Forty Under 40

FOX

One of Evans’ biggest clients is GM, which had a big presence at this year’s game with several in-game spots. It also sponsored the postgame show and the episode of “Glee” that followed the Super Bowl telecast.

GM was looking for a way to incorporate a robot it co-designed with NASA engineers into its ads. What followed was a series of conference calls — “there must have been at least 50,” Evans said — between Fox’s production team and GM. Eventually, it led to an on-air pregame spot with Howie Long — a GM pitchman — introducing two GM cars and interacting with the robot, known as Robonaut 2.

“You’d be surprised to know how many conference calls I was on for a minute-and-a-half feature on Sunday,” Evans said. “When you’re a sales guy, you don’t expect to have to deal with things like that.”

Evans sells across all of Fox’s sporting events, though his main responsibility over the past several years has been selling the broadcaster’s MLB schedule.

But he always brings the same kind of deft touch that he showed with GM to other clients and other sports. It’s a way of doing business that has won Evans a lot of fans from the ad-buying community.

“Mark has the unique ability to place himself in the client’s shoes and sweats the details that, in the end, result in our brands and our company as a whole being extremely satisfied,” said Mark Wright, vice president of media, sports and entertainment marketing for Anheuser-Busch.

“He is just one of those executives in this business that truly does get it.”