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 Internet of Things is coming soon to consumer packaged goods. Pernod Ricard introduced a pilot last month with 40,000 bottles of Malibu rum, turned into “digital touchpoints” with an NFC chip. The bottles connect wirelessly to your phone, providing exclusive content like drinks recipes and prize draws. As marketing manager Jo Alexander put it: “We have identified an opportunity…
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Marketers have more data at their disposal than ever. But it still feel’s like a giant game of “Where’s Waldo” in determining where customers are in the customer journey. And deciding what messages to share at any point in time. In many ways, we currently have the worst of both worlds. Customers know (and in some cases resent) that their…
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Most brands have some form of newsletter to connect with customers. But for many brands, more emphasis is placed on getting people to sign up than on giving them a reason to sign up. Last week David Hieatt, founder of Hiut Denim and the Do Lectures gave a workshop in London on the power of the humble email newsletter. I…
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The marketing world is buzzing about P&G’s announcement last month that they’re moving away from Facebook ads that target specific consumers. As CMO Marc Pritchard described the move, “We targeted too much, and we went too narrow. And now we’re looking at: What is the best way to get the most reach but also the right precision.” Coming from the…
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The Pokemon Go phenomenon may have peaked, but it sure lit a fuse for marketers to think about augmented reality, location-based marketing, and how their brands might fit in. As with adopting any other technology for marketing, many marketers will treat it as a gimmicky bandwagon. I stumbled across an AdAge article with an interesting insight on why Pokemon Go…
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There has been an explosion in purpose-driven brand communication the last few years. As Matthew Gardner at Droga5 put it, “Because of the challenge for people’s attention, purpose is the only thing that will get brands to break through. This is not a trend but more of an imperative and should be top of mind for every company.” When every…
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Marketers often think of their communication plan as three distinct types of media: Paid (buying ads), Owned (creating branded content), and Earned (social and word of mouth) Media. This P.O.E.M. model can be a handy way to think about marketing. But in practice, there are increasingly blurred lines between Paid, Owned, and Earned Media. And marketers sometimes act as if…
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“For many people the first interaction they have with a company is via a sterile, lifeless lead gen ad that takes you to a prison landing page where you are forced to enter in your life’s information and you know you will get immediately called by an overbearing sales rep before you are ready to have that conversation.” This was…
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Influencer marketing is all the rage, but there’s not a clear understanding of what constitutes influence. A few years ago, I participated in an influencer event for a consumer brand. It was an expensive affair put on by the brand’s agency. There were a few dozen “influencers” there, which, it turned out, meant a collection of people with blogs and…
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It’s in vogue for marketers to think of themselves as storytellers. But much of the marketing that gets passed off as “storytelling” really isn’t that much of a story. There is genuine power in stories and there are inspiring examples of brands that tell stories. But I think that often gets diluted by all of the content produced in the…
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There’s a widening gap between how marketers and consumers feel about brands collecting data and tracking customer journeys. According to a recent report by Edelman and The University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, 77% of marketers believe their organization should invest in predictive data and 71% of consumers believe that brands with access to personal data are using it unethically. Much…
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Marketers risk talking too much to ourselves. As demonstrated at Cannes, SXSW, and every other festival where marketers congregate, there’s a well-insulated marketing echo chamber. Nowhere is this more prevalent today than in content marketing. The sheer glut of new content created every day is deafening, and much of this content is created on the topic of the content marketing…
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Snapchat is the hottest advertising ticket right now. With 150 million daily users, they reach 41% of consumers 18-34 in the US. And, just in time for Cannes, they unveiled a new advertising strategy last week, including an API that will allow Snapchat ads to be sold by third parties. This land rush is going to be interesting to watch,…
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If you think the way that retargeting ads follow consumers around the internet is a little creepy, just wait. Retargeting is only getting warmed up. We’re all used to seeing ads for products that we’ve browsed online suddenly pop up ad infinitim on every other site we visit. Retargeting ads are 76% more likely to be clicked than regular display…
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Few marketers think that they spam. Spamming is often thought of as using email addresses from a bought list. But spamming is more expansive than that. Spam really just means an unsolicited or unwanted message. Cory Doctorow recently audited all of the spam in his inbox and discovered that most of it came, not from unknown entities, but from organizations…
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I was struck by the recent research that 60% of clicks on mobile banner ads are accidental. The main contributing factor was identified as fat finger syndrome. With mobile on track to become the third largest advertising medium, accounting for 12% of all ad spend, that’s an enormous disconnect. Of course it’s not fat fingers that are to blame. It’s…
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Instagram caught a lot of flak for its rebranding last week, but it’s only the most recent in a string of companies that have gone through brand makeovers. Uber, Airbnb, and Yahoo each debuted new brand identities in the last couple years that were widely lampooned. The biggest rebranding cautionary tales remain Tropicana in 2009, which backtracked after sales dropped…
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In the vein of last week’s cartoon on ROI, marketers are struggling to prove their digital efforts are working. Advertisers aren’t sure which measurements point to success, often relying on single metrics like the click-through rate. Single metrics can give a false picture, particularly for campaigns that may be more about awareness than conversion. I read recently that a whopping…
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Marketers are facing increasing pressure to demonstrate ROI, but giving a simple answer to the ROI question still isn’t that simple. Econsultancy released a report last month titled “Marketing Budgets 2016” that flags ROI measurement as a major impediment to increasing marketing activity. Illustrating ROI has always been tricky in traditional marketing, but even in digital marketing, marketers don’t rate…
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In innovation, the path of least resistance usually leads to mediocrity. A form of Darwinism drives organizations as they decide which ideas to launch. But instead of “survival-of-the-fittest,” it’s “survival-of-the-safest.” Innovation stage gates generally reward predictability, proof points, and past successes. And so the ideas that rise to the top result in more of the same. Innovation in many organizations…
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