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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In London last week, I happened across Mark Ritson’s column in Marketing Week: “Hoodwinked by the Emperor’s New Tweets”. The title alone sparked this cartoon idea. Mark lampoons the social media bandwagon, particularly the herd mentality to incorporate social media into each and every marketing plan and the gullibility of marketing directors to believe all the hype. He writes, “Most…
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“Poking the Bear” belongs on a marketing lingo bingo card alongside “Low Hanging Fruit” and “Share of Voice”. It’s one of my favorite marketing buzz phrases because it’s so vivid. “Poking the Bear” means going up against a competitive giant knowing the potential response will be massive. Schwans innovation guy Marc Coudeyre, who I knew at General Mills years ago,…
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It cracks me up whenever I hear a creative director referred to as “the Creative”. It makes it sound like creative directors belong to a different species. We wouldn’t refer to “the Supply” or “the Accounting”. But “the Creative” is often referred to in this strange third person (as parodied in this clever video from an agency: “Creatives grow better…
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Most products are developed like a waterfall. Waterfall development is the classic sequential linear process where you finish one stage before moving on to the next one. You aim never to revisit a stage once you’ve finished it, so you’d better get that brief right the first time. When I worked in web development in the late 90’s, we adopted…
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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.
Last year, I heard Swedish axe maker Gabriel Branby speak at the DO Lectures. Gabriel’s company, Gränsfors, makes the finest forged axes in the world. He spoke about the essence of product development as craft. His company takes axe-making very personally. To underscore that commitment, each of his axes is forged by a smith who stamps his or her personal…
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As Jerry Garcia once said, “You do not merely want to be considered the best of the best. You want to be the only ones who do what you do.” That quote was part of Rule #24 in Alan Webber‘s inspiring Rules of Thumb book, and partly inspired this cartoon (except I played with toes, not thumbs). The vast majority…
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Last week, I happened across Tim Ferriss handing out copies of 4-Four Hour Workweek at SXSW. I first read the book two years ago after hearing Tim speak at the Do Lectures in Wales. We were the only two Americans there and I was inspired by his talk. I reread some of the book on the flight home and was…
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I’m gearing up to speak at SXSW in Austin on Friday, so my mind is racing. My talk is called “Drawing Board: Innovation Lessons from Cartooning”. I’m sharing the many ways that cartoonists come up with ideas and find ways to break through the clutter. I think these lessons can apply to any form of innovation. Last week, I met…
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Last week I traveled to snowy Toronto with a sales director. Over two days, we saw more than 30 Canadian stores and talked with dozens of consumers, retail buyers, store managers, and shelf stockers. It reminded me that I need to get out of the office a lot more often. It’s easy to think of marketing as what happens in…
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Working at method has taught me that package design is the single most important part of your marketing plan. Founder Eric Ryan likes to say that he views cutting steel as a marketing expense. Once a consumer told me that he buys method because the package design makes him want to lick the bottles. Remarkable design, whether in the store…
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I doubt there’s a marketing plan in the world nowadays without some form of influencer marketing focus. Reaching influencers is part of every agency pitch. With mainstream media becoming less effective over time and widespread recognition that influencers play a big role in buying decisions, the influencer hunt is on. The challenge is how to do it right. How do…
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I was struck by a recent Joel Spolsky column in Inc. magazine on dysfunctional communication in growing companies. “What used to work with three people in a garage all talking to one another about everything just doesn’t work when your head count reaches 10 or 20 people. Everybody who doesn’t need to be in that meeting is killing productivity.” Joel…
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My mentor Jim Lawrence inspired this cartoon with an insight he shared recently that a career is more like riding a trapeze than climbing a ladder. Most careers are not rung-by-rung linear paths. Instead, they involve a series of flying leaps, not knowing whether those leaps will take you up, down, or sideways. Or if you’ll miss the trapeze altogether.…
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Missy Carvin emailed me this week asking if I had any cartoons about Zombie ideas, “those terrible ideas that exist within an organization that never, ever die, just resurface every few years”. It struck me that there are different types of ideas in organizations. Most time is spent chasing the elusive “Eureka” moment, where the clouds part and an idea…
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I’m gearing up to talk at SXSW in Austin in March. My topic is titled “Drawing Board: Innovation Lessons from Cartooning” and it’s loosely based on a few talks I gave last year about cartooning as a metaphor for innovation. Both activities involve coming up with ideas and bringing them to life. As I prepare for the talk, I’ve been…
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I’ve always liked the Albert Einstein quote, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I recently started following the witting observations of @MeetingBoy (“Say or do something stupid in a meeting and I’ll tweet it”). He’s putting out a 2010 MeetingBoy calendar in the next week or so and asked if…
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This cartoon sprung fully formed from a great post from Guy Kawasaki. I always learn something from Guy’s blog, so it’s a tribute of sorts to put together a cartoon entirely inspired by one of his posts. Twitter can be overwhelming at first, like drinking through a firehouse. It definitely helps to understand the different archetypes there. Seek out the…
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As businesses wade into social media, there’s an interesting choice to make about the voice of the brand. The falacy is that social media is free. But the people costs to do it properly are important to understand going into it. As much as I love Tony Hsieh’s approach at Zappos, not every CEO is capable of personally fronting the…
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Last year, business battened down the hatches and prepared for a hunger year. As I parodied in another cartoon at the time, a few companies with deep pockets used this opportunity to invest, but most companies cut back and slashed budgets. Some tightened their belts more than others. Budget cuts test to force priorities, and the immediate essentials usually trump…
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I get most of my cartoon ideas in meetings. I was in a strategy discussion recently that became stuck in a competitive debate. We charted the minutia of each recent competitive action and overdosed on two-by-two matrices. In the middle of this war-gaming, someone observed, “We’re trying to drive by the rear view mirror.” It was a wake-up call that reminded…
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