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# Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne. Marketing cartoons, content marketing with a sense of humor, keynote speaking.

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://marketoonist.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [Weekly Cartoons and Observations on the World of Marketing](https://marketoonist.com/blog) - Weekly cartoons and observations on the world of marketing from Tom Fishburne, Marketoonist
- [Impact of ChatGPT](https://marketoonist.com/2023/06/impact-of-chatgpt.html) - Salesforce recently found that 67% of senior IT leaders are pushing to adopt generative AI across their businesses in the next 18 months, with one-third naming it their top priority. At the same time, a majority of these senior IT leaders have concerns about what could happen. Among other reservations, the report found that
- [Virtual Reality](https://marketoonist.com/2023/06/virtual-reality.html) - Scott Galloway had an interesting take on Apple’s Vision Pro announcement last week: “It will officially be the most elegant final nail in the coffin of this sort of headset-driven VR consensual hallucination.” If it's a “headset-driven VR consensual hallucination," it includes not only the tech players, but all of the brands that jumped on
- [Marketing Metrics and Technoplasmosis](https://marketoonist.com/2026/01/marketing-metrics-and-technoplasmosis.html) - I recently spoke at a conference with Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, and he shared a fascinating insight about the influence of ad platforms on how we think about marketing. Rory said that many of the metrics that marketers chase are not designed to serve the brand. They're designed to serve the platforms that
- [My Favorite Marketoons of 2025](https://marketoonist.com/2025/12/my-favorite-marketoons-of-2025.html) - My friend Ann Handley once described my cartoons as a type of diary, which rings true to me. Since 2002, I've drawn this cartoon series as a kind of open diary to help make sense of whatever I'm noticing around me. As we wrap up 2025, here are some of my personal favorite diary moments
- [Brand Visibility in AI](https://marketoonist.com/2026/01/brand-visibility-in-ai.html) - There's an old search engine joke that the best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google search results. When search engines are the primary mode of finding information, brands do everything they can to be on the first page. That includes SEO tactics to become one of the ten blue links
- [Making a List, Checking it Twice](https://marketoonist.com/2025/12/making-a-list-checking-it-twice.html) - Businesses have never had greater and more varied data at their disposal. But the stubborn issue of data silos continues to plague what they can do with it. AI alone can't fix this. AI is only as useful as the quality of the data that it has access to. And all the hype and promise
- [Decades of Marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2025/12/decades-of-marketing.html) - I originally drew a version of this cartoon before the AI boom. ChatGPT launched three years ago this week, and completely changed the trajectory of the decade. (The original panel I drew for the 2020s involved the metaverse, which already seems so dated.) It's a good reminder things are always in flux in marketing. And
- [Chasing the Algorithm](https://marketoonist.com/2025/11/chasing-the-algorithm.html) - The algorithm giveth and the algorithm taketh away. When Facebook first introduced the News Feed in 2006, posts appeared in chronological order. In 2009, they introduced their first algorithm to sort based on popularity. LinkedIn introduced an algorithmic feed in 2012, Twitter in 2014, and Instagram in 2016. All the algorithms continue to change and
- [Smartify Everything](https://marketoonist.com/2025/11/smartify-everything.html) - One of the most popular cartoons I ever drew was about the Internet of Things, right after Google announced the acquisition of Nest in early 2014. “I think my Nest smoke alarm is going off,” one character tells another. “Google Adwords just pitched me a fire extinguisher and an offer for temporary housing.” iRobot later
- [How To Shop Online](https://marketoonist.com/2025/11/how-to-shop-online.html) - In 2000, there was an influential experiment on the paradox of choice. Columbia and Stanford psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper set up two displays of jam jars at a grocery story. One display featured 24 jam varieties and the other only six. The result, as Barry Schwartz famously chronicled his 2004 book “The Paradox
- [AI Productivity and Workslop](https://marketoonist.com/2025/10/ai-productivity-and-workslop.html) - GenAI prompts are getting pushier. From productivity apps to search to social media, users have to navigate a constant array of pop-ups, tooltips, and moving icons pushing GenAI features for just about every task. And yet the result is not automatically better output or higher productivity. BetterUp Labs and Stanford Social Media Lab recently published
- [B2C, B2B, and Business-to-Human](https://marketoonist.com/2025/10/b2c-b2b-and-business-to-human.html) - There has long been a chasm between B2C and B2B marketing. At an event recently, I was asked about humor in marketing, and whether it was more appropriate for B2C than B2B. Part of my answer was that humor could be even more effective in B2B marketing because the bar is so low. B2B marketing
- [Bot or Not](https://marketoonist.com/2025/10/bot-or-not.html) - Recently I was nearly defeated by a restaurant mobile website. I somehow managed to fail a THIRD visual CAPTCHA puzzle asking me to identify something in a blurry image grid before I could order a burrito. The next day, I chuckled at a news story describing a ChatGPT Agent that casually and successfully passed CAPTCHA
- [Marketing Attribution](https://marketoonist.com/2025/09/marketing-attribution.html) - In the early 1900s, Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker famously said: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” In a way, Wanamaker is the grandfather of marketing attribution — the science of giving credit to each marketing touchpoint that a customer was exposed to before a
- [AI Slop Fatigue and Analog Intelligence](https://marketoonist.com/2025/09/ai-slop-fatigue-and-analog-intelligence.html) - Following my cartoon last month on the content firehose, I was struck by this comment from Albi Pagenstert, head of brand for BMW North America: “Authenticity is the new disruption. At a time when everyone’s using AI to simulate something that looks and feels real, being genuine actually stands out.” Albi was describing the brief
- [How to Navigate Customer Service](https://marketoonist.com/2025/09/how-to-navigate-customer-service.html) - I once drew a cartoon with someone trying to call customer service and hearing: “Your call is very important to us. Please hold while we evaporate all the goodwill created by our expensive advertising.” I’ve been thinking lately about the state of customer service, particularly with customer service touted as one of the first areas
- [Echo Chambers, Bubbles, and Confirmation Bias](https://marketoonist.com/2025/09/echo-chambers-bubbles-and-confirmation-bias.html) - I love this observation by Adam Grant: “Confirmation bias is twisting the facts to fit your beliefs. Critical thinking is bending your beliefs to fit the facts. “Seeking the truth is not about validating the story in your head. It's about rigorously vetting and accepting the story that matches the reality in the world.” In
- [Collaborative Innovation](https://marketoonist.com/2025/08/collaborative-innovation.html) - Disney alum Paul Williams once shared the brainstorming method developed by Walt Disney. Disney used to separate the act of coming up with and executing ideas into three distinct steps (and associated mindsets): The Dreamer, The Realist, and The Spoiler. As Paul wrote: “By compartmentalizing the stages, Walt didn’t let reality get in the way
- [Content, Content, Content](https://marketoonist.com/2025/08/content-content-content.html) - I’ve never been that comfortable with the term “content”, even though I use it like everyone else. Ad exec Dave Trott once gave voice to some of what bugs me about calling it “content”: “Content (noun): everything that is inside a container; the contents of a box.” “So there it is: we’re in the shipping business.
- [Marketing Technology](https://marketoonist.com/2025/08/marketing-technology.html) - In August 2011, Scott Brinker created the first official “Marketing Technology Landscape.” It was a supergraphic with logos of the 150 different marketing solutions in the market at the time. Scott continued mapping the landscape as the number of marketing technology solutions exploded — doubling to 350 in 2012 and blowing past 5,000 just five
- [Digital and AI Upskilling](https://marketoonist.com/2025/08/digital-and-ai-upskilling.html) - There’s a funny old observation on data analytics from Duke professor Dan Ariely from 2012 or 2013: “Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it.” I’ve been thinking about that in the
- [Networking](https://marketoonist.com/2025/07/networking.html) - In 2012, the default generic introduction message on LinkedIn was “Since you are a person I trust, I wanted to invite you to join my network on LinkedIn.” Since that greeting was often sent to people they’d never met (let alone trusted), it inspired me to draw a cartoon about a guy saying this greeting
- [Social-First Marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2025/07/social-first-marketing.html) - In 2013, I drew a cartoon with an executive telling his colleagues, “I support word-of-mouth marketing, just as long as we tightly control exactly what they say.” That tension of control and letting go has long been a tricky one for marketers to navigate, both inside and outside a company. I’ve been thinking about that
- [B2B Marketing and the 95:5 Rule](https://marketoonist.com/2025/07/b2b-marketing-and-the-955-rule.html) - In 2021, Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute introduced the 95:5 Rule, a simple but powerful concept that challenged conventional thinking in B2B marketing. In his research, John showed that up to 95% of buyers are not in the market in any one time (and perhaps won’t be for months or years). As he
- [AI Hallucinations and Reliability](https://marketoonist.com/2025/06/ai-hallucinations-and-reliability.html) - The NYT published a fascinating article last month on the conundrum of AI accuracy and reliability. They found that even as AI models were getting more powerful, they generated more errors, not fewer. In OpenAI’s own tests, their newest models hallucinated at higher rates than their previous models. One of their benchmarks is called a
- [Creativity and Effectiveness](https://marketoonist.com/2025/06/creativity-and-effectiveness.html) - I stumbled across this line from advertising professor Tyler Dolph: “Creative without strategy is called ‘art’ — creative with strategy is called ‘advertising.’” The annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which ended a few days ago, always reminds me of the tension of creativity and effectiveness. Last year was the first time I attended
- [Manufacturing Authenticity](https://marketoonist.com/2025/06/manufacturing-authenticity.html) - I stumbled across this observation from a product marketer named James Christopher: “When everyone speaks the language of authenticity, no one sounds authentic anymore… “We’ve created a world where the only truly authentic thing is our collective exhaustion with fake authenticity.” Against the backdrop of so many brands pushing “authenticity” as a messaging priority, it’s
- [Buzzword-First Strategy](https://marketoonist.com/2025/06/buzzword-first-strategy.html) - A strategy has to be more than buzzword-deep. In 2017, a publicly traded beverage company called the Long Island Iced Tea Corp. announced that it was renaming itself Long Blockchain Corp. They gave no justification for the pivot. But based on the name change alone to replace “iced tea” with “blockchain”, their stock price surged
- [AI-Powered Insights](https://marketoonist.com/2025/05/ai-powered-insights.html) - The expression “Garbage In, Garbage Out” emerged in the earliest days of computer science. A 1957 article on US army mathematicians working with old-school IBM mainframes used the phrase “Garbage In, Garbage Out” to describe how poor quality data inputs lead to poor quality outputs. The adage has only grown more relevant in our increasingly
- [Marketing AI Agents](https://marketoonist.com/2025/05/marketing-ai-agents.html) - Marketing technology has always been something of an arms race. Yesterday’s breakthroughs turns into today’s table stakes. Agentic AI is being touted as the next frontier in the race. Marketers are already starting to implement Marketing AI agents across their tech stacks to analyze customer data, tailor messaging, and run campaigns. These AI agents can
- [Pricing and The Four Ps of Marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2025/05/price-and-the-four-ps-of-marketing.html) - “Price” is only one of the classic Four Ps of Marketing (the other three are “Product”, “Placement”, and “Promotion”). But it’s sure getting most of the focus right now, as businesses figure out how to brace for tariff impact. Some brands like Black & Decker have already started raising pricing. Others like P&G and Hasbro
- [Impact of Tariffs](https://marketoonist.com/2025/04/impact-of-tariffs.html) - I’ve been hearing requests from some of you to draw a cartoon explicitly on the impact of tariffs — including one reader fresh from the Canton Fair (China’s largest trade show). Businesses of all sizes and geographies have been trying to estimate the potential impact. Last week, 3M estimated potential annual impact of $850 million
- [Humanize the Brand](https://marketoonist.com/2025/04/humanize-the-brand.html) - There’s an aphorism I heard somewhere that “brands want to be human and humans want to be brands.” I’ve always found it funny when brand teams try to engineer sounding “human”. It can be like manufacturing “authenticity.” It’s often easy to see through it. But it’s particularly funny to me in the age of AI,
- [Evolution of Apps](https://marketoonist.com/2025/04/evolution-of-apps.html) - A couple years ago, Cory Doctorow observed a phenomenon in online products and platforms that he dubbed “enshittification”: “Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value
- [natural evolution of products](https://marketoonist.com/2007/08/natural-evoluti.html) - I took my four year old daughter to the Natural History Museum recently and we had an entertaining chat about evolution. As you can imagine, she had some very funny questions. And she's convinced her little sister might be a little more closely related to a monkey than she. Anyway, it got me thinking about
- [Scenario Planning](https://marketoonist.com/2025/04/scenario-planning.html) - There’s a famous observation from Dwight D. Eisenhower I've always found interesting: “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Another is Mike Tyson’s quip before a fight with Evander Holyfield: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” What we know as “scenario planning” can be traced back to a Shell strategist
- [AI-First](https://marketoonist.com/2025/03/ai-first.html) - Organizations have been sending very mixed signals with AI. Many have claimed a strategy of being “AI-first” in one breath, while setting confusing draconian guardrails in the next. The promise of AI has outpaced our organization’s ability to adopt it. I like how Oguz Acar, professor at King’s Business School advocated for a more balanced
- [Navigating Uncertainty](https://marketoonist.com/2025/03/navigating-uncertainty.html) - Almost exactly five years ago, in early March 2020, I drew a cartoon that captured some of how I felt in that moment of uncertainty. It showed a group of of people in a meeting and one holding up a coin: “We need to update the forecast. Heads, this will blow over soon. Tails, it’s
- [The Creative Review](https://marketoonist.com/2025/03/the-creative-review.html) - In 2006, I drew one of my most popular cartoons: “The 8 Types of Bad Creative Critics.” It featured common archetypes like “The Blender”, “The Waffler” and “The Crammer.” It seemed to strike a chord because many of us have been in bad creative reviews, on either side of the client/agency table. One agency even
- [Loyalty Programs](https://marketoonist.com/2025/03/loyalty-programs-2.html) - In 2012, I drew a cartoon of a shopper emptying her purse at checkout, saying “wait, I may have a card showing my loyalty to whatever store this is.” The loyalty program arms race has only accelerated since then — partly driven by brands trying to collect more first-party data. The checkout ask for an
- [AI Low Hanging Fruit](https://marketoonist.com/2025/02/ai-low-hanging-fruit.html) - With all the hype and promise of AI, including synthetic market research I wrote about last week and new advances like “Agenic AI”, adoption in business is facing barriers and obstacles. Deloitte published their latest State of Generative AI report last month, including this headline takeaway: “We see that most companies are transforming at the
- [Market Research Pitfalls](https://marketoonist.com/2025/02/evolution-of-market-research.html) - Early in my marketing career, at General Mills, we used to hold focus groups in a Minneapolis suburb called Eden Prairie. I once overheard a couple of our agency partners jokingly refer to this focus group ritual as going to see the “Oracles of Eden Prairie.” Whether new products, campaign strategy, or ad creative, the
- [Digital Distractions and Finding Focus](https://marketoonist.com/2025/02/digital-distractions-and-finding-focus.html) - We need to find time for focus to do our best work. Ironically some of the tools we use to make us more productive are designed to steal focus. Distraction is the default setting. Some of this challenge relates to work norms. I love how Jeff Maurer joked about the “always on” expectations of Slack:
- [The Super Bowl Ad Formula](https://marketoonist.com/2025/02/the-super-bowl-ad-formula.html) - The Super Bowl is the biggest high wire act in marketing. The media alone costs $7 million for a 30 second spot to reach an audience of more than 100 million people. So this is when marketers pull out all the stops. And yet they also tend to play it safe by following tried-and-true conventions.
