for my parents back then. And, you know, like, the usual stigma, it's either going to be accounting or medical in between those two for me, but then I kind of stood my ground. And then I said, No, I kind of like, you know, like Business Administration. I'm not sure what kind of part of marketing I like, yeah. But then kind of like growing up, I realized that I want to do advertising. So I got, I got a chance to come to the United States and study and graduated from U of H in advertising. That's when I started to work with, you know, different agency marketing agency. And they started with a b2b industry. So I have clients, different clients, in different backgrounds in terms of like construction, manufacturing, and I started there. I did f&b for a while, but then I kind of like b2b a lot. And then that when COVID hit and then I started my graduate school journey. And then after I graduated, I found camps and then I started working with Melissa, which is I think Melissa is so much more amazing than what she told other people today. She's one of the people who you can count on in an emergency, like this woman technically got stuck in in an elevator and then she legit just said, "You know what, I know people from the building that can get us out, because the button was not working. And that's how she saved technically the whole entire HR department. So I will say, Melissa, like this company would not be running, like literally.
Melissa Kinsella:
I do pretty well under pressure.
Veronica Sopher:
Yeah, yeah, well, definitely. And I love that story. Because there we all need people like that on our teams, especially in the marketing and comms space, because there's all kinds of stuff that comes comes to us. So tell us a little bit about what you guys do at CAMS? What's, what's the structure? I know that, and we've had a lot of guests from the medical space, and even some tech, so it's structured a little bit differently. But for those of us that are not in energy, what's a typical? And how are you guys set up with like the marketing, PR advertising? Any Stakeholder Relations? How does that work in your shop?
Melissa Kinsella:
Sure. So I'll start and I'll let Haley finish. Just to give everyone a background CAMS is in a privately owned company. And we do Asset Management Services. And the way I explain it to most people who've never heard of us, basically, we oversee assets that, you know, a lot of large PE firms are interested in purchasing, say, a power plant. Well, they don't necessarily want to do the day-to-day operations or, you know, manage the employees. So essentially, they would hire us to come in, and we would manage not only the facility, but those employees become our employees. And so it's unique in that manner. And we actually have a role in not only just power plants, battery, any separate renewable. So we also have a 24/7 remote operation center. So we're unique in that we offer a lot of different I guess services. And as far as the Haley and I's role it, it's constantly evolving. There's not one day that's similar. Yeah, some days it's more quite chaotic than the other. But generally speaking, I would say that a lot of our focus are on you know, pitching to potential clients, current clients. As far as you know, our role would be creating PowerPoint presentations for the business unit lead, or creating, you know, email blasts to some of our employees are planning to attend a conference, press releases, do a lot of social media posts, just to promote CAMS in general. That's kind of the you know, very superficial level. And I'll let Haley talk more about her specific role and responsibility.
Hailey Bui:
So I will say, most of what we do in terms of like, communication and marketing, we try to kind of like maintain branding for CAMS, to external and internal stakeholders as well. So that is gonna be a marketing campaign on search ad, or is it going to be something that we put out on social media, Melissa usually deals mostly with the press releases and media relation aspect of our company, I am more kind of like a creative direction, where I deal with a lot of like, designing, creating the materials for the company, to either portray our CAM services, since I think cam services is like they said our greatest assets is like our people. So we offer a lot of niche and various services in terms of like energy operations and facility. So it's kinda, it's kind of like, you have to find like the perfect space in between a flight promoting the company services, but also figure out what your target audience can like listening to and want in terms of like, where are they heading to? Conference-wise, webinars, can only what the people in the industry are looking for, or like an audience are looking at?
Melissa Kinsella:
Yeah, and we don't have one specific target audience because we do offer so many different services, like HR would our HR group, you know, we actually do a recruiting, we have a service called staffing solutions, where some of our recruiters will provide that as a service to a client, a current client or a potential client. You know, we also do environmental consulting, we have an asset management service, we have a midstream service. So we're very unique in that manner. So our target audience is constantly changing.
Veronica Sopher:
Do you have to be mindful of what's happening in the community? Are there external factors that really play into what's happening? I know, you know, people will talk about, you know, global type energy issues or local issues, but in your role, do you have to also get down to that micro-level or do you guys really work at that big macro level when it comes to those kinds of big issues? Sure, I'd say both, you know, we do have a lot of facilities throughout the US. And, you know, we have to be very cognizant of, you know, there's potential for, you know, some type of God forbid, you know, a crisis, one of the power plants gives me, so it's, it changes. So I would definitely say both. Yeah.
