Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne. Marketing cartoons, content marketing with a sense of humor, keynote speaking.
Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne, a career marketer and cartoonist.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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“If marketing kept a diary, this would be it.”
- Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs
Packed with nearly 200 marketing cartoons, this new book collection celebrates 15 years of Marketoonist.
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…
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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…
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“The correlation between stated intent and actual behavior is usually low and negative,” HBS Professor Gerald Zaltman wrote in his classic textbook, How Customers Think. Years ago I took Zaltman’s class as a student and it made an impact on me. He talked about the conundrum that 80% of new products and services fail within six months of launch, usually…
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Marketing is full of myths, anecdotes, and long-held beliefs of what drives growth. I think part of our job as marketers is to continually question these assumptions. It’s easy for marketers to get entranced by the idea that consumers will fall in love with our brands. Former Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts coined the term “Lovemark” in 2005 and…
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In my marketing career, I’ve worked on both sides of the client-agency relationship. I’ve experienced genuine strategic partnerships where the resulting work was greater than the sum of its parts and I’ve experienced dysfunctional alliances that were transactional and even combative. One of the biggest changes to the client-agency relationship in the last 15 years is the increasing role of…
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I love this statement from David Droga as he accepted Lifetime Achievement recognition at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity a week or so ago: “I used to try to sell things just on the creativity of something, and I’d be furious if they didn’t see the genius I saw. Now if I was a client, I wouldn’t want to…
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I first drew a version of this cartoon years ago sitting behind the focus group one-way mirror while working at General Mills. We held a lot of focus groups, many of them in a Minneapolis suburb called Eden Prairie. We used to jokingly refer to those focus group respondents as “The Oracles of Eden Prairie.” We seemingly brought just about…
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When digital advertising first emerged, technology seemingly offered a utopian future for marketers — the ability to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. Marketers talked about an eventual end to one-size-fits-all advertising seen as irrelevant, interruptive, and annoying. Yet, today’s experience certainly hasn’t gotten any less annoying. Nielsen Norman Group released a study last…
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After a decade of Millennial obsession, the marketing world is increasingly buzzing about the next generation around the corner — Generation Z. Studies highlight their buying power of $44 billion, that they’ll be 40% of the population of US, Europe, and BRIC by 2020, and that they are naturally immune to advertising. Agencies are lining up to offer tools and…
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In these fast-paced days of digital marketing, there’s a continuous stream of new technologies for marketers to get excited about. It’s tempting for marketers to drop everything in favor of the shiny new thing. Our sense-checking isn’t always caught up with our enthusiasm. We risk being caught without our clothes. Or pretending like we see the clothes, when we don’t.…
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I spoke at a conference last week called MarTech, which focuses on the intersection of marketing and technology. One of their founding insights is that technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically. One of the other speakers talked about the rise of chatbots, and how they will fundamentally change marketing. The speaker shared that 80% of brands expect to be…
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I once heard Seth Godin give a talk to a group of marketers in London. After this session, someone asked his secret to being so productive. Seth not only publishes books and starts ventures, he famously finds the time to reply personally to every single email he receives. Seth replied simply, “I don’t watch TV and I don’t go to…
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Bringing ideas to life in an organization can be a bumpy ride. We’re all familiar with the myth of Isaac Newton sitting under the apple tree, waiting for inspiration to fall on his head. Newton’s apple is one of the more common symbols of innovation, right up there with Archimedes shouting Eureka from his bathtub. Metaphorically, that’s what we do…
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When last month’s “Communicator of the Year” can turn into this month’s PR disaster, there’s a lesson for any brand on the perils of flubbing a corporate apology. Any brand can go from hero to zero. Much has been written in the last week about the missteps of United and its CEO. Given that it was PRWeek that so recently…
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I was struck by a recent Marketing Week poll that 65% “believe older marketers are being edged out by digital natives in the job market.” The terms “Digital Natives” and “Digital Immigrants” were coined by Marc Prensky in 2001 to define a generational divide of those born before and after the advent of digital. As technology continues to impact every…
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