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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I found an interesting study about social media in the workplace, called “Whistle but don’t tweet at work.” The poll reports that 54% of companies ban social networking entirely, even for business purposes. Organizations are clearly struggling how to address social media. Many start with the premise of social media as a threat, rather than an opportunity. The emphasis is…
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There’s constant pressure in business to make things as efficient as possible. In every project, the fat is trimmed, the edges are sanded, and the processes are streamlined. It’s how you bring scale to ideas. It’s how you improve margins over time. But far too often, the uniqueness of an idea gets lost in all the efficiency. I was reminded…
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I passed by a design studio last week that had jack-o-lanterns on the stoop. I like that an office of designers would spend time designing pumpkins. It struck me that jack-o-lantern carving could be a good metaphor for innovation. If we carved jack-o-lanterns the way we design products, we would probably carve by committee. And, whenever something is designed by…
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In the last two weeks, there’s been a lot of chatter about the role of the “brand manager” and marketing organizations generally, after Jack Neff at Ad Age previewed a Forrester research report in an article called “Why it’s time to do away with the brand manager.” “Managing a brand has always been a slightly odd concept, given that consumers…
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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.
Back in 2001, BMW created an internet-only series of short films called The Hire directed by big name directors like Guy Ritchie and John Woo. All of the films featured a pre-famous Clive Owen driving a BMW in different assignments around the world (my favorite involved Clive driving around Madonna). Over four months, the films were seen 11 million times…
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Whenever I need a marketing wake-up call, I listen to the classic Tom Waits’ song, “Step Right Up.” It is an anthem for bad marketing. In this brilliant song, Tom Waits cobbles together every cliché marketing pitch. “We got a year-end clearance, we got a white sale And a smoke-damaged furniture, you can drive it away today Act now, act…
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I recently stumbled across the cluetrain manifesto again. It had a big impact on me when I first read it ten years ago. At the time, I was building web sites for big companies and it gave voice to a lot of the frustration I felt trying to get these companies to really embrace the potential of engaging with consumers…
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I was struck by something that Seth Godin wrote this week about the unheralded skill of setting priorities. He poses the question: “how do you decide what to do next?” A few years ago, I worked on a business that routed packaging artwork by hand to get reviewed and approved. They had a traffic department that managed this process and…
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Watching some businesses and brands grapple with social media reminds me of that classic expression, “putting lipstick on a pig”. I stumbled across this Marketing Week article a few months ago called, “Reckitt Benckiser makes an online push to connect with young consumers.” As part of a social media campaign backed by online advertising, the cleaning products company launched a Facebook…
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My friend Adam at method asked if I could contribute a cartoon to a post he wrote for TreeHugger this week called “For design to create change, we must all become designers.” When talking about the post, he introduced me to the concept of “Silent Design”, an expression coined in the late 80’s by Peter Gorb and Angela Dumas in…
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I’ve been unpacking storage boxes after moving home from London to San Francisco a few weeks ago, and rediscovered a classic children’s book called “Mr. Pine’s Mixed-up Signs”. It features a signmaker who loses his glasses and accidentally installs the wrong signs all over town: “One sign said Stop. One sign said Go. One sign said Fast. One sign said…
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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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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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