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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This cartoon was partly inspired by my friend Paul at Idea Sandbox and his brilliant Idea Killer BINGO card. All businesses talk about the importance of innovation yet most struggle with it. I don’t think they suffer from a shortage of ideas. I think they suffer from an inability to recognize and grow the ideas once they have them. It’s…
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For a while, it felt like social media was under the radar for many companies. Something they gave to interns or outsourced to agencies. The better companies experimented with being more transparent than ever before, overlooking the typical safety nets around corporate communication. Lately though I’ve sensed a backlash brewing about potential liabilities around corporate social media. For a start,…
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I stumbled across a great maxim recently: “a camel is a horse designed by committee.” It reminded me of this great spoof video from 2006 that imagines the packaging that would have resulted if Microsoft had launched the iPod instead of Apple. What is most remarkable about this video is that Microsoft eventually confessed that Microsoft’s own packaging department created…
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It’s only fitting that I found inspiration for this social media cartoon from something I read on Twitter. @KathySierra writes, “Please, businesses, don’t DO ‘social media’. Do ‘user happiness’, which may, or may not require use of social media tools.” It’s interesting to watch the varying ways that business embraces social media. For brands with the right mindset and something…
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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.
I gave a talk last week on challenger brand thinking, so I’ve had David and Goliath on my mind. I talked about the importance of changing the game when you’re the little guy so that you’re not playing by the rules of Goliath. Changing the game can level the playing field. Last month, I read a fascinating article from Malcolm…
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My friend Jon at online grocer Ocado nicely invited me to give a talk at their supplier conference this week. I’m talking about how Ocado helps enable challenger brands because they break the rules of traditional retail. To help prove my point, I’m showing this photo from a typical British grocery store. I call this “Where’s Waldo” merchandising because it’s…
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I’ve thought a lot about “thinking global, acting local” since I moved to the UK to help launch an American brand two years ago. It’s a constant tug-o-war between global consistency and local adaptation. Recently, I had coffee with Patrick Cairns, CEO of Plum Baby, who spent a lot of time in global roles with Unilever. He described the standard…
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I’ve always loved that classic Saul Steinberg painting “View of the World from 9th Avenue”, which The New Yorker ran as its cover in 1976. I love the detail of the first few streets, and then Los Angeles as a tiny speck in the distance. This image popped to mind recently when I was thinking about the marketing ivory tower. …
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Several of my agency friends have complained that client negotiations have gotten more cutthroat recently. As companies look for ways to trim expenses, many are putting agencies through the same purchasing wringer as their commodity suppliers, often using the same central purchasing team they use for things like catering and industrial bleach. While I’m sure there’s some efficiency to be…
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I was in Paris over the long weekend for the first time in eight years. It’s my favorite city in the world and my favorite activity is to leisurely people-watch at the outdoor cafés. In France, there’s a lot of talk about the “American McDonaldization” of culture and I was curious to see what had changed in eight years. The…
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I love that George Bernard Shaw quote about the UK and US as “two countries separated by a common language”. I think that the same can be said of functions within companies. And marketers are the worst offenders. I doubt any function produces more jargon and buzzwords each year than marketers (in case you’re wondering, here are the Top 100…
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I’m in San Francisco this week, and was invited by Alice at Clorox to give a talk while I’m in town. My talk is titled “everything I needed to know about innovation, I learned by drawing cartoons” and one of my themes is the importance of finding a niche. I once heard Mark Addicks, the General Mills CMO, complain that…
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I’ve been thinking about how consumers are spending (or not spending) in this environment. With wallets under lock-and-key, one might think that a premium brand wouldn’t have much of a chance. This is a time when consumers are evaluating where their money goes. With low consumer confidence, there is less that is being spent in general. What is being spent…
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I came across a Brandweek article called "Enough with the Value Messages Already" and it made me think of the song-and-dance that many businesses are doing to demonstrate value nowadays. The primary knee-jerk reaction for brands in the recession has been to radically drop price (either permanently or through deep discounting). With many retailers ramping up private label "switch and…
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I've been thinking about how the recession is sinking into the collective business psyche. It feels like we're all going through some form of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief (which I like using as a cartoon setup). I've been struck by the resurgence of WWII-era propaganda, like the vintage "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster that suddenly appeared everywhere. I've…
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I stumbled across "recession washing" as a useful expression in this presentation and thought it captured so much of the advertising bandwagon right now. Six months ago, I was at a conference on marketing in the credit crunch and several speakers stressed the importance of showing empathy to consumers. Of course, sincerity is crucial too. Empathy without sincerity can do…
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I think LinkedIn can be a meaningful tool. It just cracks me how many invitations we all get with the default "since you are a person I trust" greeting. Particularly when they come from people we don't actually know. A friend of mine who used to run a high profile investment fund told me he gets 20-30 LinkedIn requests a…
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I've been thinking lately about the entrepreneurial anthem, "it's not the big that eat the small, it's the fast that eat the slow." I once did a field study with Fast Company magazine, which epitomized that sentiment. It was a year after the dot-com bubble popped, and they were facing a big identity crisis. They had been the quintessential handbook…
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Performance reviews can be incredibly dehumanizing. I recently stumbled across this telling depiction from software luminary, Joel Spolsky: First, you gave “anonymous” upward reviews for your direct manager (as if that could be done in an honest way). Then, you filled out optional “self-evaluation” forms, which your manager “took into account” in preparing your performance review. Finally, you got a…
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I think that how you share ideas is just as important as the idea itself. The most revolutionary idea, poorly articulated, will come across as mediocre and humdrum. I've been playing around with this theme lately. I think that many businesses struggle with how to share ideas. We've all found ourselves in the audience in this cartoon, completely uninspired by…
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