Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne. Marketing cartoons, content marketing with a sense of humor, keynote speaking.
Marketing has always been a little full of it and there are many forms of marketing B.S. Ironically, the more that brands push to sound “authentic”, the more these efforts can come across as fake. YUM! Brands CMO Ken Muench oversees global marketing for KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. He has a particular pet peeve about brand purpose. He…
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Mastercard gave the first glimpse of the 2021 holiday shopping season last week. In their SpendingPlus report, they found holiday spending rose 8.5% over the previous year — the biggest spending increase in 17 years and higher than their expected forecast of 7.4%. They also found that e-commerce holiday sales were up a whopping 61% over the 2019 pre-pandemic level…
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Brands from retailers to restaurants are all struggling with staffing issues in the last sprint of holiday shopping, and beyond. Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, said: “I would say ‘labor shortage’ is kind of a tricky term because is does imply that there aren’t workers available … what we know is that there are a significant number of workers…
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Supply chain issues have become the go-to excuse for just about anything. Supply chain ripple effects are impacting every industry from restaurants to retailers. And even as some supply chain snarls are growing less severe, others have no end in sight. This week, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger predicted supply challenges for semiconductors would continue through 2023. Yet supply chain excuses…
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Organizations have always struggled with making decisions. One McKinsey study found that more than half of all business time spent making decisions is ineffective. In an average Fortune 500 company, McKinsey estimated that decision paralysis cost $250 million of wasted labor costs per year. But decision paralysis is particularly acute in the face of an uncertain future. And decision making…
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Wired editor Brian Barnett suggested a few years ago that Cyber Monday is the perfect day to battle annoying marketing emails: “Today more than any other, every single marketer in possession of your email address has set their phasers to send… “Whether you’re partaking in deals this year or passing them by, take a moment to embrace the season’s true…
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A few weeks ago, NPR’s Planet Money coined a catchy new economics term — skimpflation: “We’ve all heard about rising inflation. The price of stuff is going up. And if you read this newsletter, you’ve heard of shrinkflation. That’s when the price of stuff stays the same, but the amount you get goes down. The economywide decline in service quality…
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