This Week's Cartoon

How to Write a PowerPoint Pitch

The surest way to stifle an idea is to write a longwinded presentation deck about it. PowerPoint, Keynote, and Prezi are powerful tools, but the power comes in how they’re used. A weighty presentation deck can get in the way of the idea itself. The classic Mark Twain quote applies equally when writing a presentation — “I didn’t have time… Read More

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Most Recent Cartoons

The Marketing Role and Owning the P&L

The marketing role is always evolving. Increasingly marketers are taking on P&L responsibility. CMO marketing technology spend is now rivaling CIO technology spend. Gartner reported earlier this year that 75% of marketing leaders said they own or share responsibility for the P&L. As Gartner’s Jake Sorofman said, “Over the past several years, we’ve witnessed an expansion of the CMO mandate, from… Read More

7 Deadly Sins of Innovation

One of the easiest ways to gauge the culture of innovative in an organization is to see how that organization deals with failure. If unchecked, failure carries a stigma that can paralyze companies from trying new things. This summer, a Swedish clinical psychologist named Samuel West opened up a pop-up “Museum of Failure” in the town of Helsingborg. The museum… Read More

The Tension of Data-Driven Creative

We need both art and science in marketing — the “MadMen” and “MathMen.” I think the most compelling campaigns of the future will bring together the greatest creativity and the greatest insight informed by data. But creatives and data scientists can make uneasy bedfellows. It’s one thing to optimize media; it’s another to optimize the creative itself. As marketing increasingly… Read More

How to Write a Creative Brief

Marketing creative can only be as good as the creative brief that went into it. Yet creative briefs are frequently one of the more overlooked parts of the creative process. Creative briefs are often neither creative nor brief. I like how Creative Director Howard Margulies voiced this in an AdAge article a while ago: “Too often, the creative brief is… Read More

snackable content

Havas Media recently reported that 60% of content created by the world’s leading 1,500 brands is “just clutter,” defined as “poor, irrelevant or fails to deliver.” This conclusion was part of their annual Meaningful Brands study, which measures outcomes for brands that form “meaningful” connections with consumers. However, Havas found a 71% correlation between brands that create meaningful content and… Read More