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 increasingly crowdsourcing aspects of their campaigns and bringing fans into the creative process. Over 20% of the ads in the last Super Bowl used some form of crowdsourcing. In February, Hasbro let a Facebook survey pick which Monopoly piece would replace the iron. Surprise, surprise, the Internet picked a cat. Crowdsourcing can bring higher levels of engagement to…
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There’s a old marketing axiom that advertising’s greatest enemy isn’t rejection; it’s indifference. Mountain Dew and Hyundai both tested this philosophy in the last two weeks with ads they ultimately pulled for being too offensive. In today’s social media world, where there’s no longer a captive audience, brands are pushing boundaries more than ever to get attention (and to try…
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A few years ago, a yogurt brand increased its margin by putting less yogurt in every container while keeping the same retail price. So that the products wouldn’t look smaller, they kept the same packaging, which meant that every container suddenly had several inches of air at the top of the yogurt. To justify this obvious drop in value, they…
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Lately, every new Internet meme seems to attract a stampede of brands eager to get in on the action. Memevertising is joining more and more marketing plans as the latest “get viral quick” scheme. Internet memes by definition tap the popular psyche. This creates an opportunity for brands to have a voice in cultural conversations. Yet as more brands gatecrash…
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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.
It cracks me up that there are two main disciplines that require one-way mirrors: market research and police interrogation (although I imagine that market research is the only one that stocks bowls of M&Ms on the dark side of the glass). Identifying a target market for a brand is one of the trickiest but most essential aspects of marketing. Yet…
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Marketers have long embraced April Fool’s Day (a few years ago, a colleague of mine sent a Canadian coworker a realistic deportation letter from the INS). But lately, more and more marketers have been taking April Fool’s to consumers. Brand hoaxes can be great ways to connect to audiences with humor. They are also risky because they can so easily…
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We’re in the awkward adolescent stage of integrated media. There is still a great divide between traditional and digital brand communication. This becomes obvious in the disjointed way that many brands talk to consumers offline and online and the clumsy calls-to-action from traditional media to digital. It always cracks me up when I’m asked to scan a QR code in…
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We’re still figuring out what it means to be a social brand. This month, Facebook redesigned its News Feed to provide even more real estate to advertising. They also announced that the sponsored stores they’ve created in News Feeds haven’t turned off users the way they feared. That means that opportunities will continue to increase for brands to elbow in…
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I heard once that there are three types of companies: rule makers, rule followers, and rule breakers. It’s easy for rule makers and rule followers to get complacent, particularly in industries that have been around for a while. As marketers, we often focus so closely on our direct competition, we can miss the big picture. I had a manager once…
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Last week, I had the great fortune of going to TED in person after watching the talks online for years. As a marketer, I was struck by a TED project called “Ads Worth Spreading“. Each year, TED and YouTube award ten ads that are “worth spreading”. As TED Curator Chris Anderson put it, “We’re seeking to reverse the trend of…
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Social media allows brands to start conversations, but are they conversations worth starting? Lately it seems like nearly every ad closes with an invitation to “join the conversation” with a dedicated Twitter hashtag. Over half of the Superbowl ads closed with a hashtag, and I’ve even seen hashtags at the end of cheesy local TV ads. Hashtags can be used…
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Brand loyalty can be pretty fickle. Marketers often overestimate the motivations of their brand loyalists and how prominent their brands are in their consumers’ lives. This is particularly apparent when more than half of all grocery items are sold on price promotion. We train consumers to buy our brands on deal and then wonder why we have so many brand…
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Super Bowl ads have long rivaled the Big Game. Thanks to social media, the ads now spread far beyond the game itself. The actual Super Bowl media time is an increasingly smaller part of the campaign. Many brands release their ads (or at least a teaser) in advance. YouTube recently shared that ads that ran online before the Super Bowl…
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Idea generation at many companies is sporadic and haphazard. It often starts with a random one-off brainstorming meeting. Then a handful of ideas run the organizational gauntlet. A very small number of those ideas ever see the light of day. I recently followed a long-time dream of going to The New Yorker with a batch of cartoons and had lunch…
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One of the biggest threats to traditional retail is “showrooming”, where consumers check out products in a store, but then go online to buy. Mobile devices have made prices fully transparent to everyone. Since traditional retailers carry higher overhead than online retailers, it’s a real marketing challenge. Do retailers drop their prices and cut their margins, or do they find…
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A packaging redesign is often the first lever that marketers pull when they are either new to a brand or facing a marketing challenge. If all else fails, redesign the packaging and slap a “New Look. Same Great Taste” burst on it. From my time at method, I learned that packaging design, when done well, can be the best media…
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The marketer’s toolkit isn’t complete without Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a theory of what motivates people. The gist is that as our more basic needs are satisfied, we look for fulfillment progressively higher up the hierarchy. Brands that tap these higher-order needs can deepen their meaning with consumers. The classic Maslow marketing case is Michelin Tires. Rather than focusing on…
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The large print giveth and the small print taketh away. Consumers rarely read the small print. That’s partly because so much of it is written in legalese that is not easily understood. Who honestly reads the lengthy “terms of use” disclaimers we have to accept before using a mobile app or the iTunes clickthrough agreement? Yet even legal disclaimers are…
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Brands are historically hardwired to communicate in one direction. Ever since P&G invented brand management in the 1930’s, brands have been designed to hammer home their single-minded propositions as efficiently as possible. The first steps into social media can be tricky for brands, because they have to put down the megaphone and engage in conversations. Unlike a 30-second spot, we…
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Our brands are increasingly brought to life by others out of our direct control. Innocent Drinks describes its brand as composed of “thousands of nice little touches”. It can be tough to synchronize the brand so that it feels consistent at every touchpoint. Many brands create strict guidelines to keep everyone in check: a style guide, visual standards, identity manuals,…
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