- [Agile Teams](https://marketoonist.com/2025/01/agile-teams.html) - In 2001, a group of 17 software engineers famously drafted the Agile Manifesto at a ski resort in Utah. They were frustrated by the limitations of traditional “waterfall” software development and wanted a more flexible, iterative approach. The term “agile” evolved into a collection of methodologies that not only changed software development but started to
- [How we Brief](https://marketoonist.com/2025/01/how-we-brief.html) - Sir John Hegarty, founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, famously said: “Writing bad briefs is the most expensive way to write advertising.” The sentiment applies to any form of creative communication and any type of brief. How we brief creative partners is as important as the talent of those creative partners. Writing a truly great brief
- [AI Learning Curve](https://marketoonist.com/2025/01/ai-learning-curve.html) - It’s hard to make sense of the real promise of AI amidst the hype and noise. In 2023, Google CEO Sundar Pichai famously compared AI to the creation of fire and invention of electricity on an episode of 60 Minutes. By 2024, the hype cycle around AI gave way to the trough of disillusionment, as
- [Ho, Ho, Holiday Returns](https://marketoonist.com/2024/12/ho-ho-holiday-returns.html) - Over the last decade, “Free Returns” became the new “Free Shipping,” going from differentiator (for pioneers like Zappos) to table stakes (for everyone else). But the tide is turning. According to logistics provider goTRG, 49% of US retailers now think of Returns as a severe problem, especially during the holiday season. In just the last
- [Product/Market Fit](https://marketoonist.com/2024/12/product-market-fit-2.html) - Product/Market Fit has emerged as a key threshold of success for startups, but the concept can apply to businesses of any size. First coined by Benchmark co-founder Andy Rachleff, Product/Market Fit was popularized by Marc Andreesen in 2007 in a famous essay titled “The Only Thing That Matters.” In the essay, Marc defined Product/Market Fit
- [Change Fatigue](https://marketoonist.com/2024/12/change-fatigue.html) - A few weeks ago, I drew a cartoon exploring the nonstop drumbeat of change in business, particularly from a marketing perspective. When everything is constantly changing, it’s easy to lose sight of the power of consistency. And yet the flip side of that dynamic is resistance to change, even when change is necessary. A couple
- [AI-Generated Homogeneity](https://marketoonist.com/2024/11/ai-generated-homogeneity.html) - It’s still early days with AI Generation tools. We’re all still learning the potential and limitations. One watch-out is the bias toward homogeneity — the tendency for AI results to look alike. As AI predicts what to generate, the path of least resistance is an averaging of the content in its source material. Ian Whitworth
- [Marketing Change Agents](https://marketoonist.com/2024/11/marketing-change-agents.html) - Marketers are frequently the biggest agents of change in a business. Inside marketing teams, there’s a constant drumbeat for change, particularly when new members join the team. In my first marketing job, junior managers rotated to new brands every 12 months. Each new assignment brought fresh energy to make a mark on the brand. Higher
- [Always Be Upskilling](https://marketoonist.com/2024/11/always-be-upskilling.html) - “Upskilling” as a business term was coined in the late 70s. But the pressure to “upskill” has never seemed more acute. Andrew Geoghegan, CMO of William Grant & Sons, described the challenge of upskilling for marketers a few months ago: “There used to be significant investment in-house in upskilling teams and building on those core
- [Herding Cats and Strategic Alignment](https://marketoonist.com/2024/10/herding-cats-and-strategic-alignment.html) - A few weeks ago, I drew a cartoon about the “silo syndrome” that most organizations struggle to navigate. It got me thinking about the challenge of strategic alignment in general — how hard it is to get and keep the extended organization on the same page. A big part of the marketing job is learning
- [Levers of Growth](https://marketoonist.com/2024/10/levers-of-growth.html) - I was struck by an observation from J. Walker Smith, Chief Knowledge Officer at Kantar: “The foundational prerequisite of growth is the courage to grow. Impediments to growth sit within a company itself. Growth is rarely hostage to the marketplace.” I like the idea that a brand is not “hostage to the marketplace” — that
- [7 Deadly Sins of Data-Driven Marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2024/10/7-deadly-sins-of-data-driven-marketing.html) - My cartoons are often inspired by something I overheard the previous week. Last week, I traveled to speak at the GPeC Summit in Romania and got to hear UnMarketing author Scott Stratten’s entertaining take on marketing while I was there. Part of Scott’s talk included a rant on vanity metrics — the seductive allure of
- [The Silo Syndrome](https://marketoonist.com/2024/10/the-silo-syndrome.html) - One of my favorite marketing observations comes from HP founder David Packard: “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” Our customers don’t care about our org charts. They don’t care which department is responsible for what. When they interact with different parts of a business, all they see is one brand.
- [Brand Planning](https://marketoonist.com/2024/09/brand-planning.html) - Mike Tyson was asked his thoughts on Evander Holyfield’s fight plan before a WBA Heavyweight Title bout and famously responded: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” As we shift from Q3 to Q4 this week, brand planning season is in full swing for 2025, even as final 2024 numbers come
- [Creative Review by Committee](https://marketoonist.com/2024/09/creative-review-by-committee.html) - A few months ago, I heard Adam Morgan from eatbigfish and Jon Evans from System1 give a talk on the Extraordinary Cost of Being Dull at the Cannes advertising festival. Adam and Jon shared analysis from Peter Field who found that a “dull” advertising campaign has to spend £10m more a year in media on
- [Sales-Focused Advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2024/09/sales-focused-advertising.html) - Peter Drucker wrote this in his 1973 book on management: “You have to produce results in the short term. But you also have to produce results in the long term. And the long term is not simply the adding up of short terms.” Business carries a bias toward short-termism in general, but particularly in marketing
- [AI is a Tool](https://marketoonist.com/2024/09/aitool.html) - In 1966, Abraham Maslow, originator of the Hierarchy of Needs, made this well-known observation: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.” This type of cognitive bias became known as Maslow’s hammer or the Law of the Instrument. I’ve been thinking about
- [Customer Journeys to Nowhere](https://marketoonist.com/2024/09/customer-journeys.html) - Earlier this year an editorial in the New York Times wondered: “When did everything become a ‘journey’? Changing our hair, getting divorced, taking spa vacations — they’re not just things we do; they’re ‘journeys.’” And of course, to marketers, there’s the “customer journey.” The customer journey is a handy metaphor to help us consider all
- [Thinking Outside the Box](https://marketoonist.com/2024/08/outsidebox.html) - Conventional wisdom holds that creativity comes from “thinking outside the box”, but constraints are actually one of its key ingredients. One of Google’s principles of innovation is “creativity loves constraints,” as Marissa Mayer once recounted: “People think of creativity as this sort of unbridled thing, but engineers thrive on constraints. They love to think their
- [Playing it Safe is Risky](https://marketoonist.com/2024/08/safeisrisky.html) - I’ve always liked this insight from Seth Godin: “If failure is not an option, then neither is success.” Organizations can spot the risks of a new idea a mile away. But there’s a curious blind spot when it comes to the risks of not taking those risks. The path of least resistance is to play
- [Thought Leadership](https://marketoonist.com/2024/08/thought-leadership-2.html) - In 2008, I brought my team to see Seth Godin speak at an event in London. There was a Q&A at the end, and someone asked Seth how he found time to do all the things he did — write so many books, keep a daily blog, and personally respond to every email he receives.
- [Future of AI](https://marketoonist.com/2024/08/future-of-ai.html) - It’s hard to read the tea leaves on the future of work with AI. There are such wild extremes between the predictions of techno-utopian boosters and techno-dystopian doomers. It’s exciting and scary at the same time and no one really knows how this will go. I keep coming back to HBS professor Karim Lakhani’s oft-quoted
- [Corporate Apology](https://marketoonist.com/2024/07/corporate-apology.html) - The recent CrowdStrike debacle gives lessons for all of us in how to (and how not to) communicate in a crisis. The initial tweeted response from CEO George Kurtz fell flat, as panned by comms expert Davia Temin: “This is a response scrubbed by a legal team with lawsuits in mind. It holds little to
- [Brand Storytelling, Showmanship, and Salesmanship](https://marketoonist.com/2024/07/brand-storytelling-show.html) - Brand storytelling is one of the most wildly overused (and least understood) buzzwords of marketing. It’s often casually used without discretion to describe just about any type of marketing communication. Years ago, I visited the Portland studio of Character, which helped pioneer storytelling as a framework for brands, and chatted with Jim Hardison and
- [Idea Killers](https://marketoonist.com/2024/07/idea-killers.html) - Labeling an idea polarizing can be the quickest way to kill an idea. Businesses usually avoid ideas that are polarizing, whether new products or campaigns. It’s always easier to launch the next flavor of vanilla. But there’s power in polarization. By trying to appeal to everyone, you won’t necessarily appeal to anyone in particular. In
- [chief idea killer](https://marketoonist.com/2012/02/chief-idea-killer.html)
- [Chief Buzzword Officer](https://marketoonist.com/2024/07/chief-buzzword-officer.html) - One of the most entertaining parts of going to the Cannes Advertising festival for the first time recently was eavesdropping on so much marketing chatter in one place. It was surreal to walk the cobblestone streets past cafe tables and hear, not French, but snippets of conversation with language like “brand salience” and “mental availability.”
- [Return from Cannes Lions '24: Creativity](https://marketoonist.com/2024/06/return-from-cannes-lions-24-creativity.html) - Here’s my cartoon recap from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this week. System1 invited me to sketch a daily cartoon based on what I observed, walking around with my sketchpad for the week. This one is about the transition back to regular work at the end. Even if you haven’t been to this
- [Dispatch from Cannes Lions ’24: Marketing Effectiveness](https://marketoonist.com/2024/06/dispatch-from-cannes-lions-24-marketing-effectiveness.html) - The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has been on my bucket list ever since I started in marketing. I’m here for the first time this week thanks to System1 — who I’ve known since their Brainjuicer days. They invited me to be a Marketoonist-in-Residence for the week, so I’m going to capture some of
- [Anecdotes and Data](https://marketoonist.com/2024/06/anecdotes-and-data.html) - There’s a well-known aphorism that “the plural of anecdote is not data.” I found it interesting to learn that the origin of that line was actually the opposite. In the late 60s, a Cal Professor and political scientist named Ray Wolfinger heard a student dismiss a statement as “just an anecdote” and responded that “the
- [AI Chatbots and GenAI Hype](https://marketoonist.com/2024/06/ai-chatbots.html) - We’re at a surreal stage of generative AI adoption, as some of the growing pains of this still relatively new technology are revealed in funny and bizarre ways. Google released “AI Overviews” at scale in the US recently, giving everyone an opportunity to kick the tires and ask Google questions answered by AI, which then
- [Guessing the Brief](https://marketoonist.com/2024/05/guessing-the-brief.html) - I stumbled across a quote recently from legendary ad agency founder Pat Fallon: “If the creative brief is not itself creative, what right do its authors have to expect anything different?” The brief is often treated as a formality or a tick-box exercise, rather than one of the most important tools in a marketer’s toolkit.
- [Market Share and Competitor Obsession](https://marketoonist.com/2024/05/marketshare.html) - I’m returning from giving a keynote talk in Europe on different types of marketing myopia, and gave some thought this week to category myopia. There’s a famous Jeff Bezos quote attributed to an early Amazon shareholder letter: “We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs, and then we work
- [Marketing Math](https://marketoonist.com/2024/05/marketing-math.html) - Marketers learning to speak the language of the CFO has been a running theme in my cartoons over the years. Even as marketing has become more data-driven, there’s still a gap between marketing and the rest of the organization. Last year, Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar brought his CFO Sachin Mehra to the Cannes Lions to
- [AI Co-Pilots and the Future of Work](https://marketoonist.com/2024/04/aicopilots.html) - I like the analogy of AI as a “co-pilot.” Microsoft largely popularized this model — now branding all of their AI tools as “Copilot,” from GitHub to a new “Copilot” key that is even part of the PC keyboard. But it will be interesting to see how the role of “co” in the “co-pilot” model
- [Marketing Seat at the Table](https://marketoonist.com/2024/04/marketing-table.html) - “A sign of success by any marketer is if they get sponsorship around the boardroom table.” I like this observation from Abigail Comber, former CMO at Debenhams. It’s a reminder of how much of the marketing role is an inside job — the ability of marketers to influence the rest of the organization. MarketingWeek reported
- [brands on TikTok](https://marketoonist.com/2020/05/brands-on-tiktok.html) - As more brands jump on the TikTok bandwagon, Melissa Eshaghbeigi, strategist at design agency Jam3, observed: “It’s possible for you to create that brand moment you’re looking for, but it’s also possible that you’ll cause a cringe reaction from everyone watching.”
- [what goes on behind the focus group glass](https://marketoonist.com/2002/11/what-goes-on-behind-the-focus-group-glass-2.html)
- [mobile marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2012/04/mobile-marketing.html) - Mobile is the next frontier for marketing. Not all mobile marketing is spam, of course, but many current campaigns feature exactly that -- unwanted, unsolicited SMS text messages. The potential of mobile marketing is far more powerful -- location-specific, time-based, highly personalized messaging. It has the potential to offer real utility to consumers. But the current state seems more geared to interrupt than create value.
- [Permission Marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2023/12/permission-marketing.html) - We’re nearing the twenty-fifth anniversary of Seth Godin’s prescient book, Permission Marketing. Published in early 1999, Permission Marketing set the stage for modern marketing. Many of the marketing tools, channels, and technology have changed or evolved in the past quarter-century (although email has surprisingly remained a fixture), but the ideal of Permission Marketing is as
- [the future of advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2013/08/the-future-of-advertising.html) - One of the more memorable scenes from the 2002 movie Minority Report was a dystopian view of advertising in the year 2054. The protagonist, John Anderton, walks through a mall, where retina scanners match his identity with purchase history so that billboards can pitch personal ads to him as he walks by.
- [tv advertising hashtags](https://marketoonist.com/2013/02/tv-advertising-hashtags.html) - Social media allows brands to start conversations, but are they conversations worth starting? Lately it seems like nearly every ad closes with an invitation to "join the conversation" with a dedicated Twitter hashtag. Over half of the Superbowl ads closed with a hashtag, and I've even seen hashtags at the end of cheesy local TV ads. Hashtags can be used effectively to amplify TV content, but I think many brands miss the point.
- [maslow's hierarchy of needs](https://marketoonist.com/2013/01/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs.html) - The marketer's toolkit isn't complete without Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, a theory of what motivates people. The gist is that as our more basic needs are satisfied, we look for fulfillment progressively higher up the hierarchy. Brands that tap these higher-order needs can deepen their meaning with consumers.
- [brand guidelines](https://marketoonist.com/2012/12/brand-guidelines.html) - ur brands are increasingly brought to life by others out of our direct control. Innocent Drinks describes its brand as composed of "thousands of nice little touches". It can be tough to synchronize the brand so that it feels consistent at every touchpoint. Many brands create strict guidelines to keep everyone in check: a style guide, visual standards, identity manuals, etc. While useful and inspiring if done well, brand guidelines can easily devolve into command-and-control compliance if taken too far.
