Keynote Talks with Humor and Insight

This Week's Cartoon

Panic as AI Strategy Marketoonist Cartoon

The AI Strategy

I drew this cartoon thinking about how much panic and FOMO has been setting the pace and tenor of AI adoption. No one wants to be left behind. And that’s led to some of the most disjointed decisions we’ve seen, like banking on business growth by laying off staff and assuming AI will “automagically” fill the gap. CNBC reported that… Read More

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Cartoon Powered Marketing

Most Recent Cartoons

The AI Scarlet Letter Marketoonist carotoon

The AI Scarlet Letter

This cartoon was partly inspired by the whiplash approach to AI writing at LinkedIn. A few years ago, they indiscriminately pushed AI tools, offering to draft a full post after typing just 30 words. Surprise, surprise, this resulted in a lot of AI slop on the platform. A recent study from Pangram Labs claims that 41% of long-form posts on… Read More

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

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

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