Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne. Marketing cartoons, content marketing with a sense of humor, keynote speaking.
There’s a perennial search for the next big thing in marketing, which can distract us from getting the basics right. I recently re-discovered “Eat Your Greens”, a thought-provoking collection of essays by marketing thinkers, edited by Wiemer Snijder in 2018 (he kindly peppered a few of my cartoons between the essays). The book includes a sharp piece by Mark Ritson… Read More
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Epoch Strategy Director Alex Murrell wrote a fascinating piece a couple years ago on “The Ageism in Advertising” and the knee-jerk way that marketers obsess over younger generations. Alex cited that only 5% of advertising spend is targeted to adults aged 35-64, despite the fact that over 50s hold 80% of the wealth (in the UK), make up 60% of… Read More
Last year, Professor Scott Galloway described COVID-19 as “an accelerant” not a “change agent.” As he later expanded: “The pandemic’s most enduring impact will be as an accelerant. While it will initiate some changes and alter the direction of some trends, the pandemic’s primary effect has been to accelerate dynamics already present in society – from e-commerce to online education… Read More
A couple months after NFTs caught the public imagination with the $69 million auction of a JPEG, it has been fascinating to see how brands have scrambled to jump on the NFT bandwagon. As Cathy Hackl put it, “everyone is talking about NFTs, and few people actually understand them.” In the luxury world, brands like Gucci and RTFKT created NFTs… Read More
The design thinking methodology, pioneered and evangelized by fabled design firm IDEO, has spread from products to services to just about anything in business. “Design Thinking” has joined the corporate lexicon in a similar fashion as “Agile”. It means different things to different people and, too often, is used as shorthand for a magic potion approach to innovation and creative… Read More
In 2015, the ANA surveyed advertisers and agencies to identify problems in the often dysfunctional client/agency relationship. One issue rose to the top — the creative brief. The ANA found that 58% of clients believe they do a good job with creative briefs. Yet only 27% of agencies agree (and 0% “strongly agree”). This gap in perception between those giving… Read More
Last year PwC investigated where the money goes in digital advertising, at the behest of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA). This wasn’t an easy task, as a single programmatic ad placement can involve 20 different players, each taking a cut. PwC found that a whopping half (49%) of digital ad spending is syphoned off before it reaches publishers. … Read More