- [marketing clutter](https://marketoonist.com/2012/05/marketing-clutter-2.html) - There has never been a greater level of marketing clutter. Yankelovich Consumer Research charts that "we've gone from being exposed to about 500 marketing messages a day back in the 1970s to as many as 5,000 a day today." At the same time, marketing communication is often little more than a string of adjectives: bigger, better, faster, cheaper, etc.
- [e-commerce profiling](https://marketoonist.com/2012/03/e-commerce-profiling.html) - This is the latest in a marketoon series with Baynote called “Intent to Buy” that parodies the state of e-commerce personalization. The series spotlights the top challenges that marketers face in online experience.
- [buying guide](https://marketoonist.com/2012/02/buying-guide.html) - This is the latest in a marketoon series with Baynote called “Intent to Buy” that parodies the state of e-commerce personalization. The series spotlights the top challenges that marketers face in online experience. Baynote is offering a signed print of this cartoon to every comment or cartoon suggestion posted at the Baynote blog over the next week (by 2/22; U.S. addresses only).
- [email offer](https://marketoonist.com/2012/01/email-offer.html) - This is the latest in a marketoon series with Baynote called “Intent to Buy” that parodies the state of e-commerce personalization. The series spotlights the top challenges that marketers face in online experience. Baynote is offering a signed print of this cartoon to every comment or cartoon suggestion posted at the Baynote blog over the next week (by 1/25; U.S. addresses only).
- [cyber monday](https://marketoonist.com/2011/11/cyber-monday.html) - This is the second in a new marketoon series with Baynote called “Intent to Buy” that parodies the state of e-commerce personalization. The series spotlights the top challenges that marketers face in online experience.
- [opening the box](https://marketoonist.com/2011/11/opening-the-box.html) - The experience of opening the box is just as much a part of marketing as the graphics on the box. Apple knows this, as we appreciate whenever we open a new iPhone or Mac. Opening the box is our first introduction to the product and Apple thinks through every detail of that process.
- [intent to buy: purchase history](https://marketoonist.com/2011/11/intent-to-buy-purchase-history.html) - I'm excited to start a new marketoon series with Baynote called "Intent to Buy" that parodies the state of e-commerce personalization. The series will spotlight the top challenges that marketers face in online experience. Baynote is offering a signed print of this cartoon to every comment or cartoon suggestion posted at the Baynote blog over
- [motivating the consumer](https://marketoonist.com/2011/11/motivating-the-consumer.html) - This cartoon is part of a series I developed with Motista to parody the state of traditional market research.
- [the last mile](https://marketoonist.com/2011/11/the-last-mile-2.html) - The "last mile" is usually thought of as a supply chain challenge: how to best deliver products the final leg to individual customers. Yet the last mile is also a marketing challenge.
- [the insight guru](https://marketoonist.com/2011/08/the-insight-guru.html) - A few years ago, I worked on a brand trying to mine the brand essence of a new product launch for kids. An outside expert was brought in. After months of intensive study (and a fair amount of our market research budget), he distilled the brand into two words: “benign rebellion”.
- [launch homework](https://marketoonist.com/2011/07/launch-homework.html) - We've all been in launch discussions where market research seemed designed to C.Y.A. (cover your bum), not to provide real insight. As long as we tick the market research check list, we're cleared for takeoff (and have something to blame if it doesn't work out).
- [recession survival tactics](https://marketoonist.com/2009/01/recession-survival-tacitcs.html) - "What we're experiencing right now is a complete sea change requiring us to completely rethink what were doing. We need to think our way out of this recession, not just wait for it to get better." I read this quote from Michael Perman (Levi Strauss) in this AdAge article and thought it was spot-on (thanks
- [glass half full](https://marketoonist.com/2009/01/glass-half-full.html) - It's never easy to do business forecasting, but this year is a total mystery. Every forecast discussion seems to start with a conversation to agree how optimistic or pessimistic to be. It reminded me of the old "glass half full/glass half empty" test. Most of what I'm hearing is pretty pessimistic. And it's only a
- [we're so eco-friendly](https://marketoonist.com/2008/05/were-so-eco-fri.html) - 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
- [Market Research](https://marketoonist.com/2024/04/market-research-2.html) - This cartoon is partly inspired by a classic quote attributed to David Ogilvy: “The trouble with market research is that people don't think what they feel, they don't say what they think and they don't do what they say.” That’s not to say that that market research isn’t important. But directly asking consumers what they
- [The Large Print Giveth](https://marketoonist.com/2024/03/the-large-print-giveth.html) - In 1976, Tom Waits released his classic song “Step Right Up”, a hilarious rant on the state of advertising. It’s an anthem to all the bad marketing clichés of the time with lyrics about “year-end clearances” and “50% off” messages jockeying for attention. He closes with a line that inspired this cartoon: “The large print
- [Navigating AI Hype](https://marketoonist.com/2023/04/navigating-ai-hype.html) - My cartoon last week, “AI Written, AI Read”, has already become one of my more widely shared cartoons ever — nearly a million impressions on LinkedIn alone. Generative AI is clearly on a lot of our minds right now. Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO, voiced the level of hype related to Generative AI at a
- [AI Washing](https://marketoonist.com/2024/01/ai-washing.html) - “AI suffers from an unrelenting, incurable case of vagueness,” Eric Siegel told BBC reporter James Clayton. At the same time, Gartner pegged Generative AI in its most recent Hype Cycle as being on the “Peak of Inflated Expectations.” That combined “vagueness” and “hype” is a recipe for “AI-powered” being applied indiscriminately across just about anything.
- [Potential of AI](https://marketoonist.com/2024/03/potential-of-ai.html) - “We approach the integration of AI with a mixture of excitement and caution,” Kate Seymour, marketing director at CMYK, said recently. She captured I think how many businesses are thinking about AI. She went on: “While we recognise the vast potential AI holds for enhancing our own marketing strategies and improving the services we offer
- [Behind the Focus Group Glass](https://marketoonist.com/2024/03/behind-the-focus-group-glass.html) - I’ve always been fascinated with how marketing teams make decisions, particularly how they try to tap into consumer insights. Any form of consumer research is an inexact science. Focus group glass can distort insights like a fun house mirror. It can easily be shaped by the team’s own biases and politics. Quotes can be cherry-picked
- [Writing and SEO Word Soup](https://marketoonist.com/2024/03/writing-and-seo-word-soup.html) - I recently met Jono Alderson, former head of SEO at Yoast, at Marketing Festival in Brno. He gave a fascinating talk on the state of content marketing. Several of his observations resonated with me, including the insularity of using the same search engine optimization checklists as everyone else as a starting point to create anything.
- [Marketing Handoff to Sales](https://marketoonist.com/2024/02/marketing-handoff-to-sales.html) - The quality of marketing leads is an age-old sales gripe, captured best by Glengarry Glen Ross, the classic 1984 David Mamet play turned 1992 movie. Salesman Shelley Levene is constantly complaining that the leads are “weak”, and the focus of the plot is the question of who stole the golden “Glengarry” leads. In B2B marketing,
- [Future of Search](https://marketoonist.com/2024/02/future-of-search.html) - The future of search is ask. The future of results is answer. I like how Carl Holden at Zellus Marketing described the shift in how we’re all going to be navigating the Internet: “Since the turn of the millennium, the verb "search" has dominated our interaction with the internet—inputting keywords into a box and sifting
- [Super Bowl Ad Playbook](https://marketoonist.com/2024/02/super-bowl-ad-playbook.html) - One of my earliest cartoons (back in January 2003) showed a large gathering of people socializing at a Super Bowl party and a guy saying “Time to come back! The commercials are starting again!” The Super Bowl is the one time every year when ordinary people actively seek out advertising. I found a reference to
- [Staying Focused](https://marketoonist.com/2024/01/staying-focused.html) - “Our ‘Aha moments’ are literally quiet brain signals.” I like this observation from Dr. David Rock I came across in a NYT article on the impact of modern distractions. With modern work culture wired for always-on communication, finding the space and time for “Aha moments” is a challenge. We have to be deliberate if we
- [Navigating Innovation](https://marketoonist.com/2024/01/navigating-innovation.html) - I recently stumbled across this observation on innovation from Ger Perdisatt of Microsoft: “Often, companies talk a good game about innovation, but when these aspirations bump up against the realpolitik of running corporate organizations, there is typically only one winner: the status quo.” The pressure of the status quo is strong. Champions of innovation have
- [Gen Z is not a Monolith](https://marketoonist.com/2024/01/gen-z-is-not-a-monolith.html) - In the 20+ years I’ve been drawing this cartoon series, one evergreen topic I’ve loved exploring is how brands sometimes twist into pretzels trying to appeal to new generations, often with hilarious unintended effects. Advice often comes in the form of a 5-step checklist — or a “one weird trick” — that magically promises to
- [Happy (Product) Returns](https://marketoonist.com/2024/01/happy-product-returns.html) - “Free Returns” has become the new “Free Shipping,” which is creating a massive logistical headache for retailers, particularly in the weeks after Christmas. This year, shoppers in the US returned 14.5% of the items they purchased, valued at $743 billion. That’s nearly double the return rates of pre-pandemic 2019. One third of shoppers now
- [It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like AI-Generated Content](https://marketoonist.com/2023/12/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-ai-generated-content.html) - I’ve been thinking lately about an observation from Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard: “Advertising has a bad reputation as a content crap trap … “In this digital age we’re producing thousands of new ads, posts, tweets, every week, every month, every year. We eventually concluded all we were doing was adding to
- [Many Hats of the CMO](https://marketoonist.com/2023/12/many-hats-of-the-cmo.html) - I’ve drawn a number of cartoons over the years on the evolving Chief Marketing Officer role, which is partly a proxy for the ever-changing job of marketing in general. Long gone are the days when CMOs were just in charge of “marketing comms” and marketing was dismissively described as “the coloring-in department.” Today’s Chief Marketing
- [Intent Signals](https://marketoonist.com/2023/11/intent-signals.html) - One of the mythical holy grails of marketing is to be able to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. Easier said than done. Despite all the focus on customer journeys, we’re still operating in the dark on what customers are actually looking for, much of the time. Even
- [Break through the Clutter](https://marketoonist.com/2023/11/break-through-the-clutter.html) - We can’t break through the clutter by adding to it. Yet the majority of marketing communication just creates more of the same. I recently caught up with Adam Morgan, founder of eatbigfish, and learned about a project he’s developing to quantify the cost of being dull (and the opportunity to be more interesting). As Adam
- [Fear of AI](https://marketoonist.com/2023/10/fear-of-ai.html) - A recent survey from Funnel and Ravn Research found that 64% of marketers fear AI will replace their jobs in the next five years, and three in four worry that AI will impact their pay or value. Whether or not we’re feeling that fear ourselves, members of our teams likely are. That’s a key factor
- [Share of Wallet and Funflation](https://marketoonist.com/2023/10/share-of-wallet-and-funflation.html) - Kevin Jordan-Deen, SVP at Colgate-Palmolive, encouraged me last week to re-imagine and re-create a “Share of Wallet” cartoon I originally drew in 2009 during the “Great Recession”. When I drew the original cartoon, I was GM for the recently launched Method brand in the UK. Much of the recessionary marketing climate at the time
- [the personalization privacy paradox](https://marketoonist.com/2021/07/zeropartydata.html) - Consumers expect personalized experiences. Yet they also grate at attempts by marketers to collect personal data about them to deliver these personalized experiences. That’s a paradox that marketers increasingly have to navigate.
- [this meeting could have been an email](https://marketoonist.com/2021/08/meeting_email.html) - Last week, Facebook released a free beta for a new virtual reality meeting experience called Horizon Workrooms. Using their Oculus Quest 2 VR headsets, Facebook re-imagines the future of meetings where we’ll all show up as cartoon avatars that will mimic our movements and facial expressions.
- [brand experience and the metaverse](https://marketoonist.com/2022/01/brand-experience.html) - Amid some of the hype surrounding the metaverse, I was struck by a Washington Post profile of Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, creator of Fortnite. The article included this synopsis of Tim’s vision for brands and the metaverse: “The metaverse … would be an expansive, digitized communal space where users can mingle freely with brands and one another in ways that permit self-expression and spark joy…
- [meeting overload, hybrid work, and asynchronous communication](https://marketoonist.com/2022/02/meeting-overload.html) - Meetings have always been a favorite punching bag of modern work life. One survey in 2014 found that employees rated meetings as the “number one office productivity killer.”
- [Chief Something Officer](https://marketoonist.com/2022/05/chief-something-officer.html) - Unilever is the latest major company to rename the Chief Marketing Officer. Having added the word “Digital” in 2019 as “Chief Digital and Marketing Officer”, they got rid of the word “Marketing” altogether last month to announce the role as “Chief Digital and Commercial Officer.” Announcing her new role, Unilever CDCO Connie Braams said: “And Unilever is the latest major company to rename the Chief Marketing Officer. Having added the word “Digital” in 2019 as “Chief Digital and Marketing Officer”, they got rid of the word “Marketing” altogether last month to announce the role as “Chief Digital and Commercial Officer.”
- [Hybrid Work](https://marketoonist.com/2022/10/hybrid-work.html) - Last week I wrote about the “messy, mushy middle” of figuring out where and how we work as more people return to the office. I closed with a funny observation from Andrew Mawson, MD of AWA: “People tried coming into the office and when they got there, they found all they were doing was being
- [Evolution of Marketing and 20 Years of Marketoonist](https://marketoonist.com/2022/10/evolution.html) - Last Friday marked 20 years of Marketoonist. On October 21, 2002, I published my very first marketing cartoon, then called Brand Camp. It was a cartoon on the 8 Types of Brand Managers. I had just started as an Associate Marketing Manager at General Mills, working on Yoplait. I emailed this first cartoon to 35
- [Decisions, Decisions](https://marketoonist.com/2022/10/decisions-decisions.html) - “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a decision,” is a truism strangely popularized both by René Descartes, the 17th century French philosopher, and Rush, the prog rock band. We can always analyze more data and write more decision trees, but we never have 100% confidence in how things are going to
- [By Bots, For Bots](https://marketoonist.com/2022/11/by-bots-for-bots.html) - There’s a funny conspiracy theory that the Internet secretly "died" six years ago — and is now mostly filled with bots communicating with other bots. As Kaitlyn Tiffany wrote in the Atlantic last year: “‘Dead-internet theory’ suggests that the internet has been almost entirely taken over by artificial intelligence … “YouTube, for a time, had
- [Reinventing Marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2023/01/reinventing-marketing.html) - My last cartoon before the holidays was about playing it safe. The other extreme is complete reinvention. There’s truth in Bill Gates’ classic 1996 observation.
- [AI Tidal Wave](https://marketoonist.com/2023/01/ai-tidal-wave.html) - On May 26, 1995, Bill Gates wrote the famous “Internet Tidal Wave” internal memo at Microsoft. This was a huge wake-up call for the desktop software company.
- [More with Less](https://marketoonist.com/2023/01/more-with-less.html) - Doing “more with less” is emerging as a sort of business mantra for 2023. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella used the term externally and internally this week to talk about the overall business climate. In a memo to staff announcing layoffs, he looked outward: “As we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic,
- [Evolution of Smart Products](https://marketoonist.com/2023/01/evolution-of-smart-products.html) - One of the most popular cartoons I ever drew was about the Internet of Things, right after Google announced the acquisition of Nest in early 2014. “I think my Nest smoke alarm is going off,” one character tells another. “Google Adwords just pitched me a fire extinguisher and an offer for temporary housing.”
