AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising

One-Minute MarketerBringing Life to Your Brand: Should Your Brand Have a Mascot?

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Bringing Life to Your Brand: Should Your Brand Have a Mascot?

GEICO has a gecko. Aflac has a duck. Progressive has Flo. Smokey Bear, Old Spice man, the Most Interesting Man in the World (Dos Equis beer), roaming garden gnome (Travelocity), free credit report band, the list goes on and on.  And every college sports team has a mascot.20150227_204229_resized 20150224_224959_resized

Mascots make companies and organizations easy to relate to. The character provides a personality for people to get to know. Likeable mascots have the power to help brands transcend the common ground and become a humanized, living brand. Kids love mascots, but adults do as well. Mascots make your brand memorable in the sea of sameness you see across the marketing horizon.

Mascots are undergoing a reawakening in the digital age because audiences are overwhelmingly responding to their lifelike qualities and approachable demeanor. Mascots also allow you to do things that no logo will allow.

Written by:

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.