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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Value is of course the theme of the moment, and marketers are all scrambling to add more “value” into their marketing plans for 2009. I met with a retail buyer last week, and tried to convince her that there was still a role for premium brands in a recession. I shared my opinion that a recession simply heightens the urgency for…
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We had a dinner party Friday for some friends moving away from London, and one of them described his job as “adult day care”. He spends a lot of time getting his team to “play nice”. This expression cracked me up and reminded me of the Robert Fulghum essay, “all I really need to know, I learned in kindergarten.” I…
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December is often a time of year when things quiet down for marketers (except for the spike in agency parties). But this year it feels dominated by a whole lot of scenario brainstorming and re-planning. The common theme is how to do “more with less”. I started kicking around cartoon ideas around “more with less” and the metaphor of a drought came to…
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The nice people at the UK Marketing Society asked me to donate a cartoon for their Christmas card this year. So, I came up with this. As I kicked around a few ideas, I realized this cartoon would be particularly relevant this “Black Friday” weekend (the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US and the official start of the Christmas shopping season).…
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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 had a cuppa the other day with my friend Ceri and wound up as a hand model on the innocent blog. We have an old-fashioned barter going with innocent, and Ceri dropped off a whole heap of smoothies in their astroturf-covered van in return for some handsoaps. Soaps for smoothies. Not a bad deal. Any way, we also had…
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This week, I'm chairing a conference put on by Marketing magazine on marketing in the credit crunch . They've invited an interesting roster of speakers, including people from McDonalds, Lush, innocent, and my friend Jon Rudoe at Ocado. A good mix of retailers and manufacturers from companies large and small, and promotion-driven to more premium. I'll post some of my takeaways…
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Nowadays, barely a day goes by without hearing the expression "cash is king". I started to wonder, if cash is king, what's the rest of the royal family? I knocked around this metaphor and my mind wandered to playing cards. It's clear that the game has changed, and the winning hand in a recession is going to be different than…
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(A quick groveling note to any retail buyers I work with who may be reading: this cartoon was entirely inspired by anecdotes from other people (my competitors actually). So, please, please, pretty please don't discontinue my products. OK, Partner?) Now that the fearful groveling is out of the way, I've been thinking a lot about retail in the context of…
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I spent a lot of time at the budget table this week, talking through cuts to 2009 spending. As we all debated the merits (and drawbacks) of every possible place to trim costs in our P&L, the image of a pork barbecue diagram suddenly popped into my head, and I scribbled this cartoon on the back of the P&L. All…
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I walked past plenty of Halloween decorations this weekend. But it struck me that the current newspaper headlines feel spookier than any of them. Instead of the same-old ghosts, skeletons, and witch costumes rampant on Halloween, I thought it would be fun to imagine a real fright night for anyone who works in marketing: kids dressed up as the credit crunch, consumer…
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My wife showed me a Grazia article the other day that announced belt-tightening as this season’s eco chic. It told the story of a cocktail party where everyone attempted to one-up each other on bargain purchases. It then described European discount chain ALDI as nouveau fashionable. It made me think about the role of ethical brands in a down economy,…
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John Grant prompted this cartoon idea recently when he shared an anecdote that a client had posed this very question to an agency John knew. This is the end result of many companies and brands treating sustainability solely as a marketing benefit, not as an underlying business practice. For years, many companies have given their agencies "green briefs" to find…
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I’ve had price promotions on my mind lately. With bad news on the doorstep, there sure is a lot of pressure to start discounting like crazy. Consumer confidence is shaken. Whole Foods is down. Wal-Mart is up. Every retailer meeting I’ve been to lately seems to include a discussion on increased frequency and depth of promotion spending to address the…
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Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell asked me to share the “marketing mix” for method in my recent interview with them. And I’ve been in the throws of 2009 marketing planning lately. So, I’ve had “marketing mix” on the mind, which always makes me think of a mixing bowl for some reason. I’ve worked with large traditional brands and small challenger…
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The other day on the tube, I saw an ad for a new 50% recycled range of pens from Pentel. It showed a photo of a polar bear stranded on melting ice. Next to the polar bear in distress, there were cartoon ice bergs and ice caps drawn by Pentel pens. The implication was that buying these pens could help…
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This cartoon was inspired by a question from Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell. Jackie and Ben are interviewing me as part of the Post2Post blogging book tour I’m doing this week. They asked: ” Is branding dead and if so, where do we bury the body?” I definitely don’t think branding is extinct, but I do think it’s evolved. So,…
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With the credit crunch brewing, there’s a lot of pressure to ramp up your price promotions. There certainly is a short-term argument (sales are down, consumers are increasingly price-sensitive, and price promotions are a predictable way to drive volume). But, in the long-run, I think it can start to train your consumers to only buy you on deal (like the…
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We all work in a fishbowl. I was thinking about how my favorite brands are marketed from the inside out. There’s a philosophy at the core that becomes ultimately reflected through everything they do. These brands view everything as marketing and everyone in the company as working in marketing (even if they work in the mailroom). When consumers poke and…
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I’ve been reading a book on Steve Jobs called “Inside Steve’s Brain” by Leander Kahney. Really interesting distillation of some of the Apple magic. I was struck by the product development process, which is cross-functional in the extreme, with designers, engineers, marketers, and programmers all involved early and in a very connected way. The book contrasted this with a typical…
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For father’s day, my girls gave me a bright yellow t-shirt that says "Mr. Perfect." I felt pretty darn special. The next day, I took them to the park and saw a couple guys wearing "Mr. Perfect" t-shirts. "Wait a minute," I thought defensively, "I thought I was Mr. Perfect." Suddenly, I started noticing the Mr. Men / Little Miss…
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