- [AI Written, AI Read](https://marketoonist.com/2023/03/ai-written-ai-read.html) - One piece of slang that has long embodied the short attention span Internet age is TL;DR, short for “too long; didn’t read.” With the explosion of generative AI tools, we’re rapidly entering the age of TL;DW: “too long, didn’t write.” A January survey from Fishbowl found that 40% of nearly 12,000 workers have used ChatGPT
- [The CMO Role](https://marketoonist.com/2023/07/the-cmo-role.html) - “In some organizations, just the expectations of CMOs are just so out of whack with the reality of what a CMO can really deliver on the timelines, and with the resources and with the headwinds that they have… “I think that in some organizations, you’re just being set up to fail, right?” Gartner analyst Chris
- [Generative AI Adoption](https://marketoonist.com/2023/08/generative-ai-adoption.html) - I love the analogy of ChatGPT that Hubspot CTO Dharmesh Shah shared at the start of the year: “Netscape was to the Internet what ChatGPT is to Artificial Intelligence. “The Internet existed before Netscape. But the browser helped millions of mere mortals connect the dots on what could be done, and dream of what could
- [AI and the Future of Work](https://marketoonist.com/2023/10/ai-and-the-future-of-work.html) - On Friday, Professor Scott Galloway released ProfG.ai, a “digital twin” trained on his writing and capable of answering questions in his voice. That’s just one of many experiments with different models on how generative AI can impact the future of work. A few weeks ago, BCG released the results of a fascinating Harvard-led
- [Moments of Truth](https://marketoonist.com/2023/10/moments-of-truth-2.html) - In 2005, A.G. Lafley, CEO of the world’s largest advertiser, Procter & Gamble, introduced the concept of “moments of truth” to the marketing world. As he wrote in the P&G Annual Report that year: “The best brands consistently win two moments of truth. The first moment occurs at the store shelf, when a consumer decides
- [Change for the Sake of Change](https://marketoonist.com/2023/10/change-for-the-sake-of-change.html) - Marketers are the first to get bored by their own marketing. Particularly when a new leader joins a brand team, there’s a common bias in marketing that what will drive growth is to change everything everywhere all at once. Given the revolving door of many marketing roles, the cycle can repeat with each leadership
- [What’s the Marketing ROI?](https://marketoonist.com/2023/09/whats-the-marketing-roi.html) - At the Cannes Lions a few months ago, Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar and CFO Sachin Mehra gave a joint talk on the CMO/CFO relationship called “Happy Tension.” Raja described the typical dynamic this way: “It's shocking that less than 40% of the finance people think that marketers can make sound commercial decisions, leaving the remaining
- [Productively Unproductive](https://marketoonist.com/2023/09/productively-unproductive.html) - Dwight D. Eisenhower reportedly prioritized his work life by classifying tasks as important or not important, and urgent or not urgent. The resulting two-by-two graph became known as The Eisenhower Matrix and it influenced a lot of thinking in work productivity. We generally spend far too much on work that is urgent but not important.
- [Personalization Gone Wrong](https://marketoonist.com/2023/09/personalization-gone-wrong.html) - In 1970, a Japanese roboticist named Masahiro Mori introduced the concept of the “uncanny valley.” In designing robots to be more human-like, he observed that people respond positively only up to a point. Then there’s an “uncanny valley” where the “almost-human” design seems creepy and people experience “revulsion.” If you watched the 2004 movie
- [Ratings Fatigue](https://marketoonist.com/2023/09/ratings-fatigue.html) - Net Promoter Score (NPS) turns 20 later this year. What Bain consultant Fred Reichheld first introduced in a HBR article in December 2003 is now ubiquitous. The "how likely are you to recommend" question is asked endlessly after customer experiences, large and small. The metric that this question generates is now tracked by two-thirds
- [Third-Party Cookiepocalypse](https://marketoonist.com/2023/08/third-party-cookiepocalypse.html) - Nearly 10 years ago, I drew one of my most popular cartoons that showed a Peeping Tom looking through the window of a living room at a couple. One says, "Don't worry, it's only marketers collecting our personal data so they can create more relevant advertising for us." Third-party cookies have been at the center
- [Beyond Gen Z](https://marketoonist.com/2023/08/beyond-gen-z.html) - “Gen Z had a profound impact on how brands approached their consumer experiences, but companies will need to brace themselves even more for the changes Gen Alpha will infuse… “They aren’t just digital natives; these are digital ninjas, and whether brands are ready or not, they’re coming.” This comment is from Razorfish President Dani Mariano,
- [Brands on Threads](https://marketoonist.com/2023/07/brands-on-threads.html) - Meta debuted their own version of Twitter a couple weeks ago called Threads. The launch created a fire drill for many a marketing team, deciding whether to jump in and if so, in what way. Part of the alarm was caused by the record user growth of the app. At 100 million users in five
- [Crossing the Chasm](https://marketoonist.com/2023/07/crossing-the-chasm.html) - I’ve drawn a few different cartoons over the years riffing on Geoffrey Moore’s 1991 classic, “Crossing the Chasm.” I once had the opportunity to give him the original of one of these when we spoke at the same Silicon Valley conference. Given the faddish nature of conventional wisdom in marketing, I particularly appreciate models like
- [5 Stages of Price Promotions](https://marketoonist.com/2023/07/5-stages-of-price-promotions.html) - “Price promotions are a drug. They are the crack cocaine of marketing. I hope we’ve seen an end to the senseless promotions that we’ve seen.” Les Binet, group head of effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, shared these thoughts at last year’s IPA’s Global Effectiveness conference. Much of the spike in sales that brands see during a
- [Innovation and TikTok](https://marketoonist.com/2023/06/innovation-and-tiktok.html) - The WSJ had a great feature last week on Chipotle and the “Keithadilla.” It was a fascinating case study on the state of innovation in the age of TikTok trends. In late 2022, a TikTok influencer named Keith Lee reinterpreted the Chipotle Quesadilla as an off-menu hack that included a DIY sauce combining Chipotle-Honey Vinaigrette
- [AI and Productivity](https://marketoonist.com/2023/06/ai-and-productivity.html) - “Maybe AI will help you work. But more likely, you’ll be working for AI.” Ian Bogost made this observation a few months ago in the Atlantic, and it stuck with me. As organizations scramble to incorporate AI, no one knows quite how AI will impact the future of work. Will productivity gains be offset by,
- [Push Notification Fatigue](https://marketoonist.com/2023/05/push-notification-fatigue.html) - Braze recently reported that the average smartphone user receives over 40 push notifications a day. The Atlantic pegged the daily number of push notifications even higher, between 50 and 80. Here’s how Atlantic staff writer Amanda Mull categorized push notifications last week: “Push notifications may indeed be the smartphone’s defining feature. They are, if nothing
- [Media Context and Brand Suitability](https://marketoonist.com/2023/05/media-context-and-brand-suitability.html) - Where an ad appears can sometimes communicate more than the ad itself. Keith Browning, LinkedIn’s brand marketing global lead, shared an interesting analogy a few years ago on the relative importance of content and context. He recounted an experiment by Joshua Bell, one of the top violinists in the world. One day, Joshua stepped onto
- [Digital Upskilling](https://marketoonist.com/2023/05/digital-upskilling.html) - Thorsten Strauss recently sent a funny observation to me that “ the Prompt Engineer is the new Growth Hacker.” The AI Prompt Engineer is suddenly an in-demand job, as organizations scramble how to work with generative AI. Insider recently reported salaries up to $375k for prompt engineers, even for those without a tech background. It’s
- [Social Listening and Consumer Insights](https://marketoonist.com/2023/04/social-listening-and-consumer-insights.html) - “The plural of anecdote is not data,” the old aphorism goes. I think the inverse is also interesting: “The singular of data is not anecdote.” Marcus Collins, Head of Strategy at Wieden+Kennedy New York, made the following observation a couple years ago: “Though the amount of data available to marketers has increased exponentially over time,
- [Focus Groups and the Oracles of Eden Prairie](https://marketoonist.com/2023/04/focus-groups-and-the-oracles-of-eden-prairie.html) - This cartoon is less about focus groups than how we often use focus groups. Or really any type of market research. Years ago, I overheard some agency friends joke about “the Oracles of Eden Prairie.” Eden Prairie is a suburb of Minneapolis, where a lot of focus groups happen. These agency friends went
- [Podcasts for Everyone](https://marketoonist.com/2023/04/podcasts-for-everyone.html) - In 2019, I drew a cartoon poking fun at the explosion of new podcasts, with one podcaster saying to another: “Thank you for being a podcast guest on my new podcast about podcasting for podcasters starting podcasts to podcast to other podcasters.” At that point, Apple claimed 700,000 unique podcasts on iTunes. Then came Covid.
- [Do Something](https://marketoonist.com/2023/03/do-something.html) - There’s a counter-intuitive Buddhist line that has stuck with me: “Don’t just do something, sit there.” It’s particularly useful in times of uncertainty or even panic, when the temptation is to follow the herd, or take action for the sake of taking action. Sometimes the best action to take on a situation is no action
- [Maslow's Hierarchy](https://marketoonist.com/2023/03/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-2.html) - In last week’s cartoon, I parodied some of my favorite clichés in marketing presentation slides. With just six panels in that cartoon, I had to leave a lot on the cutting room floor. One of my other favorite used and abused slides is the ever-present framework, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Psychologist Abraham Maslow first
- [Marketing Planning](https://marketoonist.com/2023/03/marketing-planning.html) - Marketing plans too often sound alike, even for completely different brands in completely different industries with completely different objectives.
- [The AI Pivot](https://marketoonist.com/2023/02/the-ai-pivot.html) - What a difference a year (or even a few months) makes. Just last January, I drew a cartoon showing a couple marketers (as legless avatars) standing in a virtual world under a banner that reads, “welcome to our brand experience in the metaverse!” One is saying to the other, “I’m sure consumers will show
- [AI-Generated Sameness](https://marketoonist.com/2023/02/ai-generated-sameness.html) - Ian Whitworth recently described AI-generated content as “infinite words nobody wants.”
- [Marketing to the CFO](https://marketoonist.com/2023/02/marketing-to-the-cfo.html) - Whenever budgets are under scrutiny, marketing is one of the first items on the chopping block. Those conversations are more difficult when marketing and finance speak a different language. One of the most important target audiences that marketers need to learn how to market to is their own CFO. I’ve always liked the brand management
- [Definition of Marketing Insanity](https://marketoonist.com/2023/01/definition-of-marketing-insanity.html) - I’ve drawn a lot of cartoons about the tendency of marketers to want to change everything, all at once, and all the time.
- [Safe is Risky](https://marketoonist.com/2022/12/safe-is-risky-2.html) - I drew this cartoon partly in response to two studies that came out this week. They seemed to capture the mixed signals that businesses are grappling with as they look at 2023. The Deloitte "CFO Signals" report partly tracks the risk aversion of CFOs over time. Deloitte found that only 29% of CFOs say this
- [First-Party Data is Coming to Town](https://marketoonist.com/2022/12/first-party-data-is-coming-to-town.html) - This cartoon is a follow-up to a cartoon I drew just four years ago about a kid on Santa’s lap in a different privacy era: “Well, Timmy, if you didn’t want me to see you when you’re sleeping, know when you’re awake, know if you’ve been bad or good, and sell that data to third
- [<strong>Tip Creep, Tip-flation, and Tip Fatigue</strong>](https://marketoonist.com/2022/12/tip-creep-tip-flation-and-tip-fatigue.html) - Asking for a tip is increasingly part of the customer experience. Partly because of the ubiquitous touch screens now at most points of purchase, tipping has crept to just about every type of transaction — from takeout to self-service frozen yogurt to propane refills to buying a t-shirt at a concert. Service tips of 15-30%
- [Marketing Babble](https://marketoonist.com/2022/11/marketing-babble.html) - I recently heard the way marketers speak described as “Jargon-Monoxide Poisoning,” which made me laugh. I think “Jargon-Monoxide” is produced by every part of a business, but marketers are particularly adept at “Jargon-Monoxide Poisoning.” It’s ironic that the business discipline in charge of communications has such a hard time communicating what it does without
- [Spray-and-Pray Marketing and Sales](https://marketoonist.com/2022/11/spray-and-pray.html) - No matter how sophisticated the tools have gotten or how rich the data, I find it funny how much of marketing and sales still rely on blunt force, one-size-fits-all lead generation tactics like these.
- [marketing with personal data](https://marketoonist.com/2014/05/personaldat.html) - A Chicago couple recently received a promotional mailer from OfficeMax addressed to “Mike Seay/Daughter Killed in Car Crash/Or Current Business.” The Seay family lost their daughter less than a year earlier.
- [the 8 types of brand managers](https://marketoonist.com/2002/10/the-8-types-of-brand-managers-2.html)
- [Fear of Recession](https://marketoonist.com/2022/10/fear-of-recession.html) - There’s nothing spookier this Halloween than some of the headlines. Sapio Research recently found that 95% of global businesses are concerned about a recession.
