Who Do You Trust the Most?
Gallup has been measuring the honesty and ethical standards for occupations since the mid-1970s.
At the top of the list, nurses — again. For nearly 20 years, nurses have “far outpaced all other professions.” Yet in advertising you rarely see a nurse as a spokesperson. Nurses outdistance medical doctors and pharmacists by 17 points, and nurses have nearly no low scores. 
Gallup also found that journalists have dramatically moved up the ethical and honesty ladder. They moved up 10 points, and now match their highest rating since 1977.
So the next time you are selecting who to be in a photo shoot, pick a nurse, medical doctor, pharmacist (can you tell we are getting older as a nation), high school teacher and a police officer.
Alas, advertising practitioners did not move up at all. We are still ranked toward the bottom with telemarketers and stockbrokers.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.
