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.
Learn MoreCartoons from 15 Years of Marketing, Business, & Doodling in Meetings
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Marketers are scrambling to figure out the implications of Facebook’s announcement in early January that it will overhaul its news feed. Updates from friends and family will be prioritized much higher than updates from brands. Facebook will emphasize “meaningful social interactions” over likes and shares. The announcement may be dramatic, but this has been a long time coming. Organic posts…
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I first played around with this cartoon idea nearly a decade ago and decided to redraw for a conference in Amsterdam last week. Organizations are designed to minimized risk. It’s in their DNA. Organizations develop all sorts of antibodies to neutralize threats to the status quo. A natural byproduct is that it can be hard to introduce unconventional ideas. As…
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I’m giving a talk this week in Amsterdam about building a culture of innovation and I stumbled across a recent innovation report from Capgemini that I found interesting. Capgemini reports that 87% of companies now have a space dedicated to innovation (a 27% increase in innovation centers versus last year). But only 17% of companies say that innovation is taking…
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A few weeks ago, a publicly traded beverage company called Long Island Iced Tea Corp changed it’s name to Long Blockchain and announced that it was focusing on blockchain technology. Their stock surged 200% on the news. Last week, Chanticleer Holdings, which owns burger restaurants and is a franchisee of Hooters, said that it was using blockchain for a new…
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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.
’Tis the season for retargeting ads. Major shopping periods spark a surge in campaigns triggered by items consumers browse, place in their carts, or (annoyingly) have already purchased. Samuel Scott gave an interesting talk in October about the net effect of all of this retargeting. He said: “If anyone here uses retargeting, then it’s your fault that people are blocking…
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“In the age of Amazon, retailers must leverage assets that Bezos doesn’t have: When Amazon zigs, retails must zag.” This was a quote from NYU Stern professor Scott Galloway in a Fast Company report this week on “The Future of Retail in the Age of Amazon.” Some analysts are calling this era a retail apocalypse. In the US this year,…
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“There is a lot of talk about creating customer-centric organizations but not nearly enough action,” a recent Forrester report said. Forrester described 2018 as “a year of reckoning” for many businesses: “Unmet customer expectations are resulting in churn; the lack of digital transformation gains is translating to loss of market share; industry lines that protected some are crumbling; and longstanding,…
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Farhad Manjoo, technology columnist for the New York Times, went to the Google I/O conference earlier this year and joked, “I have been counting occurrences of the phrase ‘now, we use machine learning’ and I got to 70 trillion.’” This has certainly been a watershed year for machine learning and the overall AI arms race, particularly in marketing technology. Salesforce…
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A few weeks ago, I drew a cartoon on the Future of Advertising, imagining increasingly invasive advertising in our homes, thanks to technology and IOT. The cartoon seemed to strike a chord, and even popped up in the Wall Street Journal. And yet while advertisers are gaining increasingly powerful tools to reach consumers in ways never before possible, consumers are…
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Marketers often fall into the trap of treating generations as monoliths. The topic, “How to Appeal to Millennials”, has appeared on many a conference agenda and marketing plan, often accompanied by a stereotypical checklist of what defines a millennial mindset and what it takes for brands to resonate with them. I like how Mark Ritson frequently skewers this practice. Here’s…
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The 2002 movie “Minority Report” portrayed a futuristic vision of advertising as the lead character, John Anderton, enters a shopping mall that identifies him from retina scans and pitches personalized ads to him as he walks by: “John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right about now.” That scene influenced a generation of marketers. I riffed on this premise with…
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Sir Alec Issigonis, designer of the original Mini in 1959, famously said, “a camel is a horse designed by committee.” The Mini became one of the most successful cars of all time. Sir Alec was knighted is 1969 because of its success. The car was voted the second most influential car of the 20th century. The Mini became an icon…
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My new book collection has launched — Your Ad Ignored Here: Cartoons from 15 Years of Marketing, Business, and Doodling in Meetings. You can find more detail on the book and where to buy it here (print and ebook on Amazon most places worldwide and other retailers like Barnes & Noble). Also, if you’re interested in ordering more than 50 copies…
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I just returned from a two week book tour with marketers in the UK and Norway. If there was one topic that overshadowed most marketing conversations, it was GDPR. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the sweeping new EU regulation on marketing data that will impact any company that offers goods or services to EU residents or tracks…
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Reaching the right person with the right message at the right time has long been the holy grail of marketing. The technology and data is tantalizingly close, and yet context and intent remain elusive. Personalized marketing is still wasted if it hits the wrong context and intent. Here’s how Google framed the opportunity recently: “Every day, three billion people around…
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This is in the vein of my “How to Write a PowerPoint Pitch” cartoon a couple weeks ago. Presenters often apologetically refer to overly busy slides in their presentations as “eye charts”. If you ever feel compelled on-stage to apologize for showing an “eye chart”, that’s a good sign you might want to rethink your slides. When I started my…
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Marketers are increasingly excited about the potential of AI. L’Oréal chief digital officer Lubomira Rochet described a commonly shared sentiment: “I believe AI is as big a revolution as the internet itself. It’s going to power more of our interactions with our consumers, be it through advertising, CRM or even ad serving. All those compartments of marketing will be transformed…
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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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