- [Brand Naming](https://marketoonist.com/2022/10/brand-naming.html) - This cartoon was partly inspired by reading someone described as the MD of EMEA at VMLY&R, part of WPP. I’ve always found it funny that some of the most successful ad agencies have some of the least imaginative names. The alphabet soup names of many agencies are hard to tell apart, and could be
- [Returning to the Office](https://marketoonist.com/2022/09/returning-to-the-office.html) - The Return-to-Office versus Work-from-Home Tug of War continues. Many businesses are getting more insistent with their plans to get staff back in the office more, shifting tactics from offering perks to issuing mandates. In a study from A.Team, 53% of tech leaders said an economic downturn would make it easier to require employees to
- [Procurement and Partnership](https://marketoonist.com/2022/09/procurement-2.html) - The nature of the relationships between all the teams across client and agency has a direct impact on the work that comes out. Small areas often overlooked — like how much care is taken in writing briefs or how how much a gauntlet there is to run to get paid — can make a difference
- [Competitor Myopia](https://marketoonist.com/2022/09/competitor-myopia.html) - Gary Rogers, former Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream CEO and Levi Strauss Chairman, used to encourage his teams not to obsess too much on “worm races.” “Worm races” were Gary’s nickname for line charts that showed competitive market share over time. He observed that marketers often spent too much time focused on what their competitors
- [Lifecycle of Social Media](https://marketoonist.com/2022/09/lifecycle-of-social-media.html) - It’s inevitable. As soon as a new social platform starts to attract an audience, brands will follow — sometimes with awkward attempts to “authentically” engage that audience. It can be a tricky dance for marketers when part of the appeal of a platform is the absence of brands. The latest social network wunderkind is BeReal,
- [AI Generated Marketing Content](https://marketoonist.com/2022/08/ai-generated-marketing-content.html) - Ad exec Dave Trott once pointed out the dictionary definition of “content” to unpack his distaste for that term in marketing: “Content (noun): everything that is inside a container; the contents of a box.” “So there it is: we’re in the shipping business. That’s what happened to what we used to call 'the idea.' The
- [The Algorithm Giveth and Taketh Away](https://marketoonist.com/2022/08/algorithm.html) - Rutgers professor Shagun Jhaver coined the term “algorithmic anxiety” while researching Airbnb hosts in 2018. He observed the obsessive lengths that hosts were taking to try to boost the rankings of their properties — while not quite sure how the Airbnb algorithm worked or what would make a difference. Shagun described many of these
- [Generation Alpha](https://marketoonist.com/2022/08/generation-alpha.html) - Nike CEO John Donahoe recently gushed about Generation Alpha, the under 12 demographic that comes after Gen Z: “The way most companies look at consumers is ‘well, who's got disposable income?’ We don't look at it that way. We look at, who is setting the agenda? Who is the future?” Many marketers are starting to
- [Data-Driven](https://marketoonist.com/2022/07/data-driven-2.html) - A couple years ago, Accenture found that only a third of businesses trust their data enough to use it effectively. Only 27% reported that their data and analytics produce insights and recommendations that are highly actionable. They identified a widening chasm between the amount of data and the value derived from it. They called it
- [How Same-Day Delivery Works](https://marketoonist.com/2022/07/delivery.html) - In 2018, WSJ columnist Christopher Mims observed: “Alongside life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you can now add another inalienable right: two-day shipping on practically everything.” This was before Amazon Prime pushed the stakes further to one-day shipping in 2019, expanded even further this year to same-day shipping for 140 metro areas, and announced
- [How to Give Creative Feedback](https://marketoonist.com/2022/07/creative-feedback.html) - David Ogilvy famously said: “Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.” That observation from the Mad Men era still rings true today. The inherent dynamic of committees to to sand the edges. That’s the
- [Talk to the QR Code](https://marketoonist.com/2022/06/serviceqr.html) - One of the customer experience legacies of the pandemic is the QR code. From ordering in restaurants to finding product info in stores to getting help while traveling, the QR code is now ever-present in our daily customer interactions. Once dismissed as niche, the QR code is gaining steam. Scanning increased 25% in 2020, 15%
- [Building a Moat](https://marketoonist.com/2022/06/building-a-moat.html) - An entrepreneur friend of mine shared that one of the most invariable (and overused) questions he gets asked is what the “moats” are for his start-up. He described the question as a crutch that VCs go to when they don’t know what other questions to ask. As my friend put it: “More troubling is
- [The Innovation Funnel](https://marketoonist.com/2022/06/the-innovation-funnel.html) - Most organizations use some version of an innovation funnel to bring ideas to life. It starts with lots of ideas at the front end and then launches whatever survives all the way to the back end. Yet this Darwinian process of bringing ideas to life doesn’t necessarily lead to survival of the fittest ideas. If
- [False Choice Between Brand and Performance](https://marketoonist.com/2022/05/false-choice.html) - In a volatile business environment like this, there’s often pressure to shift gears (and budgets) from long-term brand building to short-term performance marketing that drive quick sales. I recently re-read Tom Roach’s excellent 2020 essay called “The Wrong and the Short of it." His piece goes after one of the classic “false choices” in marketing In a volatile business environment like this, there’s often pressure to shift gears (and budgets) from long-term brand building to short-term performance marketing that drive quick sales.
- [make the logo bigger](https://marketoonist.com/2019/07/logobigger.html) - I first drew a version of this cartoon almost 10 years ago, and decided to riff on the concept with an updated version. “Make the logo bigger” is still the most common client feedback for creative work, and the quickest way to drive a creative director crazy.
- [walled gardens](https://marketoonist.com/2022/05/walled-gardens.html) - “The number of walled gardens is growing and we can only expect their walls to get higher,” Quantcast VP Mark White observed recently. “Walled gardens” as a business concept describing a closed tech ecosystem is nothing new. John Malone is credited with coining the term in the 90s to apply the world of telecom. But “The number of walled gardens is growing and we can only expect their walls to get higher,” Quantcast VP Mark White observed recently.
- [artificial intelligence](https://marketoonist.com/2022/03/artificial-intelligence.html) - “Children today are not only digital natives, they’re AI natives.” I was struck by this observation by Cynthia Breazeal, MIT professor and founder of RAISE (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education).
- [product/market fit](https://marketoonist.com/2022/04/product-market-fit.html) - A CB Insights study found that 35% of startups failed because they launched a product with no market need. It’s one of the main reasons cited why startups fail.
- [the future of the metaverse](https://marketoonist.com/2022/04/the-future-of-the-metaverse.html) - No one knows exactly what form the internet of the future will take, but the frustrations of the current internet won’t automatically go away with new technology.
- [risky assumptions](https://marketoonist.com/2004/09/risky-assumptions.html)
- [shopping cart abandonment](https://marketoonist.com/2022/04/shopping-cart-abandonment.html) - Baymard Institute reports that 70% of all online shopping carts are abandoned. High cart abandonment rates are a headache for any marketer in charge of e-commerce sales.
- [ad fraud](https://marketoonist.com/2017/08/ad-fraud.html) - marketing, cartoon, marketoon
- [loyalty programs and personal data](https://marketoonist.com/2022/03/loyalty-programs-and-personal-data.html) - “Loyalty programs need to be treated as a trade-off, meaning they need to provide something of value to the customer and in return customers will provide their personal information along with the permission to track their shopping behavior and actions providing that Big Data.” This is a good reminder from Andy Wood, MD at GI Insight. With the death of third-party cookies and the privacy changes of iOS 14, brands are scrambling to find other ways to collect personal data.
- [user-generated content creep](https://marketoonist.com/2022/03/ugc.html) - The power of user-generated content (UGC) in marketing is nothing new, but the lightbulb went on for many brands in 2020 when Nathan Apodaca’s truck broke down on the way to work.
- [business as unusual](https://marketoonist.com/2022/03/business-as-unusual.html) - Last week I got ready to share a weekly cartoon I drew on some marketing topic, and it just didn’t seem to matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. So I took a pause.
- [metaverse hype cycle](https://marketoonist.com/2022/02/metaverse-hype-cycle.html) - Gartner has been mapping the Hype Cycles of emerging technologies for nearly 30 years. Jackie Fenn (still at Gartner) originated the widely-used Hype Cycle Methodology in 1995.
- [data-driven decision making](https://marketoonist.com/2022/02/data-driven-decision-making.html) - Computer scientists coined the colorful expression “garbage in, garbage out” in the earliest days of data processing, a term first recorded in an article in 1963 when an AP reporter visited an early computer lab. Nearly 60 years later, we’re still struggling with data credibility.
- [shiny new NFT syndrome](https://marketoonist.com/2022/01/shiny-new-nft-syndrome.html) - Marketers are perennially excited about the shiny new thing. Few shiny new things have captured the imagination of marketers quite like the NFT bandwagon of the last year.
- [thought leadership](https://marketoonist.com/2022/01/thought-leadership.html) - The term “thought leadership” was first coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, editor of Strategy+Business, with a narrow focus in mind. He wrote: “Thought Leaders are those people who possess a distinctively original idea, a unique point of view, or an unprecedented insight into their industry.”
- [marketing b.s. detector](https://marketoonist.com/2022/01/marketing-b-s-detector.html) - 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.
- [customer experience and shipping delays](https://marketoonist.com/2022/01/shippingdelays.html) - 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%.
- [ho, ho, holiday labor shortage](https://marketoonist.com/2021/12/labor-shortage.html) - 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 on the sidelines who would be willing to come back to work if the conditions were right.”
- [supply chain excuses](https://marketoonist.com/2021/12/supply-chain-excuses.html) - 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.
- [social media monitoring](https://marketoonist.com/2011/09/social-media-monitoring-2.html)
- [decision paralysis](https://marketoonist.com/2021/12/decision-paralysis-2.html) - 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.
- [spam, spam, spam](https://marketoonist.com/2021/11/spam-spam-spam.html) - 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."
- [inflation, shrinkflation, and skimpflation](https://marketoonist.com/2021/11/skimpflation.html) - A few weeks ago, NPR’s Planet Money coined a catchy new economics term — skimpflation.
- [Chasing Gen Z](https://marketoonist.com/2021/11/chasing-gen-z.html) - Marketers are constantly obsessed with how to reach younger generations to stay relevant. This can lead to a lot of “cringey” marketing, to use a term my teenage daughters make fun of when older people like me use to try to speak their language.
- [targeted advertising and the end of third-party cookies](https://marketoonist.com/2021/10/end-of-third-party-cookies.html) - As marketers prepare for the end of third-party cookies, it’s good to remember how inaccurate much of that third-party data is.
- [productivity and interruptions](https://marketoonist.com/2021/10/productivity-and-interruptions.html) - Jeff Maurer, former senior writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, recently made a funny observation on how to deal with unwanted Slack interruptions: “You CAN mute notifications: Just go to ‘settings’ > ‘notifications” > ‘never get promoted’, and turn the slider to ‘on’.”
- [types of creative brief](https://marketoonist.com/2021/10/types-of-creative-brief.html) - Veteran agency planners Matt Davies and Pieter-Paul von Weiler released a damning study this week on the state of the marketing brief as part of their Better Briefs Project. It was the first global and largest study on the topic.
- [we value your privacy](https://marketoonist.com/2021/10/we-value-your-privacy.html) - “We value your privacy” is one of those meaningless marketing phrases, like “your call is very important to us” or "we're all in this together", where actions speak louder than words.
- [pain in the supply chain](https://marketoonist.com/2021/10/supplychain.html) - Doug Hall once said that “marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” The 2021 holiday season is a visceral reminder that the supply chain team is an integral part of the brand team. Consumers may not appreciate the myriad complicated steps that products travel in the global supply chain, but they certainly notice empty shelves and shipping delays.
- [marketing in the metaverse](https://marketoonist.com/2021/09/marketing-in-the-metaverse.html) - Lindsey McInerney at Anheuser-Busch InBev recently gave voice to some of the enthusiasm marketers are feeling for the potential of the metaverse. She said: “It’s a really exciting time to be a marketer in this space. I believe the shift we’re seeing to the metaverse, is going to be one of the largest shifts we’ve seen in a long time … we are where we were in social media 17, 18 years ago."
- [share of voice](https://marketoonist.com/2021/09/share-of-voice.html) - Marketers are perpetually looking for the most useful metrics to guide marketing decisions. None are perfect and many are in flux.
- [personal branding](https://marketoonist.com/2021/09/personal-branding-2.html) - Tom Peters ushered in the age of personal branding with a 1997 cover story in Fast Company titled “The Brand Called You.”
- [every brand onion](https://marketoonist.com/2021/08/every-brand-onion.html) - I find few things as silly in the world of marketing as the classic Brand Onion. The Brand Onion goes by many names — Brand DNA, Brand Architecture, Brand Wheel, Brand Key, etc. — but it’s basically a one-page synopsis of a brand, collectively word-smithed by the marketing team.
- [HiPPO: Highest Paid Person's Opinion](https://marketoonist.com/2014/07/hippo.html)
- [brand fatigue and brand consistency](https://marketoonist.com/2021/08/brand-fatigue-and-brand-consistency.html) - There’s an adage that “Marketers get tired of their advertising before consumers do.” The same is true for all aspects of a brand. A brand team spends so much time surrounded by the same old brand assets, it can be tempting to change for the sake of change. Marketers are also tempted to leave their
- [sea of sameness](https://marketoonist.com/2021/08/sea-of-sameness.html) - When I worked on the method brand from 2006-2010, we often talked about about trying to stand out in a “sea of sameness.” Like many aisles in the grocery story, household cleaning was dominated by brands that looked and sounded alike — same stock bottle packaging, same messaging, same product benefits, same designs, same claims. There was very little differentiation or distinctiveness.
- [media planning](https://marketoonist.com/2021/08/media-planning-2.html) - Media spend is rebounding in 2021 with a continued spending shift from traditional to digital channels. Zenith reported this week that digital ads will make up 58% of total ad spend in 2021, up from 48% in 2019 and 54% in 2020.
- [back to the office](https://marketoonist.com/2021/07/backtotheoffice.html) - I was struck by this observation from Ron Carucci in his HBR article last month on returning to the office: “If the transition to WFH wasn’t challenging enough, the transition back to the office may prove even more difficult.”
- [marketing myopia and brand choice](https://marketoonist.com/2021/07/marketing-myopia-and-brand-choice.html) - Faris Yakob wrote an interesting piece last year on what motivates consumers to buy, particularly in the few seconds a consumer spends at shelf. He wrote: “In 2005 P&G coined the term “first moment of truth” to describe the importance of packaging in their marketing model.
- [influencer marketing and authenticity](https://marketoonist.com/2021/06/influencer-2.html) - I recently heard a marketing executive say at a conference that “to establish trust you have to appear authentic.” I found this turn of phrase interesting, and telling; she didn’t say “be” authentic — she said “appear” authentic.
- [customer lifetime value](https://marketoonist.com/2021/06/clv.html) - A recent study from the CMO Council and Deloitte found that only 17% of CMOs track Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) well.
- [the next big thing in marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2021/06/nextbigthing.html) - There’s a perennial search for the next big thing in marketing, which can distract us from getting the basics right and making the most of what's already right in front of us.
- [generational marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2021/06/generational-marketing.html) - Epoch Strategy Director Alex Murrell wrote a fascinating piece a couple years ago on “The Ageism in Advertising” and the knee-jerk way that marketers obsess over younger generations.
- [back to normal](https://marketoonist.com/2021/05/back-to-normal.html) - Last year, Professor Scott Galloway described COVID-19 as “an accelerant” not a “change agent.” As he later expanded: “The pandemic’s most enduring impact will be as an accelerant. While it will initiate some changes and alter the direction of some trends, the pandemic’s primary effect has been to accelerate dynamics already present in society – from e-commerce to online education to remote healthcare.
- [the NFT bandwagon](https://marketoonist.com/2021/05/nft-bandwagon.html) - A couple months after NFTs caught the public imagination with the $69 million auction of a JPEG, it has been fascinating to see how brands have started to jump on the NFT bandwagon.
- [Design Thinking and the Theater of Innovation](https://marketoonist.com/2021/05/designthinkingcartoon.html) - The design thinking methodology, pioneered and evangelized by fabled design firm IDEO, has spread from products to services to just about anything in business.
- [the creative brief gap](https://marketoonist.com/2021/05/creative-brief-gap.html) - In 2015, the ANA surveyed advertisers and agencies to identify problems in the often dysfunctional client/agency relationship. One issue rose to the top — the creative brief.
- [the state of digital advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2021/04/digitaladwaste.html) - Last year PwC investigated where the money goes in digital advertising, at the behest of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA). This wasn’t an easy task, as a single programmatic ad placement can involve 20 different players, each taking a cut.
- [customer experience friction](https://marketoonist.com/2021/04/cx-friction.html) - Market research firm Statista reported that the global shopping cart abandonment rate for online retailers in 2020 was 88%.
- [advertising without cookies](https://marketoonist.com/2021/04/advertising-without-cookies.html) - Adland is counting down to the end of third-party cookies by 2022, which has major implications for marketers.
- [metrics metrics everywhere](https://marketoonist.com/2021/03/metrics-everywhere.html) - I’m struck by an observation this week from Alison Hanrahan, Head of Marketing Performance at HSBC: “As marketers we have to be careful not to settle for campaign metrics … we have to push for business outcomes.”
- [reinventing the marketing 4Ps](https://marketoonist.com/2021/03/reinventing-the-marketing-4ps.html) - There’s a constant tendency in the marketing community to throw out long-established marketing concepts in favor of something new.
- [brands on social media](https://marketoonist.com/2021/03/brands-on-social-media.html) - “Because it’s so new and fresh, brands seemingly have no idea what to look for when it comes to Clubhouse, they just know it’s a significant avenue that they should capitalize on.”
