The upcoming Fall TV schedule line-up is stacked! There are show reboots and returning favorites, whether in sports, reality programming or other binge-watching options. To get things started, the football season had a double-header kickoff that was different than in the past. One game was played on a Wednesday in the U.S. and another on Thursday (really from overseas in Australia on Friday). Both games were sold-out events with fans watching from the highest seats to the lowest rows. Some folks even lounged in a more relaxed setting at home, maybe with brew and snacks at their fingertips.
The reason for the game in Australia made sense. They’re looking to expand football viewership to as wide a global audience as possible. How they’re doing that is helpful in knowing what it means to be standing on business as a brand. After the recent World Championship soccer tournament, we were reminded how that game (aka football in many countries) has the largest participation/fan base in the world. Another sport with a long and related history is rugby. One way to think of American football is like a shift between rugby and tradition football, to the American version now being exported to the world.
This Substack kickoff might be a good time to explain See America In Color (SAIC), the social-edge campaign/platform for which I’m the founder/creator. SAIC is built on a shift between black & white TV and color TV. One beams ‘white light’ with varying intensity to show images in black, white and gray. The other combines colored light (RGB: red, green, blue) for a beautiful TV picture. SAIC’s ‘smart shift’ brings a good handle on hot-button issues by how we See America in color, not just in black & white. In addition, ‘Empower With Doc’ is where shared purpose invites group action to shift results that level-up America.
American football is marketed as sports entertainment. They are standing on business as a brand to give customers (fans) an exciting and enjoyable product. With SAIC, we are standing on business as a civic brand to give residents/citizens, employees, students an educational and empowering consumer value. While these two brands are very different in audience size and activity volume, they deliver:
1. Content: Information or human-interest stories on the ins/outs of the game and life.
2. Programs: Content delivery sources for a multi-cultural consumer market.
3. Events: Regular scheduled activities that ‘feed’ the interests/wishes of customers.
4. Juice: Boost in adrenalin, fun, insight or knowledge, based on consumer demand.
We tune to weekly football games across various channels, whether on streaming or traditional platforms. The American football brand has such traction that their own cable channel is merged with a mainstream sports network. Somewhere, people are upset about the pricing and positioning of the brand, which is making it harder to keep up. While ‘Empower With Doc’ isn’t designed as a media or programming endorsement outlet, the point is that consumers watch sports sprinkled in with hot-button topics, social impact and community empowerment. SAIC helps connect the dots across those areas in American life and beyond the U.S.
For example, it provides an eye-opening lens on civic/social issues for a higher level of citizenship. This can help take the edge off from ongoing political storms in the same way we receive alerts for impending weather storms. The forecaster isn’t trying to scare us but instead warn and inform us. Our Substack won’t be trying to scare people, just inform and empower towards best life experiences. How we do that via this and other SAIC venues will be helpful to understanding America’s first 250 years of independence and charting a path for the next chapter towards life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
So, subscribing to ‘Empower With Doc’ is like a staging ground for civic engagement, community uplift and social branding. These align with my book Public Good Sense: Rebirth in Voice of a People and Soul of a Nation. Whether your work life has various tasks or life’s work is part of a business roundtable, governing legislature, organization board or hometown/alumni collective, we strive to have public service, education, business and community come together and make our journeys one (mojo). Plus, if sports can celebrate athletes on their field of dreams, we can be a forum and showcase for our American dream journey.