Hailey Bui:
Like, from what I'm seeing, we were trying to keep up with the energy trends happening in the market. So for example, a lot of we are in a current transition to renewable energy. So that is where I kind of like the company also wanted to focus on this year is to expand the group that we currently have the amazing folks that they currently dealing with, like, you know, solar wind, kind of my facility, and to kind of like emphasize the service on that N, or sometime in Melissa have to work on a kind of like, what, what can we bring to the table in terms of like exposure for the group, so that maybe they can go to kind of like this and that conference and speak at those conferences, or we have to apply for like the industry awards to showcase our abilities or our achievement. Or recently, I think, like one of our remote operations center, they did kind of like a very good case study in terms of like, where they were able to manage kind of like zero downtime for one of the facilities, completely remotely with just our people power. So we thought that would be one of the interesting case study to the audience.
Melissa Kinsella:
That focus is on the zero downtime for 48 hours with the remote operation center, with this current freeze that Houston had. That's something that we're very proud of. And another thing to add on to what Haley had already said is, there's a huge focus in our company, for the ESG initiative. It's the Environmental Social Governance, and we implemented it a few years ago, and we currently do a quarterly newsletter and an annual report. So there's a lot of focus on community aspect, you know, volunteering, donations, and so forth. But there's also, you know, a larger scale that we focus on environmentally and, and the governance.
Veronica Sopher:
So, yeah, and that strategically, how do you strategically put that into your daily workload? Because you're right, you have to be considerate. I like Haley, how you talked about the different stakeholders, their stakeholders at all levels, but you also have to maintain your brand identity. And you also have to make sure that you're aligned to your strategic goals and initiatives? How do you guys make sure that that happens, at least in the work that you're doing on a day to day basis? Because my guess is that's a lot more complicated than it might be for maybe a tech company or a medical company, or maybe even a governmental entity?
Melissa Kinsella:
Yeah, I mean, I think it's constantly and I can speak for myself, it's constantly on the in the back of my mind, just you know, because we've worked really hard in the last few years to ensure that we have the same, you know, message being conveyed. And in all of our, you know, you know, online presence or you know, any type of presentations that we create, it's always in the back of our mind to ensure that we're adhering to those, because we have worked very hard in getting to that point.
Veronica Sopher:
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's exciting. And I'm so glad you guys can work together as a team in doing all of that. Do you have a larger team? Or is it Are you a two-person shop? How are you set up?
Melissa Kinsella:
We definitely have another individual. However, he's finishing up his degree. So he's only here part-time.
Veronica Sopher:
Gotcha. Yeah, well, it sounds like you guys do a lot for a small team. So what a mighty hefty lift. Well, ladies, I've enjoyed talking to you and learning about what you're doing over at cams, I am fascinated by how you guys can incorporate the marketing and advertising aspects into your your role there, especially in the energy space. So Melissa, and Haley, how can people connect with you? We know that we've got in-person events for our members, but not everybody can get to them all the time. So if people want to connect with you, how can they do that?
Hailey Bui:
Oh, so I am currently a member of PRSA. So you, you will probably see me at some or most of the event appearances this year, and now trying to drag Melissa whenever I can, right. But yeah, I'm more than willing to connect with people with young professionals out there who have a similar background to me. Or just simply for the purpose of connecting. I'm on LinkedIn, under the name Haley Bui, so you can find me on there.
Veronica Sopher:
Great, and we'll make sure the link is in the show notes for sure. What about you, Melissa?
Melissa Kinsella:
One of my goals this year is to attend more meetings in the future. We attended one at the end of the year in 2023. So that's one of the goals is to be, you know, more of a, you know, in-person role versus more more so, you know, online. So I, I'm open to anything. My email phone number and or LinkedIn is perfectly fine with me as well. Great. That's awesome. Well we look forward to seeing you guys have more events. I'm so glad we had an opportunity to talk. I love learning new things that are happening with our members, especially in the Houston area. And I just appreciate your time. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. It was great. Yeah, you bet. You bet. All right. With that, we're gonna wrap up this episode of PRSay, the award-winning podcast for the Houston chapter Public Relations Society of America. I'm your host and sponsor Veronica Sopher. And I'm glad we all got an opportunity to talk to Haley and Melissa with CAMS so be sure to check them out. Their contact information is in the show notes. If you are listening on the podcast, make sure you hit subscribe and if you are watching on YouTube or Facebook, drop it in the comments and we can connect, and with that, we will see you in our next episode.