Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne. Marketing cartoons, content marketing with a sense of humor, keynote speaking.
Marketers are the first to get bored by their own marketing. Particularly when a new leader joins a brand team, there’s a common bias in marketing that what will drive growth is to change everything everywhere all at once. Given the revolving door of many marketing roles, the cycle can repeat with each leadership change. While brands need fresh… Read More
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At the Cannes Lions a few months ago, Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar and CFO Sachin Mehra gave a joint talk on the CMO/CFO relationship called “Happy Tension.” Raja described the typical dynamic this way: “It’s shocking that less than 40% of the finance people think that marketers can make sound commercial decisions, leaving the remaining 60% on the negative side. … Read More
Dwight D. Eisenhower reportedly prioritized his work life by classifying tasks as important or not important, and urgent or not urgent. The resulting two-by-two graph became known as The Eisenhower Matrix and it influenced a lot of thinking in work productivity. We generally spend far too much on work that is urgent but not important. As Stephen Covey famously summarized… Read More
In 1970, a Japanese roboticist named Masahiro Mori introduced the concept of the “uncanny valley.” In designing robots to be more human-like, he observed that people respond positively only up to a point. Then there’s an “uncanny valley” where the “almost-human” design seems creepy and people experience “revulsion.” If you watched the 2004 movie The Polar Express, you may… Read More
Net Promoter Score (NPS) turns 20 later this year. What Bain consultant Fred Reichheld first introduced in a HBR article in December 2003 is now ubiquitous. The “how likely are you to recommend” question is asked endlessly after customer experiences, large and small. The metric that this question generates is now tracked by two-thirds of the Fortune 1000. … Read More
I love the analogy of ChatGPT that Hubspot CTO Dharmesh Shah shared at the start of the year: “Netscape was to the Internet what ChatGPT is to Artificial Intelligence. “The Internet existed before Netscape. But the browser helped millions of mere mortals connect the dots on what could be done, and dream of what could be.” As this breakout year… Read More
Nearly 10 years ago, I drew one of my most popular cartoons that showed a Peeping Tom looking through the window of a living room at a couple. One says, “Don’t worry, it’s only marketers collecting our personal data so they can create more relevant advertising for us.” Third-party cookies have been at the center of the consumer privacy debate… Read More
