Technology Is Moving Fast, but Not Everyone Is in the Fast Lane
I love my calculator. I know I could use my phone. Yet there is something tactile about punching numbers into my Texas Instruments TI-1795+. 
So it was no surprise to me, as we begin to enter the new year, that not everyone has the latest wearable tech or the latest phone. Bank of America conducted a study this year and found that nearly 50% of people are still using CDs. And 40% of the cool people are still using calculators. Or 36% are still using landline phones.
If you’ve made the switch from one technology to another, like I have with the landline phone, we all must remember that the “Curse of Knowledge” is hard to overcome. The curse is that it is difficult for informed people to think about problems from the perspective of uniformed people. In others words, you have no idea what people outside your organization are really thinking and feeling about what you know to be true. It’s why, for many nonprofits, you hear: “I know who you are, I just don’t know what you do.”
We are all slow to adapt to something. Make sure your marketing is moving with the entire audience, and not just the convenient media for you.
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.