- [brand safety whack-a-mole](https://marketoonist.com/2021/03/brand-safety-whack-a-mole.html) - Rob Rakowitz, former head of media at Mars, once described brand safety as “a constant game of whack-a-mole.”
- [sustainability marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2021/02/sustainability-marketing.html) - EcoVeritas CEO David Harding-Brown recently observed: "Sustainability as an umbrella term is becoming meaningless; a series of macro statements that consumers can no longer relate to or engage with."
- [status quo and resistance to change](https://marketoonist.com/2021/02/status-quo-and-resistance-to-change.html) - If the only constant is change, a close second is the resistance to that change. Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company magazine, once stumbled across an obscure article written by a Product Manager in 1959 entitled “50 Reasons Why We Cannot Change.” The Product Manager, E.F. Borisch, compiled this list while working for the Milwaukee Gear Company, and many of the reasons still resonate as if they were written today:
- [building resilience](https://marketoonist.com/2021/02/building-resilience.html) - There has been renewed emphasis on resilience this last year, which PwC defines as “an organization’s capacity to anticipate and react to change, not only to survive, but also to evolve.”
- [playing it safe](https://marketoonist.com/2021/01/playing-it-safe.html) - Rob Schwartz, CEO of TBWA\Chiat\Day, recently said: “Every client conversation I’ve had these days is about who is going to be offended by this ad. There’s a lot of discussion about risk mitigation. What that tends to do is that it makes things very bland and not effective.”
- [pop-ups and user experience](https://marketoonist.com/2021/01/pop-ups.html) - The web has turned into an obstacle course of pop-ups upon pop-ups. No one likes pop-ups and yet there’s plenty of conversion data that designers can point at to justify them.
- [culture of new ideas](https://marketoonist.com/2021/01/culture-of-new-ideas.html) - I was struck by this recent observation from Timothy Clark in his HBR article on cultivating “Intellectual Bravery”: “Intellectual bravery is a willingness to disagree, dissent, or challenge the status quo in a setting of social risk in which you could be embarrassed, marginalized, or punished in some way. When intellectual bravery disappears, organizations develop patterns of willful blindness. Bureaucracy buries boldness. Efficiency crushes creativity. From there, the status quo calcifies and stagnation sets in."
- [marketing beyond cookies](https://marketoonist.com/2021/01/marketing-beyond-cookies.html) - Marketers are bracing for the “Cookiepocalypse” — when Google Chrome follows up on its promise to cut support for the third-party cookie by 2022.
- [we're going agile](https://marketoonist.com/2021/01/were-going-agile.html) - Next month marks the 20th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto. Twenty years ago, 17 software engineers went skiing in Utah. After bonding over their shared frustrations on the state of software development, they drafted the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.
- [creating personas](https://marketoonist.com/2020/12/creating-personas.html) - Marketers use personas as a tool to try to bring customers into the room — to help organizations be more customer-centric. They’re intended to help with everything from innovation to experience design to marketing and sales.
- [consumer privacy comeback](https://marketoonist.com/2020/12/consumer-privacy.html) - In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg famously said that privacy was no longer a “social norm.” New research this month showed that 94% of consumers are uncomfortable with how their personal data is shared online. Drew MacRae at the Financial Rights Legal Centre, said consumers’ expectations had shifted.
- [brand purpose marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2020/11/brand-purpose-marketing.html) - “If being purposeful means doing ads to you, then you’re probably doing it wrong.” I was struck by this observation from the ever-insightful Tom Roach in his balanced essay exploring whether brand purpose is “the biggest lie the ad industry ever told.”
- [how to do strategic planning](https://marketoonist.com/2020/11/strategic-planning.html) - Traditional strategic planning is often neither “strategic” nor much of a “plan”. It usually resembles a peace treaty more than clear marching orders for an organization. Strategic planning also tends to be out-dated the moment it’s written.
- [branded content](https://marketoonist.com/2014/08/brandedcontent.html) - There has never been a better time to take the stage as a brand and share content with our audience. Every night can be open mic night.
- [lead nurturing isn’t a numbers game](https://marketoonist.com/2020/11/lead-nurturing.html) - Gapingvoid creator Hugh MacLeod once observed, “If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they’d punch you in the face.” Hugh shared this insight years before the marketing automation revolution, but the same could be said for many forms of marketing, now more than ever.
- [CX is more than a department](https://marketoonist.com/2020/11/cx-is-not-a-department.html) - A Capgemini study found that 75% of organizations believed themselves to be customer-centric. Only 30% of customers agreed. The numbers were even more stark for consumer products companies — 80% believed they were were customer-centric and only 14% agreed.
- [changing customer needs](https://marketoonist.com/2020/10/changing-customer-needs.html) - In this time of change, I’ve been thinking about the gap between a desire to change and uncertainty on where or how to change. The pandemic has been a change accelerant, but the path isn’t always clear.
- [product choice overload](https://marketoonist.com/2020/10/product-choice-overload.html) - From data plans to toothpaste to headache medicine, most categories seem to assume that more choice is better than less choice. But if you’re actually a shopper with a headache in a headache medicine aisle, the only thing a complicated product assortment will do is make your headache worse.
- [business as usual](https://marketoonist.com/2020/08/business-as-usual.html) - A Gartner study recently reported that more than half (57%) of CMOs expect to see a return to business as usual in the next 18-24 months. It made me think about what “business as usual” even means right now.
- [big data](https://marketoonist.com/2014/01/big-data.html) - There’s a funny saying circulating with marketers right now on the current state of Big Data: “Big Data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it.”
- [data-driven marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2014/11/data-driven-marketing.html) - Marketing is increasingly “data-driven”. But that doesn’t have to mean “data-blinded”.
- [focus group of one](https://marketoonist.com/2015/06/focus-group-of-one.html) - It’s tempting for marketers to assume we intuitively know what consumers want. After all, we’re consumers too. But listening to the focus group of one inside our heads can lead us astray.
- [data-driven decision making](https://marketoonist.com/2015/08/data-driven.html) - I heard a marketer say recently, “Publishing numbers in a powerpoint deck does not make them true.” We have never had greater access to data to make decisions. But it has also never been easier to cherry pick data to support whatever point we’re trying to make.
- [the marketing toolkit](https://marketoonist.com/2015/10/the-marketing-toolkit.html) - Andrew Maslow said in 1966, "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." This concept of “Maslow’s hammer” means to overly rely on a familiar tool.
- [tracking the customer journey](https://marketoonist.com/2016/07/tracking.html) - There’s a widening gap between how marketers and consumers feel about brands collecting data and tracking customer journeys.
- [advertising metrics](https://marketoonist.com/2016/04/advertising-metrics.html) - When I worked in web marketing in the late nineties, everyone was focused on “eyeballs” - basically counting impressions. Ad inventory was sold on a CPM model. Eyeballs are still commonly cited as the measurable end result of a campaign.
- [marketing ROI](https://marketoonist.com/2016/05/marketing-roi.html) - Marketers are facing increasing pressure to demonstrate ROI, but giving a simple answer to the ROI question still isn’t that simple.
- [campaign performance](https://marketoonist.com/2016/05/campaign-performance.html) - In the vein of last week’s cartoon on ROI, marketers are struggling to prove their digital efforts are working. Advertisers aren’t sure which measurements point to success, often relying on single metrics like the click-through rate.
- [the future of retargeting](https://marketoonist.com/2016/06/retargeting-2.html) - If you think the way that retargeting ads follow consumers around the internet is a little creepy, just wait. Retargeting is only getting warmed up.
- [the customer journey](https://marketoonist.com/2016/09/journey.html) - Marketers have more data at their disposal than ever. But it still feel’s like a giant game of “Where’s Waldo” in determining where customers are in the customer journey. And deciding what messages to share at any point in time.
- [digital marketing metrics](https://marketoonist.com/2016/10/metrics.html) - Marketing is more measurable than ever. But many of those measurements come from black boxes that marketers don’t fully understand.
- [buyer personas and account-based marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2016/12/buyerpersonas.html) - Marketers have more customer insights at their disposal than ever. Buyer Personas can be one useful tool to turn this customer data into a story. They can help capture an abstract target audience as a tangible character sketch.
- [upselling and customer experience](https://marketoonist.com/2017/01/upselling.html) - United recently announced that it’s joining Delta and American in creating a new Basic Economy fare class, one tier below Standard Economy. This no-frills tier cuts a few of the remaining “frills” of Standard Economy, like using the overhead bin and getting an pre-assigned seat..
- [marketing with virtual assistants](https://marketoonist.com/2017/01/virtualassistants.html) - At CES this week, marketers were buzzing about the potential of virtual assistants.
- [customer-centric marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2017/01/customer-centric.html) - “Customer-centric” is frequently claimed by CMO’s to describe their marketing visions. But, like many feel-good marketing buzzwords, “customer-centricity” has lost much of its meaning. Many marketers give it lip service, but there’s not a lot of alignment on how to define it, or where to start.
- [newsletter list growth](https://marketoonist.com/2017/01/newsletter.html) - I’ve never understood web sites that subject visitors to a giant pop-up the moment they arrive demanding their email address. The strong-arm tactic is often used before visitors have even had a chance to read whatever article they came to read.
- [big data promises](https://marketoonist.com/2017/03/bigdata.html) - Many organizations have pursued Big Data as a panacea. For years, there has been an implicit strategy to capture as much data as possible and then figure out what to do with all of it later.
- [The Tension of Data-Driven Creative](https://marketoonist.com/2017/08/data-driven-creative.html) - We need both art and science in marketing — the “MadMen” and “MathMen.” I think the most compelling campaigns of the future will bring together the greatest creativity and the greatest insight informed by data.
- [The Marketing Role and Owning the P&L](https://marketoonist.com/2017/09/owningthepandl.html) - The marketing role is always evolving. Increasingly marketers are taking on P&L responsibility. CMO marketing technology spend is now rivaling CIO technology spend.
- [marketing data and GDPR compliance](https://marketoonist.com/2017/10/gdpr.html) - I just returned from a two week book tour with marketers in the UK and Norway. If there’s one topic that overshadowed most marketing conversations, it’s GDPR.
- [Right Person, Right Message, Right Time](https://marketoonist.com/2017/10/right-person-right-message-right-time.html) - Reaching the right person with the right message at the right time has long been the holy grail of marketing. The technology and data is tantalizingly close, and yet context and intent remain elusive. Personalized marketing is still wasted if it hits the wrong context and intent.
- [5 stages of data privacy grief](https://marketoonist.com/2018/04/dataprivacy.html) - “Hey Ms. Consumer, you get email, search, maps, friendship interaction and voice-activated homes for free! How good is that? Just don’t look at the pipe at the back of your house pumping terabytes of data back to Northern California.” This quote was from a fascinating Mark Ritson editorial a few weeks ago in MarketingWeek. Mark
- [one-to-one personalization](https://marketoonist.com/2019/05/onetoone.html) - Twenty years ago, in early 1999, the HBR published a pioneering article on the future of personalization titled “Is your company ready for one-to-one marketing?”
- [data privacy, consent fatigue, and GDPR](https://marketoonist.com/2019/05/data-privacy-consent-fatigue-and-gdpr.html) - GDPR celebrated its first anniversary this week with a flurry of new data privacy regulations on the way, including the California Consumer Privacy Act, called “GDPR-lite” or “California GDPR.” One year later, the effectiveness of GDPR is debatable, company compliance is confusing and bureaucratic, and consumers are drowning in a tidal wave of privacy pop-up
- [retargeting ads](https://marketoonist.com/2017/12/retargetingads.html) - ’Tis the season for retargeting ads. Major shopping periods spark a surge in campaigns triggered by items consumers browse, place in their carts, or (annoyingly) have already purchased.
- [the personalization gap](https://marketoonist.com/2018/06/personalization-gap.html) - We're in a marketing catch-22. Consumers increasingly demand hyper-personalized experiences but are increasingly reluctant to hand over the data needed to make those experiences personalized.
- [vanity metrics](https://marketoonist.com/2018/07/vanity-metrics.html) - As marketing becomes increasingly data-driven, we have to be careful we’re measuring the right metrics. It’s easy to cultivate a false sense of security looking at rosy marketing dashboards that don’t actually tie to business results.
- [watching the numbers](https://marketoonist.com/2018/08/numbers.html) - Marketers can track business performance more closely than ever before. Reports that used to take weeks or months are now available practically in real-time. All of this can make marketers savvier. Better data can lead to better decision-making. But with noses buried in dashboards, marketers need to be careful not to miss the big picture.
- [marketing automation](https://marketoonist.com/2018/09/marketing-automation.html) - Brands are increasingly adopting marketing automation, with email marketing as the most common application. Marketing automation has great potential to help deliver personalized useful messages to an audience that wants them.
- [360-Degree Customer View](https://marketoonist.com/2018/09/360-degree-customer-view.html) - Gartner recently categorized the buzzword “360-Degree Customer View” on its Hype Cycle and determined that it was at the “peak of inflated expectations.” Marketers everywhere are touting a “360-Degree View” as the holy grail for customer experience. And yet the actual results are mixed.
- [evidence-based marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2018/09/evidence-based-marketing.html) - It can be difficult to separate myth from fact in marketing. There’s a lot of marketing folklore passed on as inherited wisdom. It’s also far too easy to cherry-pick data that supports our pre-existing point of view. And there’s always a shiny new thing that captures everyone’s attention until the next shiny new thing comes along.
- [customer satisfaction survey fatigue](https://marketoonist.com/2018/10/satisfaction.html) - Fred Reichheld is the grandfather of the one-question customer satisfaction survey. In 2003, he famously introduced the concept of the Net Promoter Score with a single question: “how likely are you to recommend X to a friend or colleague?”
- [the marketing dashboard](https://marketoonist.com/2018/11/dashboard.html) - “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” I think this 1963 quote from William Bruce Cameron (often misattributed to Albert Einstein) touches on some of the potential pitfalls of marketing dashboards.
- [customer experience](https://marketoonist.com/2018/11/customer-experience.html) - Singapore Airlines has long been a pioneer in customer experience, not just in airlines, but the hospitality industry in general. They’re investing in taking their customer experience even further, partly with a sophisticated app that tracks granular customer data from check-in, through the flight, to baggage claim.
- [data, privacy, and brand trust](https://marketoonist.com/2018/12/privacy.html) - Last week’s NYT expose into the intimate location data collected and shared by mobile apps (including one app that tracked a user’s location more than 14,000 times a day) is the latest in a constant stream of bombshell data privacy revelations in 2018.
- [smart speakers and voice-driven AI](https://marketoonist.com/2019/04/smartspeakers.html) - Bloomberg reported last week that Amazon employs thousands of workers to listen to voice recordings captured from Echo speakers as part of it’s efforts to improve the performance of Alexa.
- [data-driven marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2019/06/data-driven-marketing-2.html) - “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” Jim Barksdale famously said this as the founding CEO of Netscape in the 90s.
- [a CMO by any other name](https://marketoonist.com/2019/08/cmo.html) - McDonald’s is the latest company to ditch the Chief Marketing Officer role, with news that Silvia Lagnado is leaving the company and her role absorbed by restructuring. The CMO role similarly disappeared in recent years at Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly Clark, Mars Uber, Lyft, Taco Bell, Beam Suntory, Hyatt, and Coca-Cola.
