Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne. Marketing cartoons, content marketing with a sense of humor, keynote speaking.

Keynote Talks with Humor and Insight

See Tom Speak

This Week's Cartoon

Product Design and Conway's Law Marketoonist cartoon

Product Design and Conway’s Law

I heard somewhere years ago that the reason the classic TV remote control is so ridiculously complicated is that each button has its own product manager, lobbying hard for the features of that button. I think of that every time I stay in an Airbnb and can’t figure out how to turn on the TV. It inspired this cartoon. In… Read More

Read More

Cartoon Powered Marketing

Cartoons to License

Speaking + Workshops

Content Marketing Campaigns

Most Recent Cartoons

AI Overviews Changing the Game Marketoonist cartoon

AI Overviews Changing the Game

There’s an old joke that the best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google search results. For years, the name of the game was to rank as highly as possible in the top 10 blue links. Some of the game resulted in mindless keyword stuffing and other SEO hacks. But it also created a value exchange:… Read More

Optimizing for the Wrong Metrics Marketoonist cartoon

Optimizing for the Wrong Metrics

I recently stumbled across Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” The British economist Charles Goodhart originally framed this in a 1975 article on monetary policy, but it’s an important watch-out for business today. When we optimize for a number instead of our true goal, we risk whatever we were trying to… Read More

Marketing Qualified Leads Marketoonist cartoon

The Trust Gap in Marketing Qualified Leads

The quality of marketing leads is an age-old sales gripe. David Mamet famously captured this sentiment in the 1984 play (and 1992 movie) Glengarry Glen Ross. The leads were so bad, they became a running joke among the sales team. In 2002, B2B research firm SiriusDecisions gave the problem a framework, the Demand Waterfall, and its now ubiquitous byproduct, the… Read More

Top of Mind Marketoonist cartoon

Top of Mind

In 2005, I drew a cartoon with a consumer and a brand tying the knot in a wedding ceremony. In her vows, the consumer says: “And I promise to be loyal, forsaking all other brands, unless your competitor is on deal, you’re out-of-stock or you’re just not meeting my need states at the time.” That cartoon was partly inspired by… Read More

New Cannes Lions Award Category cartoon

Cannes Lions Humblebrags

Around 15,000 marketers descend this week on the French Riviera for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. And everyone else will feel like we’re there. As Agency SOS Founder John Kovacevich wrote a few years ago: “Prepare yourselves. Your (highly-placed, senior-level, expense-account-having) advertising friends are about to flood your feed with yacht and rosé photos. Later this week, when… Read More

New Self-Serving Study cartoon

New Self-Serving Study

Byron Sharp from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has long been on the frontlines of debunking marketing myths, starting with “How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know” in 2010. Byron recently introduced me to the term SONK — “the Scientific-cation Of Non-Knowledge.” In an interview last year, Byron credits SONK to his mentor Andrew Ehrenberg. As Byron describes SONK: “You take trivial… Read More

Wondering if a marketoon™ campaign is a good fit?

Let's Talk

Marketoons

Browse Categories

About Marketoonist

Tom Fishburne is the Founder and CEO of Marketoonist, a content marketing studio that helps businesses reach their audiences with cartoons.

© 2026 Marketoonist