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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It’s been a while since I poked fun at senior management. I heard someone described as a "control freak" recently, and it struck me that there was actually another type, the "out-of-control-freak". A senior manager who assumes total control of a project or area, but actually doesn’t have the time or interest to really understand it. It made me think…
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I’ve been enjoying Seth Godin’s latest book, Meatball Sundae. He writes about the rush of companies jumping on the "new marketing" bandwagon. Some companies are leaping into myspace, youtube, blogging, etc. in exactly the same self-serving way they approach TV advertising — by trying to "interupt" consumers from what they were doing. This obviously misses the point. Consumers are gravitating…
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I once worked in an Internet startup that grew from 25 employees to 2,500 in 3 years. Much of that was through acquisition — basically 30 startups rolled up into one. The resulting patchwork company then went public (and filed for Chapter 11 about a year after that). Kind of a crazy rollercoaster. Anyway, the midst of it all, I…
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I always struggle with giving creative feedback. I can only imagine what’s it’s like to be a creative director and have your work (which is inherently personal) continually critiqued in front of you. I guess you learn to grow really thick skin (or plug your ears discretely). This last week, I gave a cartoon talk to 200 people at Unilever,…
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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 like ideations as much as the next guy. Particularly when there are good snacks. I just think they are too often treated as a cure-all. Need an innovation? Just hold an ideation. I don’t think that an isolated brainstorm once a year is the best approach for coming up with innovations. I think it works better when innovation is…
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I’ve been involved in some kooky one-sided retailer negotiations lately, including thorny topics like exclusivity. The retail market is more concentrated in the UK than in the US, so it’s pretty clear where the power lies here. But, I think the basic dynamic holds true in the US too. Of course, in this one-sided dynamic, it takes extra creativity (and…
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An old colleague emailed me recently to ask if I’d ever done a cartoon on product naming. She was helping a friend start a naming company called Spark. Good name for a naming company. Anyone, I was surprised to discover that I’d never covered product naming. I have certainly been in lots and lots of ridiculous naming sessions over the…
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I’ve been really fortunate to have worked mostly with Creative Directors in "The Genius" camp. But, I couldn’t resist poking a little fun at some of the other archetypes. This cartoon is a response of sorts to this other cartoon I drew a while back. And, come to think of it, my first ever Brand Camp cartoon was in this…
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A few weeks ago, I was lucky to meet Michael Braungart (who co-wrote the thought-provoking book Cradle to Cradle about ecological product development). He helped expand our thinking about eco responsibility to being less about one attribute or another, and more about a holistic approach of thinking through the past, present, and future of every product. In the group discussion,…
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I drew this cartoon thinking about some of the debates I’ve seen about squeezing just one more product benefit on the front of a package. Insisting on too many benefits front-and-center cuts back the impact of any one. It’s often hard to agree to the lead benefit, so products become the result of a peace treaty. Also, many benefits have…
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I’ve been thinking lately how communication can sometimes get a little squirelly inside companies. Something gets interpreted out of context and then passed along down the line just like that telephone game we all played in kindergarten. I think this gets even worse with geographical distance. I worked at a company once with the R&D center a full 5-hour drive…
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Just off a plane after a whirlwind week back in San Francisco, so a little bleary-eyed, and haven’t been great at updating the blog lately. I took a bunch of marketing photos while in SF though, and hope to post some of the them over the next few days. I jotted the pencil sketch of this cartoon on the…
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This week, we moved to a new flat in Richmond (a little further down the Thames from central London), and discovered that it has a great local farmer’s market. I’m kind of a farmer’s market junkie. I like to chat up the people working the stalls and I’m always amazed by how passionate and enthusiastic they are about what they…
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‘Tis the season to make resolutions. Including many that fall quickly by the wayside. It’s only human of course. That’s why gym memberships try to lock you into a long contract. Something about the idea of brands/products making resolutions just like the rest of us cracks me up. Particularly, since marketing is full of same foibles that we all share.…
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A few days ago, I met the head of sustainability for a British retailer, and he said he was conflicted about carbon labeling. There’s a big push here to add a numeric carbon footprint to all consumer products (starting with a big announcement from Tesco last year). It seems like a good disclosure in spirit, and the sheer effort to…
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Obviously, not all retail partnerships work like this. But, I do feel like the typical starting point can be pretty adversarial. And the balance of power is definitely with the retailer. I was in a retail meeting recently, and the category director explained how they tier the meeting rooms. "The little ones by the lobby are for people we don’t…
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When I heard Doug Hall speak recently, he talked about challenge of launching new products in companies with deeply separate functional silos. It can take a peace treaty to get a product through this system, so the "safest" products win. Too often, I think, it ends up like this cartoon, with too many puppeteers at odds. And the consumer gets…
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I’m giving a little talk to a group of marketers at Pepsi tomorrow. When they originally asked me to speak, we talked about one of the dilemmas of innovation in a large company. Senior management want to be included in the decisions, but they don’t have enough time to really be in the loop. By the time they have a…
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I haven’t worked in a public company for a while, but I definitely remember that fish bowl feeling. I was emailing with someone recently about public CPG companies, and the growing sense that innovation is just as important to Wall street as it is to consumers. "Street cred" was used to describe the intent of more and more NP initiatives. …
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Thanks to my friend Clint for sharing the term "focus group diva". It instantly connected with me, because I’ve witnessed (and sadly exhibited) this behavior many, many times. As Clint explained it: "I earned my ‘focus group’ diva nickname by having our lunch delivered to the facility from an hour away. The group was in Detroit, and there is a…
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