Marketing firm’s success stems from founder’s roots in advertising and Native American culture

An entrepreneurial drive, creative mindset and a desire to impact his community led Chad Germann to start his own business.

More than two decades later, his Red Circle advertising and media agency is the nation’s largest 100% Native-owned casino marketing firm.

“I think there must be something inside me that’s entrepreneurial. I think there's something there, that you look at an opportunity, you see somebody else capitalizing on it and you're like, ‘Well, I can do that,’” the St. Cloud State University alumnus said. “When I started the company, there were all these Native American casinos popping up everywhere. And tribes, they want to hire other Native Americans. That was a part of the policy built into my tribe's casino organization, and I had done the work, so I knew what was required and how to do it.”

Education has been integral in Germann’s life, even before he attended SCSU. A member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Tribe of Minnesota, he credits his grandmother prioritizing education for her children, including Germann’s mother, as it had a trickledown effect between the family’s different generations. Both of Germann’s parents are college-educated and were educators, and encouraged Germann and his sister to pursue knowledge whenever possible. In turn, Germann’s three children have all attended college as well.

“(My grandmother) shaped her kids’ behavior and my behavior. To get money to go to the store and get candy, I would have to pick up sticks in her yard and make little piles of sticks and I would get 25 cents for every pile — that was my grandmother teaching me work ethic. I would go to her house and before I could turn on the TV and watch cartoons as a little kid, she would make a worksheet for me with math problems, and I would have to do my worksheet before I could turn the TV on. That's really why I am where I am today, because of the choices she made.”

Germann was recruited to St. Cloud State as a basketball player. While he enjoyed his time playing for the Huskies, he credits his time in the classroom for encouraging him to push further in life.

“As you go through life, you're picking things up and building up who you are and what you know and what your skills are and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “I spent six and a half years at St. Cloud State, and those were wonderful developmental years for me.”

While working toward degrees in English literature and English that he would complete in 1996 and 1998, respectively, Germann started interning with Grand Casino’s marketing department. He’d go on to start his career as director of advertising for Grand Casino Hinckley, following his graduation and eventually moving back to the area. In that role he got to know a number of people from the advertising agencies the casino worked with, which inspired him to get more involved on the creative side of the industry as he started Red Circle in 2001.

“I've always been a creative person, so hanging out at the ad agency, where they're coming up with ideas and different ad campaigns — I absolutely love that and I still love that about my job. When we get to go to work and do the creative stuff to come up with a brand idea — what it's going to look like, what we're gonna say in the TV ads — I love that,” he said. “Even though I'm the owner of the company and I’ve got 40-some employees, whenever the creative stuff, the creative work comes around, I make sure I jump into those meetings and participate, because I really enjoy that.”

As founder and CEO, it’s important to Germann that Red Circle provides better solutions for Native American businesses. In 2009, he created Casino Data Technologies, which spawned RECON, a database software system that casinos can use to manage, analyze and report on their marketing programs.

“The mission from the beginning was to provide an ad agency solution for my tribe’s casinos. Most people don't understand what a weird business organism an Indian tribe with an Indian casino is and how politics spills over into business and vice versa. Casinos are unique businesses themselves, and I found that most ad agencies, even if they're full of talented people, really don't understand how casinos work and they don't understand how the politics work and the pace of business,” he said. “I thought that, because I'm a member of the tribe and spent years of my life working in the marketing department for my tribe’s casino, I understood things that the average ad agency person's not going to understand. So I'm going to be able to provide a better solution for my tribe’s casinos, but also any other tribes’ casinos that I go work for. Our business has always been about working for Indian tribes and their casinos. It's 98% of what we do. We end up doing other stuff here and there, but we chase casino business and we chase Indian casino business specifically.”

Throughout his career, Germann has had multiple ties to SCSU pop back up in his life. He served for a time as an advisory board member for the University’s American Indian Center. Through work ties overlapping in the tribal casino industry, he has also made friends with fellow Huskies along the way, including Craig Fuller ’01 and Joe Nayquonabe ’04.

“Just both of those guys are wonderful humans. With all that negative stuff that can be out there, I try very hard to make friendships with people that are the opposite of that,” Germann said. “Joe is a super good human; you'd never see him do anybody wrong. And Craig's the same way — just really good people. So that's, I think, why we become such good friends, is that I to try to be a good person, too.”