- [always be testing](https://marketoonist.com/2019/10/testing.html) - As marketing evolves, one of the key shifts is the ability to test everything, all the time. Compared to my earliest marketing jobs in the late 90s, the tools of experimentation have been democratized and the cycle time between experiments have disappeared. We can get instant learning on just about any attribute we care to test on just about any aspect of marketing.
- [KPI overload](https://marketoonist.com/2019/11/kpi-overload.html) - We are working in a golden age of metrics. But the explosion in available data and metrics can give us KPI tunnel vision. It can blind businesses to what’s really most important.
- [wearable marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2015/07/wearables.html) - I heard recently that the average person checks their mobile 150 times a day. From a marketer’s perspective, that’s a lot of potential touch points — both in collecting data and in messaging. But it pales in comparison to the staggering world of wearables.
- [omnichannel customer engagement](https://marketoonist.com/2019/11/omnichannel-customer-engagement.html) - Customer engagement is often discussed purely as a technology challenge. If only brands had the right platform, the right tools and the right customer data, they would somehow build deep and meaningful relationships with their customers.
- [the career path](https://marketoonist.com/2003/03/the-career-path.html)
- [psychographic profiling](https://marketoonist.com/2020/10/psychographic-profiling-2.html) - Psychographics are back in the news as part of the US election cycle, four years after the Cambridge Analytica scandal made the term mainstream. This week, CB Insights published a useful primer on psychographics, which they describe as one of the “dark arts” of social media and internet marketing.
- [marketing to generation Z](https://marketoonist.com/2015/03/generation-z.html) - Even as brands continue to chase Millennials, marketers are starting to shift their attention the next generation — Generation Z. Born after 1995, this is a group that grew up in our social, mobile, and digitally-connected world.
- [flipping the script](https://marketoonist.com/2020/09/flipping-the-script.html) - I once heard Hubspot co-founder Dharmesh Shah advise businesses, “Don’t make your process my problem. Solve for my success, not your systems.” Six months into the pandemic, this strikes me as good advice for brands to think about their COVID response as well.
- [flipping the script](https://marketoonist.com/2020/09/flipping-the-script.html) - I once heard Hubspot co-founder Dharmesh Shah advise businesses, “Don’t make your process my problem. Solve for my success, not your systems.” Six months into the pandemic, this strikes me as good advice for brands to think about their COVID response as well.
- [how marketers really come up with their volume forecasts](https://marketoonist.com/2002/11/how-marketers-really-come-up-with-their-volume-forecasts-2.html)
- [why are we meeting?](https://marketoonist.com/2020/01/meeting.html) - David Hieatt recently drafted a few internal principles he uses to create a culture of “Deep Work” at his company, Hiut Denim. The idea of Deep Work was famously coined by Cal Newport. Number one on David's list is: “Protect you from meetings.”
- [meetings, meetings, meetings](https://marketoonist.com/2017/05/meetings.html) - I once heard Seth Godin give a talk to a group of marketers in London. After this session, someone asked his secret to being so productive. Seth not only publishes books and starts ventures, he famously finds the time to reply personally to every single email he receives. Seth replied simply, “I don’t watch TV and I don’t go to meetings.”
- [zoom fatigue](https://marketoonist.com/2020/06/zoom.html) - “Zoom fatigue has me wanting a landline and a rotary phone,” Tammy Sun, Founder and CEO of Carrot, shared recently. Tammy spends 9 out of every 10 conversations on Zoom, 6 days a week.
- [idea killer org chart](https://marketoonist.com/2012/02/orgchart.html)
- [what is digital transformation?](https://marketoonist.com/2020/02/digitaltransformationmeaning.html) - A recent report found that 94% of businesses said that digital transformation was high on their list of priorities and 51% said they’re moving on these priorities in the next month. Yet a separate YouGov study found that 54% of employees either don’t understand (20%) or misinterpret (34%) the meaning of digital transformation.
- [we're going digital](https://marketoonist.com/2012/04/going-digital.html) - Should campaigns be media-driven or idea-driven? Lately, it feels like the media tail is wagging the campaign dog. Many campaigns are built around a media platform, as if the media platform alone was the big idea. Most of the Foursquare campaigns I see feel like that. Sometimes marketers forget that media platforms are enablers to big ideas. They aren't the big ideas themselves. The media channels developing today are
- [Artificial Intelligence Hype](https://marketoonist.com/2017/09/ai.html) - Marketers are increasingly excited about the potential of AI. L’Oréal chief digital officer Lubomira Rochet described a commonly shared sentiment:
- [shiny object syndrome](https://marketoonist.com/2015/01/shinyobject.html) - Marketers love chasing the shiny new thing. It seems like every week, we learn about a new technology, social network, or media platform that promises to be the next big idea in marketing.
- [safe is risky](https://marketoonist.com/2014/07/safe-is-risky.html) - Organizations can spot the risks of a new idea a mile away. But there’s a curious blind spot when it comes to the risks of not taking those risks. The path of least resistance is to play it safe and keep the idea as close to the tried-and-true as possible. We just need to ask Polaroid how that strategy works in the long run.
- [how not to communicate right now](https://marketoonist.com/2020/03/communicate.html) - Brands are judged less by how they operate when things go right, than by how they handle situations when things go wrong.
- [marketing is more than communication](https://marketoonist.com/2020/04/communication.html) - In any crisis that impacts cash flow, one of the first reactions of a business is often to cut the marketing budget. That can leave marketers scrambling with how to do their jobs with less.
- [customer experience](https://marketoonist.com/2019/01/customerexperience.html) - Whenever I’m in the midst of a frustrating customer service exchange, I find myself reaching for a sketch pad. Last week it was Nespresso, but I think what happened is commonplace and illustrates some of where customer experience frequently falls short.
- [the marketing tech stack](https://marketoonist.com/2019/03/the-marketing-tech-stack.html) - According to Gartner, marketing technology now accounts for 29% of the total marketing budget. That’s currently the single largest area of marketing investment, greater than talent (24%), paid media (23%), and agencies (23%).
- [the blockchain bandwagon](https://marketoonist.com/2018/01/blockchain.html) - A few weeks ago, a publicly traded beverage company called Long Island Iced Tea Corp changed it’s name to Long Blockchain and announced that it was focusing on blockchain technology. Their stock surged 200% on the news.
- [marketing predictions](https://marketoonist.com/2019/01/marketing-predictions.html) - This time of year, we marketers love to make bold predictions about the year ahead. We are perennially excited about the shiny new thing.
- [digital transformation](https://marketoonist.com/2018/10/transformation.html) - “Technology changes exponentially; organizations change logarithmically.” Scott Brinker described this observation as “Martec’s Law” five years ago, but I think the same can be said beyond the world of marketing technology to digital transformation in general.
- [long live marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2019/12/longlive.html) - As we transition to a new decade in marketing, it can seem like everything is up for grabs. Long-established marketing concepts are continually challenged. There’s a lot of pressure to throw out the old and jump on to the new.
- [how to unsubscribe from a marketing newsletter](https://marketoonist.com/2019/09/marketingnewsletter.html) - I’ve never understood why so many brands turn the choice of unsubscribing from their newsletter into a negative brand experience. Or why purchasing a t-shirt means that the retailer assumes you want to hear from them 5 times a week for the rest of your life.
- [the new normal](https://marketoonist.com/2020/05/newnormal.html) - A cafe in northeast Germany implemented a quirky new policy to encourage physical distancing as they re-open. Cafe & Konditorei Rothe is asking customers to put on colorful hats made out of swimming pool noodles that stick out several feet in all directions.
- [digital transformation and organizational change](https://marketoonist.com/2020/04/digital-transformation-2.html) - There’s a funny image circulating right now of a survey that asks, “Who led the digital transformation of your company? A) CEO B) CTO C) COVID-19.” COVID-19 is circled. COVID-19 is accelerating digital transformation at many companies, knocking through long-standing resistance and silos. As ITWC CIO Jim Love noted, “Sometimes it takes a crisis to turn people’s mindsets around.”
- [innovation that lays the golden eggs](https://marketoonist.com/2011/05/innovation-that-lays-the-golden-eggs.html) - There is an inevitable friction in bringing ideas to life within a company. That friction can polish an idea and make it stronger, sand the edges of the idea and make it weaker, or kill the idea altogether. Anyone who works in innovation is familiar with that tension. Navigating it is part of what makes
- [sales impact of advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2020/09/salesimpact.html) - Lately I’ve been re-reading David Ogilvy’s 1983 classic, “Ogilvy on Advertising” to see how much has changed — and how much has remained the same — in advertising over the years. One constant is the challenge of how to measure sales impact in advertising, and the tension of long-term brand building versus short-term direct response.
- [the productivity trap](https://marketoonist.com/2020/09/the-productivity-trap.html) - A recent survey from Blind found that 83% of marketing and communications professionals are reporting burnout, the highest of any job function. There are likely many factors at play, but I wonder how much of this burnout relates to productivity anxiety, the pressure to be busy, and the hustle culture in business.
- [rise of the customer service bots](https://marketoonist.com/2020/08/customer-service-bots.html) - This cartoon is dedicated to Comcast, the most recent company to show me how far we have to go before we reach conversational AI that can come close to a human voice.
- [evolution of digital transformation](https://marketoonist.com/2020/08/evolution-of-digital-transformation.html) - We are never finished with digital transformation.
- [the pace of change](https://marketoonist.com/2020/08/paceofchange.html) - “The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again,” Justin Trudeau famously said in his 2018 speech at Davos. Of course that was two years before COVID-19 changed and accelerated everyone’s plans beyond recognition.
- [From Brand Safety to Brand Suitability](https://marketoonist.com/2020/08/brandsuitability.html) - Brand safety has been high on marketers’ agendas since the 2017 YouTube crisis, when some advertisers found their ads next to terrorist videos. Yet the blunt tool response that followed has brought its own problems. Many brands started addressing brand safety with overly broad keyword blocklists that can penalize legitimate content and make it harder to find audiences, limiting reach and engagement.
- [customer experience management](https://marketoonist.com/2020/07/cx.html) - COVID-19 is drawing fresh attention to the promise of customer experience management (and all its ancillary marketing buzzwords shown in this cartoon). Yet there’s still a yawning gap between the shiny promise of technology to deliver a better customer experience and the old-fashioned analog organizational limitations that hold back that potential.
- [the value proposition and lessons from higher education](https://marketoonist.com/2020/07/valueprop.html) - “Universities are no longer nonprofits, but the highest-gross-margin luxury brands in the world,” NYU Professor Scott Galloway wrote recently. Professor Galloway has been exploring the crisis of higher education in the U.S. lately, accelerated by the pandemic. Of all the wrecking ball implications of Covid-19 on brands, the impact on higher education is one of the most dramatic. And as with other industries, it’s less of a new problem, than an acceleration of problems already under way.
- [facebook ad boycott and 10+ years of facebook cartoons](https://marketoonist.com/2020/07/facebookboycott.html) - “The way you allocate your media spend, where you put your ads, talks about your company. We moved from brand safety to, I think, societal safety.” This is the perspective of Stephan Loerke, CEO of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), in response to the growing Facebook ad boycott by big brands.
- [strategic options in a recession](https://marketoonist.com/2020/06/recession.html) - “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” This was Mike Tyson’s famous response when asked by a reporter if he was worried about Evander Holyfield’s boxing fight plan. I think it also applies to the best laid 2020 strategic marketing plans.
- [Brands, Hashtag Activism, and a Time for Real Reflection](https://marketoonist.com/2020/06/hashtagactivism.html) - ”Now is not the time to be silent, neither is it the time to jump on a bandwagon. It’s a time for real reflection and care with regards to how a brand and its leaders stand by the black community at this time and move forward with real steps to end racism and injustice globally and not only on the streets but in their organizations too.” - Cephas Williams, founder of 56 Black Men
- [communicating in a crisis](https://marketoonist.com/2020/05/communicating-in-a-crisis.html) - Brené Brown once gave a talk that explained the difference between empathy and sympathy: “Empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection … Empathy is I’m feeling with you. Sympathy, I’m feeling for you.”
- [resilience and change](https://marketoonist.com/2020/05/resilience.html) - I’ve been thinking lately about Scott Brinker’s observation back in 2013 that “technology changes exponentially, organizations change logarithmically.”
- [generic advertising "in these uncertain times"](https://marketoonist.com/2020/05/genericadvertising.html) - Someone named Microsoft Sam recently compiled a selection of current advertisements into one three-minute montage titled: “Every Covid-19 Commercial is Exactly the Same.” The video highlights eerily similar copy, music, and visuals across all the ads, spanning automotive to tech to retail.
- [our brand promise](https://marketoonist.com/2020/04/brandpromise.html) - Supply chain software firm BlueYonder recently found that 87% of consumers faced out-of-stocks at their grocery store. A related survey from eMeals reported that shoppers are unable to find 40% of grocery items on their shopping lists.
- [urgency without clarity on digital transformation](https://marketoonist.com/2020/04/transformationclarity.html) - My cartoon last week on the COVID-19 digital transformation wrecking ball seems to have touched a nerve. That cartoon was shared and licensed more than just about any cartoon I’ve created in the last 18 years (nearly as widely as this other cartoon I drew on digital transformation in 2018).
- [we're all aligned](https://marketoonist.com/2017/12/were-all-aligned.html)
- [decision paralysis](https://marketoonist.com/2020/03/decision-paralysis.html) - I recently stumbled across the old cliche adage attributed to Cicero: “More is lost by indecision than wrong decision.” Every business is being asked to make decisions with incomplete information right now. What limited information we do have can change quickly. There’s often no clear right call in such a climate of uncertainty. And so, the default decision is no decision at all. That’s the path of least resistance.
- [virtual collaboration](https://marketoonist.com/2020/03/collaboration-2.html) - Team collaboration can be tricky in the best of times, but it will be interested to navigate how completely virtual meetings will test this further — particularly when we add strained WiFi, the learning curve of more people learning new videoconferencing tools, and trying to juggle kids in the background.
- [managing uncertainty](https://marketoonist.com/2020/03/uncertainty.html) - “The worst thing to do in a time of chaos is add to it.” I found this quote from an article from Ogilvy on British brands reacting to the Brexit vote a few years ago. While Brexit isn’t a good corollary for what is happening now, I was reminded by this quote that we will periodically have to navigate times of extreme uncertainty. Every period of uncertainty is unique. But I find it helpful to remember that this too shall pass.
- [customer-centric culture](https://marketoonist.com/2020/03/customer-centric-culture.html) - Many companies pay lip service to being customer-centric, but don’t actually put it into practice. When used primarily as a buzzword, it’s no surprise the results are only buzzword-deep. The CMO Council found that “only 14 percent of marketers would say that customer-centricity is a hallmark of their companies, and only 11 percent believe their customers would agree with that characterization.”
- [7 types of LinkedIn requests](https://marketoonist.com/2020/02/linkedinrequests.html) - “It’s too bad most people only think about their network when they need something from it.” I heard this years ago from branding adviser Denise Lee Yohn and it stuck with me.
- [Advertising in the Super Bowl](https://marketoonist.com/2020/02/superbowlad.html) - The Super Bowl is the world’s biggest marketing stage, so it’s always educational to see how brands place their bets.
- [customer satisfaction metrics](https://marketoonist.com/2020/01/customer-satisfaction-metrics.html) - Net Promoter Score is the mother of all customer satisfaction metrics. Created by Bain partner Fred Reichland 16 years ago, NPS is the two-digit number generated by the ubiquitous one-question survey that now seems to trail just about every customer interaction — “How likely are you to recommend this brand to your friends and family?”
