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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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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“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.
Marketers are tripping over themselves to reach Millennials. Advertisers spend five times as much on reaching Millennials as they do on all other generations combined. The Millennial obsession on how to become relevant to the next generation has led to a lot of soul searching for marketers. Many old-school brands have been having a sort of brand identity crisis. McDonalds…
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When I worked in web marketing in the late nineties, everyone was focused on “eyeballs” (basically counting impressions) and clicks. Ad inventory was sold on a CPM model. Not much has changed. Eyeballs are still commonly cited as the measurable end result of a campaign. But at the end of the day, impressions don’t buy. Real people do. Many of…
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Many marketers were schooled in the marketing funnel. In the traditional funnel, consumers move lockstep in uniform sequential stages from awareness to purchase. The specific stages might vary, but the journey is assumed to stay pretty much the same. The marketing funnel actually dates back to 1898, in the writings of Philadelphia advertising pioneer E. St. Elmo Lewis. His framework…
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When every innovation claims to be disruptive, disruptive loses its meaning. This is particularly the case in startups, where the word “disruption” is almost a business pitch requirement nowadays. We have to be careful of the echo chamber in innovation. Most of what is claimed to be disruptive is really just just an incremental innovation with a large dose of…
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SXSW has turned into the Superbowl of “brand experiences.” This year, virtual reality was the main technology focus. McDonalds even created a virtual reality experience where attendees could paint the inside of a giant Happy Meal box. There is obviously tremendous promise in virtual reality, and some are calling 2016 a breakthrough year in virtual reality for marketing. But as…
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The Trojan Horse metaphor is regularly used to describe content marketing. I’ve used it frequently myself. I like the idea of marketers sharing content so good that an audience would welcome it for its own sake. By sponsoring the content, the marketer’s brand comes along for the ride. But the Trojan Horse can also be a metaphor of trickery. Historically…
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“People don’t want to be interrupted by advertising. They want to engage with it on their own terms, when they’re in consumer mode and thus in the proper mindset to listen to a brand’s messaging.” I read this takeaway in a Guardian article on the death of the 30-second spot, comparing it to the eight-track of advertising. But I wonder…
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Marketing is increasingly data-driven. But the data we choose matters. It’s tempting to cherry-pick the data that makes us look or feel good. Or the easiest data to persuade an audience to buy into whatever we want them to believe. This is particularly the case in digital marketing, where over-simplified numbers like Likes or YouTube views are frequently used as…
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Are your buyer personas saying more about the marketing team than about the buyer? It can be difficult to wade through all of the insights that marketers collect on their customers. Buyer personas are a tool to give customer profiles a human face. They synthesize all of the observations, insights, and data into a fictionalized character sketch. Buyer personas can…
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“Ambushes done right can deliver instant fame and talk value, but the unpredictability of catching lightning in a bottle is not suited for everyone or every brand,” Innocean’s Eric Springer said in a recent Adweek article called “How to Win the Super Bowl Without Spending $5 Million on a 30-Second Spot.” With Super Bowl ads fetching a record $5 million…
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Marketers are increasingly eyeing Tinder, the dating and hookup app, as a potential advertising platform. With 50 million users and 1 billion-plus swipes, the numbers are attractive, particularly to reach Millennials. And as Brian Norgard, VP of Advertising at Tinder, put it, “If you think about the way Tinder works, with ‘like’ and ‘pass’, we have a really amazing signal…
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Considering that clients and agencies both work in communication, it’s amazing how dysfunctional they can be at communicating with each other. This is particularly clear in the creative process, from the brief to the creative review. A creative execution is only as good as the relationship between the creative partners that produce that execution. How we show up to the…
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“This generation doesn’t dislike brands. What they don’t like is advertising.” Erin McPherson from Maker Studios said this about about Millennials at an IAB event last year. She continued, “The new authority is authenticity.” We frequently hear that “authenticity” is the key to marketing to millennials. It’s an amorphous term that has led many brands adding words like “honest” and…
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It’s tempting to look at any new marketing trend as a cure-all. It’s just as tempting to completely give up on that trend when it doesn’t immediately live up to all of the hype. Gartner created a model called the Hype Cycle to track any emerging technology as it goes from hero to zero and then ultimately somewhere in between.…
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It’s the time of year to make vague resolutions that we’ll forget by February. According to Statistic Brain, 45% of Americans make New Year’s resolutions and only 8% of those are actually successful. I think marketing teams often follow the same pattern. We start off the year with big ideas and good intentions and then get distracted. It’s easy to…
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In the early 1900s, Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker famously quipped, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” In a way, he’s the grandfather of marketing attribution — the science of giving credit to each marketing touchpoint that a customer was exposed to before a purchase. More than ever, marketers are…
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