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
More Details Here
I’ve been hearing so much gloom and doom lately about the recession. And how it spells disaster for marketing in general and premium brands in particular. Consumers aren’t shopping as much, they’re only looking for value, blah, blah, blah. It’s obviously true that consumers change behavior during a recession (just look at Wal*Mart’s performance versus Target recently). But, I…
Read More
In business school, I once joined an exercise called "the beer game". Not quite as fun as it sounds, but interesting. Our class piled into a computer simulation lab, and we acted out parts of a brewery supply chain. We weren’t allowed to talk to each other. We could only place orders and fulfill orders for our part of the…
Read More
I picked up a book recently called Shades of Green, which has a spectrum of eco tips for people based on how green they consider themselves, from dark green to light green. It made me think about the different motivations for people thinking green and I thought it would be fun to play with a few stereotypes. There’s the classic…
Read More
I think that cause marketing, when done right, can be extremely positive. I once worked on Yoplait and saw first-hand how powerful their “save lids to save lives” campaign with the Susan G. Komen foundation was in raising awareness and creating donations. But I’ve been feeling a little cause marketing fatigue lately. I like corporate philanthropy and I think it’s…
Read More
“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 took my family camping on a goat's milk farm a few months ago and asked the farmer what he thought about organic farming. He said that organic foods were a "rich man's luxury". It got me thinking about the impact of a recession on ethical consumerism. As consumer's start squeezing their pocketbooks, how will this affect brands with a…
Read More
I love going to factories. Putting on the hard hat and lab coat and seeing where the magic happens. It makes me feel like Willy Wonka. Massive humming machines. Thousands of containers whizzing by on conveyer belts. Ice cream plants are particularly cool. But, the inner workings of a plant always seem like a stark contrast from the persona put…
Read More
To everyone at work, I promise I’m not signalling anything with this cartoon (I’m confident we’ll make it all up by Q4). I was thinking of the funny dance we all do in "meeting plan" (hitting your volume targets). Whenever you’re off, the easiest thing to do is blame the plan itself and whoever committed to it in the first…
Read More
My friend Eric likes to say that there are no low-interest categories, only low-interest brands (which is why he looked to household cleaning when he decided to start method). On every brand team I’ve joined, we’ve spent some time "climbing the benefit ladder" from product benefits to emotional benefits, trying to mine some emotional insight that will cause consumers to…
Read More
I recently joined a group called the Marketing and Sustainability Steering Committee, which is trying to come up with standards for green marketing in the UK. The UK Marketing Society asked me to me their delegate, which was nice. On Friday, I met everyone else for the first time (kind of an eclectic mix of non-profits, academics, and agency people…
Read More
I just started reading John Grant’s Green Marketing Manifesto, a thought-provoking book on how marketers like us should approach the green marketplace. I’m only 56 pages into it, but I recommend it and the accompanying blog too. We’re at an interesting turning point. Greenies and marketers used to be diametrically opposed, because the traditional eco mantra was "consume less" and…
Read More
I came across an article on the environmental ills of outdoor media: lots of paper, lots of fuel to drive to media sites, toxic glues, etc. The next time I rode the tube, I was struck by how many outdoor ads were touting some environmental benefit. I put the two together and it felt very ironic, and inspired this cartoon.…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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,…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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,…
Read More