AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising

One-Minute MarketerIt Doesn’t Feel Like Football Season, But the Big Negotiation Game Is on TV

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Slime Cannons for NFL Game

It Doesn’t Feel Like Football Season, But the Big Negotiation Game Is on TV

You may have missed last season’s NFL playoff game on Nickelodeon. It was between the New Orleans Saints and the Chicago Bears. It featured slime-filled graphics on the field when there was a score, and the announcers were not your typical NFL sports broadcasters. SpongeBob SquarePants was on the net catching field-goal kicks.

Slime Cannons for NFL GameThe Nickelodeon game was the network’s most-watched program in nearly four years with 2.06 million viewers. For the NFL, this is what it will want to see in negotiated rights to broadcast the game. It is a simple way to bring new fans to the game — especially young fans. The NFL is searching for new audiences and ways to extend its content. Amazon is bidding. So are Disney/ESPN, FOX, CBS and maybe even some social media outlets. ESPN has experimented with multiple channels from ABC, ESPN, Freeform, ESPN2 (coaches’ room), ESPN+ (analytics-focused) and ESPN Deportes.

It is all intended to build more audiences, bring in a new generation of football fans, extend content offerings and appeal to a broader audience set for each game.

The alternative broadcasting helps extend the brand and make it more accessible to fans and new fans. The negotiations will be the best game to watch this summer. But there is a lesson for us all in this: Take your most popular content and leverage it for broader reach and spinoffs.

Mark Mathis III is chief creative & strategy officer, partner and cofounder of AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising.

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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.