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 way you allocate your media spend, where you put your ads, talks about your company. We moved from brand safety to, I think, societal safety.” This is the perspective of Stephan Loerke, CEO of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), in response to the growing Facebook ad boycott by big brands. WFA members represent 90% of global marketing communication…
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“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” This was Mike Tyson’s famous response when asked by a reporter if he was worried about Evander Holyfield’s boxing fight plan. I think it also applies to the best laid 2020 strategic marketing plans. Mark Ritson shared in an insightful MarketingWeek webinar that brands now find themselves in…
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“Zoom fatigue has me wanting a landline and a rotary phone,” Tammy Sun, Founder and CEO of Carrot, shared recently. Tammy spends 9 out of every 10 conversations on Zoom, 6 days a week. All meetings have started to default to video conferencing. As have family reunions, happy hours, workouts, webinars, and just about every other social interaction. Zoom has…
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”Now is not the time to be silent, neither is it the time to jump on a bandwagon. It’s a time for real reflection and care with regards to how a brand and its leaders stand by the black community at this time and move forward with real steps to end racism and injustice globally and not only on the…
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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.
As more marketers jump on the TikTok bandwagon, Melissa Eshaghbeigi, strategist at design agency Jam3, observed: “It’s possible for you to create that brand moment you’re looking for, but it’s also possible that you’ll cause a cringe reaction from everyone watching.” TikTok is catnip for marketing plans right now: record app downloads, access to Generation Z, high engagement, and people…
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A cafe in northeast Germany implemented a quirky new policy to encourage physical distancing as they re-open. Cafe & Konditorei Rothe is asking customers to put on colorful hats made out of swimming pool noodles that stick out several feet in all directions. I think the image of customers wearing swimming pool noodle hats is emblematic of “business as unusual.”…
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Brené Brown once gave a talk that explained the difference between empathy and sympathy: “Empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection … Empathy is I’m feeling with you. Sympathy, I’m feeling for you.” I see that empathy/sympathy divide in how organizations are choosing to communicate right now. A time of crisis is when it’s most important to show empathy and fuel…
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I’ve been thinking lately about Scott Brinker’s observation back in 2013 that “technology changes exponentially, organizations change logarithmically.” Scott was referring specifically to marketing technology (and dubbed this conundrum as “Martec’s Law”) but I think this observation also rings true for the time that we’re working now more generally. As Scott later said: “In my opinion, Martec’s Law encapsulates…
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Someone named Microsoft Sam recently compiled a selection of current advertisements into one three-minute montage titled: “Every Covid-19 Commercial is Exactly the Same.” The video highlights eerily similar copy, music, and visuals across all the ads, spanning automotive to tech to retail. As Microsoft Sam observed in the video liner notes: “Since they can’t film a new ad because of…
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Supply chain software firm BlueYonder recently found that 87% of consumers faced out-of-stocks at their grocery store. A related survey from eMeals reported that shoppers are unable to find 40% of grocery items on their shopping lists. A supply-constrained climate like this challenges how brands are perceived, evaluated and valued. Shopkick found 85% of consumers say brand names do not…
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My cartoon last week on the COVID-19 digital transformation wrecking ball seems to have touched a nerve. That cartoon was shared and licensed more than just about any cartoon I’ve created in the last 18 years (nearly as widely as this other cartoon I drew on digital transformation in 2018). Organizations are all feeling the sudden and increased urgency of…
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There’s a funny image circulating right now of a survey that asks, “Who led the digital transformation of your company? A) CEO B) CTO C) COVID-19.” COVID-19 is circled. COVID-19 is accelerating digital transformation at many companies, knocking through long-standing resistance and silos. As ITWC CIO Jim Love noted, “Sometimes it takes a crisis to turn people’s mindsets around.” The…
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In any crisis that impacts cash flow, one of the first reactions of a business is often to cut the marketing budget. That can leave marketers scrambling with how to do their jobs with less. I liked this reminder from Mark Ritson to remember all four Ps, not just Promotion (which relates to communications), but Product, Placement, and Price. “The world…
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I recently stumbled across the old cliche adage attributed to Cicero: “More is lost by indecision than wrong decision.” Every business is being asked to make decisions with incomplete information right now. What limited information we do have can change quickly. There’s often no clear right call in such a climate of uncertainty. And so, the default decision is no…
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Brands are judged less by how they operate when things go right, than by how they handle situations when things go wrong. Mark Ritson recently recounted the story of Marks & Spencer during World War II, when the retailer made ration clothing for the British public. They had to figure out how to manufacture clothing in a different…
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Team collaboration can be tricky in the best of times, but it will be interesting to see how completely virtual meetings will test this further — particularly when we add strained WiFi, the learning curve of more people learning new videoconferencing tools, and trying to juggle kids in the background. Videoconferencing technology has advanced (and kudos to Zoom for announcing…
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“The worst thing to do in a time of chaos is add to it.” I found this quote from an article from Ogilvy on British brands reacting to the Brexit vote a few years ago. While Brexit isn’t a good corollary for what is happening now, I was reminded by this quote that we will periodically have to navigate times…
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Many companies pay lip service to being customer-centric, but don’t actually put it into practice. When used primarily as a buzzword, it’s no surprise the results are only buzzword-deep. The CMO Council found that “only 14 percent of marketers would say that customer-centricity is a hallmark of their companies, and only 11 percent believe their customers would agree with that…
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A recent report found that 94% of businesses said that digital transformation was high on their list of priorities and 51% said they’re moving on these priorities in the next month. Yet a separate YouGov study found that 54% of employees either don’t understand (20%) or misinterpret (34%) the meaning of digital transformation. When more than half of employees are…
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“It’s too bad most people only think about their network when they need something from it.” I heard this years ago from branding adviser Denise Lee Yohn and it stuck with me. In 2012, the default generic introduction message on LinkedIn was “Since you are a person I trust, I wanted to invite you to join my network on LinkedIn.” …
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