Book collection celebrating 15 years of Marketoonist

This Week's Cartoon

The Silo Effect cartoon

The Silo Syndrome

One of my favorite marketing observations comes from HP founder David Packard: “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” Our customers don’t care about our org charts. They don’t care which department is responsible for what. When they interact with different parts of a business, all they see is one brand. That means that every functional… Read More

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5 Stages of Missing Plan cartoon

Brand Planning

Mike Tyson was asked his thoughts on Evander Holyfield’s fight plan before a WBA Heavyweight Title bout and famously responded: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” As we shift from Q3 to Q4 this week, brand planning season is in full swing for 2025, even as final 2024 numbers come into clearer view. The process… Read More

Creative Review by Committee cartoon

Creative Review by Committee

A few months ago, I heard Adam Morgan from eatbigfish and Jon Evans from System1 give a talk on the Extraordinary Cost of Being Dull at the Cannes advertising festival. Adam and Jon shared analysis from Peter Field who found that a “dull” advertising campaign has to spend £10m more a year in media on average to get the same… Read More

Sales-Focused Advertising cartoon

Sales-Focused Advertising

Peter Drucker wrote this in his 1973 book on management: “You have to produce results in the short term. But you also have to produce results in the long term. And the long term is not simply the adding up of short terms.” Business carries a bias toward short-termism in general, but particularly in marketing and advertising. There’s a fundamental… Read More

AI is a Tool cartoon

AI is a Tool

In 1966, Abraham Maslow, originator of the Hierarchy of Needs, made this well-known observation: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.” This type of cognitive bias became known as Maslow’s hammer or the Law of the Instrument. I’ve been thinking about that line in the current… Read More

Customer Journey cartoon

Customer Journeys to Nowhere

Earlier this year an editorial in the New York Times wondered:  “When did everything become a ‘journey’? Changing our hair, getting divorced, taking spa vacations — they’re not just things we do; they’re ‘journeys.’” And of course, to marketers, there’s the “customer journey.” The customer journey is a handy metaphor to help us consider all of the interactions and experiences… Read More

Thinking Outside the Box cartoon

Thinking Outside the Box

Conventional wisdom holds that creativity comes from “thinking outside the box”, but constraints are actually one of its key ingredients. One of Google’s principles of innovation is “creativity loves constraints,” as Marissa Mayer once recounted: “People think of creativity as this sort of unbridled thing, but engineers thrive on constraints. They love to think their way out of the little… Read More

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