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
More Details Here
A Chicago family recently received a promotional mailer from OfficeMax addressed to “Mike Seay/Daughter Killed in Car Crash/Or Current Business.” The Seay family lost their daughter less than a year earlier. Including “daughter killed in car crash” wording on the envelope was obviously a mistake, but the issue is far bigger than a typo. Having that sensitive data to begin…
Read More
My post last week on the innovation buzzword “disruptive” got me thinking about another overused and abused example in our corporate lexicon — “pivot”. The idea of a pivot was first coined by Lean Startup writer, Eric Ries, as a type of course correction that startups can make as they find product-market fit. Here’s how he first described it in…
Read More
Marketers are full of buzzwords, particularly when talking about innovation. Even the term “innovation” is a cliché in danger of losing its meaning. In talking about innovation, it’s easy to get lost in the “strategery” and lose sight of the actual consumer need. We marketers tend to breathe our own exhaust after a while. One of the more misunderstood and…
Read More
Marketers have never had more data at their disposal. The opportunity to glean insights by crunching all of these new sources of data is pretty intoxicating. Yet having access to the data is only one part of the equation. Making sense of the data is the harder part. Marketers sometimes forget the Statistics 101 maxim that correlation doesn’t imply causation.…
Read More
“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 increasingly see mobile as an integral part of the marketing mix and have invested significantly in mobile apps. 92 of the world’s top 100 brands have at least one app on Apple’s app store. Yet most apps are completely lost in the clutter. There are over a million active apps for both iPhone and Android and 90% of people…
Read More
The meeting after the meeting sometimes has more impact that the meeting itself. In many organizations, that’s where people share their real opinions and where the real decisions are made. A team might agree around the conference table, but then express doubts in the “safer” environment of the hallway or coffee shop. It’s a passive aggressive way to squash ideas,…
Read More
Ad retargeting is on the rise — those ads that stalk you across the internet after you’ve even briefly visited a company’s site. Google is even testing cross-platform ad retargeting, so a site that you visit from your desktop can lead to ads served on your mobile devices. The potential of retargeting is huge for marketers — highly relevant advertising.…
Read More
There’s a growing movement in Silicon Valley to replace “Marketers” with a new position called “Growth Hackers”. Some are claiming that startups should eliminate their marketing teams altogether. I agree that marketers in general need to become more data-oriented and tech-savvy. I also respect many of the techniques that are getting categorized as “growth hacks”. But I seriously question that…
Read More
It’s an irresistible temptation for marketers to see how far their brands can stretch. In the endless search of brand growth, extending into new categories as a master brand can seem like a slam dunk. As the brand consultancy Prophet put it: “Most companies can simultaneously manage budgets and invest in their growth by strategically extending their master brands into…
Read More
Arguably the biggest shift in consumer behavior in the last few years has been the explosion of devices and the number of screens in a consumer’s life. That has a major impact on media consumption and how marketers reach consumers. As Google reported, 90% of people juggle different devices when working toward a goal. As they move between devices, they…
Read More
Few marketing tactics are as hated as the pop-ad ad. A Harris Interactive poll last year showed that Americans find irrelevant pop-up ads even more annoying than ads for male or female enhancement. Yet marketers continue to use them, aggressively (MacKeeper is a personal pet peeve). Pop-up ads are 49% more noticeable than other online ads types. I’ve heard marketers…
Read More
Superbowl is always a showcase of the state of marketing. This year’s Superbowl was dominated by social media war rooms all trying to replicate last year’s Oreo moment. During the Superbowl power outage in 2013, Oreo tweeted “Power out? No problem” with an image that simply said “You can still dunk in the dark”. Oreo was signaled out as a…
Read More
It’s common for marketers to exaggerate the importance of their brands in consumers’ lives. Brand positioning statements are often written as if consumers constantly think and obsess about the brand. Social media from brands can make it sound like every consumer is a cult follower. In reality, even “brand loyalists” have complex lives completely separate from our brands. Brands can…
Read More
Last week’s news that Google would buy Nest triggered a lot of discussion on the future of marketing (this cartoon was inspired by a joking tweet from Valleywag’s Sam Biddle). Nest makes smart home devices like learning thermostats (which I personally love) and smoke alarms, with the goal of creating a conscious home. It also collects a lot of data.…
Read More
There’s a funny saying circulating with marketers right now on the current state of Big Data: “Big Data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it.” Gartner recently released a report that 64% of companies are deploying or planning…
Read More
Marketers have gone hashtag crazy. Beyond Twitter and Instagram, Facebook recently incorporated hashtags into its platform. Hashtags are appearing in TV ads and on packaging. Some marketers are referring to hashtags as the new URL. But there’s a fundamental difference between hashtags and a URL. Brands aren’t in control of hashtags. JPMorgan Chase discovered this the hard way a couple…
Read More
Recently Leo Burnett invited me to be artist-in-residence for a day. I gave a talk about marketing worth sharing, and then answered a few questions about Marketoon Studios and the future of cartoons and social. Here’s a two-minute summary.
Read More
Forrester recently released a report on the future of push notifications (those messages that apps send to your mobile device). “Moving forward, we expect to see push notifications integrated as a core component of any direct marketing and relationship program.” That goes for mobile devices, but also for all of the other connected devices like TVs, cars, and game consoles.…
Read More
Santa’s not the only one who keeps a list of naughty and nice. We live in the age of consumer empowerment. Consumers can instantly share feedback on a meal at Yelp, a plumber at Angie’s List, even an ex-boyfriend at Lulu. A Harvard Business School study showed that a one-star increase in Yelp leads to a 5 to 9 percent…
Read More
Marketers have been closely watching the explosive growth of the latest social network, Snapchat. The social app now shares more that 350m photos every day. Because of the one-to-one messaging and pictures that self-destruct after just a few seconds, it hasn’t been obvious how brands could use Snapchat. But it’s only a matter of time before marketers rush in. Some…
Read More