- [Smart Devices and 5G](https://marketoonist.com/2020/01/smart.html) - A French entrepreneur named Nicholas Baldeck pranked CES 2020 last week by debuting the “World’s First Smart Potato” at an actual CES booth.
- [peak brand purpose](https://marketoonist.com/2020/01/peak-brand-purpose.html) - I was struck by a recent editorial from Russell Parsons on “peak brand purpose”, which he linked to a crisis of confidence in marketing as a discipline.
- [the island of misfit innovation](https://marketoonist.com/2019/12/misfits.html) - Every business has their own island of misfits — innovations that failed to make it. Most companies treat these misfits the same way as the Rudolph special, by sequestering them on an island somewhere out of sight and not talking about them. When we don’t talk about our misfits and flops, we don’t learn from them, or we take the wrong lessons.
- [holiday deal creep](https://marketoonist.com/2019/12/holiday-deal-creep.html) - Black Friday has long shed its American Thanksgiving roots, spreading around the world, spanning more of the calendar, and pulling in more brands and retailers. Black Friday has morphed into Black November and Cyber Monday has expanded into Cyber Week.
- [brand trust](https://marketoonist.com/2019/11/brand-trust.html) - Salesforce CMO Stephanie Buscemi recently observed, “customers are in the midst of a trust crisis.” Citing a Salesforce study, she said “54% of customers don’t think companies operate with their best interests in mind.”
- [innovation and risk](https://marketoonist.com/2019/10/innovation-and-risk.html) - Organizations give mixed signals with innovation. There is constant pressure to come up with breakthrough new ideas. And there is simultaneous resistance to the risks associated with ideas that are breakthrough. It’s an innovation catch-22.
- [four horsemen of the brainstorm](https://marketoonist.com/2019/10/brainstorm.html) - I recently rediscovered a beautiful quote from Jonathan Ive on the fragility of ideas. This was part of the tribute he delivered at Steve Jobs’ 2011 memorial:
- [push notification overload](https://marketoonist.com/2019/09/push.html) - According to an Appiterate survey, 71% of all app uninstalls are triggered by a push notification. And eMarketer found that the top reason (57%) US smartphone users unsubscribe from a brand’s mobile messaging is “too many messages or updates.”
- [evolution of new products](https://marketoonist.com/2019/09/newproducts.html) - “Apple delivered exactly the iPhones everyone expected on Tuesday — and that's kind of the problem. Instead of "one more thing," Apple's event was more like none more thing,” Axios reported earlier this month after Apple’s latest new product event. The most talked-about new iPhone feature was a camera system with three cameras. Samsung launched a product with four cameras earlier this year.
- [the state of e-commerce](https://marketoonist.com/2019/09/e-commerce.html) - This cartoon idea was suggested by Brian Fung, reacting to some interesting Google research on how even a one-second delay affects bounce rates. Google found that as page load time goes from 1s to 3s, the probability of bounce increases 32%. As it goes from 1s to 5s, the probability of bounce increases 90%.
- [talking about sustainability](https://marketoonist.com/2019/08/sustainability.html) - Consumers increasingly look for sustainability credentials in the brands they buy. And yet, whenever brands talk about sustainability, consumers are increasingly sensitive to green-washing and hypocrisy.
- [diversity and inclusion](https://marketoonist.com/2018/08/diversity.html)
- [Fix it in Post](https://marketoonist.com/2019/08/post.html) - In an advertising shoot, we often hear someone say, “we’ll fix it in post”. It can be comforting to hear (particularly at the end of a long day), but it’s often a cop out.
- [marketing effectiveness](https://marketoonist.com/2019/07/marketing-automation-2.html) - Cheryl Calverley, CMO at UK mattress brand Eve Sleep recently observed: “We’ve reached peak performance optimization. Everyone has piled in and done the easy stuff in digital marketing … so we come back round in a circle. The only way to stand out from the crowd is creative.”
- [sonic branding](https://marketoonist.com/2019/07/audio-branding.html) - Brand style guides are traditionally visual. When brand interactions are increasingly screenless, how do brands stand out? How do brands show their identity in a world of sound?
- [advertising production](https://marketoonist.com/2019/06/advertising-production.html) - After my Cannes cartoon a couple weeks ago, I heard a lot of crazy stories on how the sausage gets made in the world of advertising. This week’s cartoon was inspired by an anecdote a reader named Mark shared with me about filming in Fiji.
- [cannes and the marketing echo chamber](https://marketoonist.com/2019/06/cannes.html) - Marketers descend this week on the French Riviera for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Like SXSW and other ideas festivals, it can be inspiring to see some of the most creative work from our industry.
- [silo mentality](https://marketoonist.com/2019/06/silo-mentality.html) - I originally drew a version of this cartoon back in 2003 and I decided to redraw it from scratch in color. 16 years later, it’s still one of my more frequently licensed cartoons. I think that speaks to the ever-present challenge of breaking out of organizational silos.
- [5 stages of digital transformation](https://marketoonist.com/2019/05/5-stages-of-digital-transformation.html) - Forrester reported last year that “firms think they are transforming, but many don’t realize that transformation will be a permanent state of being.”
- [too many cooks in the creative review](https://marketoonist.com/2019/05/toomanycooks.html) - I wrote recently about about lackluster creative briefs as a leading cause of lackluster creative. Another common factor is the lackluster creative review.
- [podcasts, podcasts, podcasts](https://marketoonist.com/2019/04/podcasts.html) - “In a world where more podcasts are being released than anyone can listen to in a lifetime, the content needs to be highly compelling to attract and retain listeners.” This was a recent observation from Alex White, VP of content at Pandora.
- [creative briefs and talking like a human](https://marketoonist.com/2019/04/human.html) - I recently started helping out with a Stanford Business School course called “Serious Business”, which is teaching students about the power of humor in work. I came across the curriculum while researching my TED Salon talk on humor last fall, and the professors kindly invited me to be their cartoonist-in-residence.
- [wannabe influencer marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2019/04/wannabe.html) - Recently the owner of a small hotel in the Philippines called White Banana grew frustrated by the constant stream of requests he received from “wannabe influencers”, each one trying to score a free vacation in return for Instagram posts.
- [tiktok and the next big thing](https://marketoonist.com/2019/03/tiktok.html) - Here we go again. Marketers are circling around a hot new social media property heralded to be the next big thing. One representative headline — “Brands not on TikTok in 2019 will be left behind.”
- [innovation myopia](https://marketoonist.com/2019/03/one-more-thing.html) - Apple has used “one more thing…” as a closing catchphrase off and on since 1998. Steve Jobs would pretend the event was over, start leaving the stage, and then would say “one more thing” before revealing some magical new innovation. Tim Cook said it most recently with the launch of the Apple Watch in 2014.
- [personal branding](https://marketoonist.com/2019/03/personal-branding.html) - As the marketing saying goes, “brands want to be people and people want to be brands.”
- [cost-cutting and zero-based budgeting](https://marketoonist.com/2019/02/zbb.html) - As the old maxim goes, you can’t cut your way to growth.
- [7 types of marketing personas](https://marketoonist.com/2019/02/marketingpersonas.html) - Marketing personas sometimes say more about the marketing team than about the customer.
- [brand social purpose](https://marketoonist.com/2019/02/brand-social-purpose.html) - Sometimes we marketers can climb so far up the brand ladder from functional benefits to emotional benefits to social benefits, we can lose touch with why people are buying our products in the first place.
- [what goes in an ad](https://marketoonist.com/2019/02/what-goes-in-an-ad.html) - After serious political forays in 2017 and 2018, ads are focused much more on levity in this year’s Super Bowl.
- [state of user experience design](https://marketoonist.com/2019/01/state-of-ux-design.html) - User experience design often loses sight of the actual user. When sites optimize so much for the behavior that it wants to influence next (collecting an email address, moving people into a funnel), the reason that people come to the site in the first place can get overlooked (or buried under pop-ups).
- [TED talk on the Power of Laughing at Ourselves](https://marketoonist.com/2018/12/ted.html) - I spoke at the TED headquarters in New York on how humor can be a vehicle to talk about things that are otherwise hard to talk about. At work, humor is often overlooked or discouraged, but it can be one of the most powerful communication tools. Humor brings people a sense of belonging, humor is disarming, and humor lets us be vulnerable.
- [aging in advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2018/12/aging.html) - Baby Boomers control 70% of disposable income in the US, spend close to 50% of consumer products dollars, and have greater buying power in 119 of the top 123 CPG categories. Yet, only 5% of advertising dollars are directed at them.
- [voice of the customer](https://marketoonist.com/2018/12/voice.html) - A couple months ago, I cartooned about customer survey fatigue and the barrage of satisfaction surveys for every minor brand interaction.
- [black friday & holiday shopping](https://marketoonist.com/2018/11/blackfriday.html) - Black Friday continued to creep into a whole booming Cyber Week this year, setting shopping records and reflecting a spike in mobile commerce. According to Adobe Analytics, online shopping on Thanksgiving Day was up 28% over last year (the fastest-growing day for e-commerce sales in history). Smartphone drove a majority of the traffic (54%) and over a third of the revenue (37%). Thanksgiving day was also the first day in 2018 to gain $1 billion in sales from smartphones.
- [the marketing ivory tower trap](https://marketoonist.com/2018/10/ivorytower.html) - As marketers, it’s easy to lose touch with what consumers and customers actually experience with our brands. In the bubble of our marketing offices, writing strategy decks and brand architecture documents, we sometimes over-inflate the role our brands play in peoples’ lives.
- [the silo mentality](https://marketoonist.com/2018/09/the-silo-mentality.html) - In 1988, a Goodyear manager named Phil Ensor first coined the phrase “Functional Silo Syndrome” to describe organizational structure. He was inspired by the grain silos of his native rural Illinois, which reminded him of how departments, divisions, and geographies so often work in business — fragmented, insular, and sequestered.
- [digital transformation](https://marketoonist.com/2018/09/digital-transformation.html) - Forrester found that 56% of companies have official digital transformation projects underway. They also found that “many don’t realize that transformation will be a permanent state of being” and that 21% of businesses think they are “finished” with digital transformation.
- [how to rebrand](https://marketoonist.com/2018/08/how-to-rebrand.html) - Burberry announced a new visual identity a few weeks ago. After only a 4-week design process, they dramatically shed 162 years of brand heritage for something entirely new, which they unveiled on Instagram.
- [fake influence and authenticity](https://marketoonist.com/2018/08/fake-influence.html) - A few months ago, Unilever CMO Keith Weed raised an alarm on the state of influencer marketing. In particular, he went after the widespread practice of influencers who buy fake followers and use bots to juice engagement.
- [the ROI of marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2018/08/roiofmarketing.html) - CMOs and CFOs often speak completely different languages. This can create a lack of understanding and appreciation for the role and impact of marketing on the business. Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar calls this the “existential crisis of the CMO.” He says it’s essential for marketers to think and talk more like business managers than communications
- [lifestyle brands](https://marketoonist.com/2018/07/lifestyle-brands.html) - Creating a lifestyle brand is catnip to marketers. Many brand teams find it irresistible to try to elevate and stretch their brands as far as they will go, occasionally losing sight of their actual consumer needs in the process.
- [innovation dreamers, realists, and spoilers](https://marketoonist.com/2018/07/innovationmindsets.html) - “In most organizations, innovation isn’t hampered by a lack of ideas, but rather a lack of noticing the good ideas already there. It’s not an idea problem; it’s a recognition problem.”
- [how to define your brand positioning](https://marketoonist.com/2018/07/positioning.html) - A clear, concise positioning statement is the starting point of branding and marketing. It creates consistency when consumers see an ad, pick up a product, talk to a salesperson, or visit a store.
- [marketing short-termism](https://marketoonist.com/2018/06/short-termism.html) - Marketing for the long-term and the short-term is a constant balancing act. Pressure to show immediate results can lead marketers to focus on quick-hit sales conversation tactics, which can look good temporarily in marketing dashboards, but are far less effective in the long-run.
- [shifting priorities and digital transformation](https://marketoonist.com/2018/05/priorities.html) - We’re all working in a time of perennial change. Marketing priorities are frequently a moving target. This climate can create a sort of organizational Attention-Deficit Disorder. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the push toward digital transformation.
- [being agile](https://marketoonist.com/2018/05/being-agile.html) - “The word ‘agile’ as been subverted to the point where it is effectively meaningless,” wrote Dave Thomas, one of the 17 original signers of the Agile Manifesto.
- [brand standing](https://marketoonist.com/2018/05/stand.html) - Sprout Social released a survey that concluded two-thirds of consumers say its important for brands to take a stand on social or political issues.
- [influencer fatigue](https://marketoonist.com/2018/05/influencerfatigue.html) - Gartner L2 recently reported that 70% of brands across industries worked with influencers on Instagram in 2017. Influencer marketing is projected to become a $5 to $10 billion market in the next 5 years.
- [innovation risk](https://marketoonist.com/2018/04/innovationrisk.html) - New ideas inherently carry risk. And there's often friction between the risk profiles of our ideas and the risk tolerances of our organization. How we navigate and manage that friction impacts what, if anything, makes it through the gauntlet of the innovation process.
- [marketing at the point of sale](https://marketoonist.com/2018/04/pointofsale.html) - “You go to the drug store now, you buy one or two things, you get a receipt that’s like a Miss America sash,” Jimmy Kimmel joked a couple years ago. E-receipts may be on the rise, but many retailers are still cranking out massive paper receipts at the till.
- [product proliferation](https://marketoonist.com/2018/04/proliferation.html) - In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to Apple and increasingly grew frustrated by all of the product complexity he saw at review meetings. He famously shouted “Stop! This is crazy” and drew a two-by-two grid on the whiteboard. At the top of the two columns, he wrote “Consumer” and “Professional” and to the left of the two rows he wrote “Desktop” and “Portable”. He told his team to focus on those 4 product areas only (iMac, PowerMac G3, iBook, PowerBook G3) and to cancel everything else.
- [personal data and terms of service](https://marketoonist.com/2018/03/terms.html) - A few years ago, a security expert named Mikko Hyppönen set up free WiFi hotspots in the center of London. As part of the “terms of service,” Mikko put in a “Herod clause”. In exchange for WiFi, “the recipient agreed to assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity”.
- [mapping the customer journey](https://marketoonist.com/2018/03/customerjourney.html) - “Our customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.” Jeff Bezos said in a Fast Company interview about Amazon last year.
- [influencer marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2018/03/influencer-marketing.html) - There’s an influencer marketing land grab underway. Influencer posts on Instagram alone nearly doubled between 2016 and 2017. That spike was even before January’s Facebook news feed announcement.
- [what makes a food natural](https://marketoonist.com/2018/02/natural.html) - It’s a tricky time to be a food marketer — navigating the Wild West of consumer expectations and unregulated food claims like “natural.”
- [the art of project management](https://marketoonist.com/2018/02/project.html) - In February 2001, a group of renegade software engineers gathered at a ski resort in Snowbird, Utah and famously wrote the Agile Manifesto. They called into question the whole traditional Waterfall approach to product development and project management.
- [the future of e-commerce](https://marketoonist.com/2018/02/ecommerce.html) - Voice is starting to redefine how consumers buy brands. Brands will increasingly have to navigate a world that doesn’t have a traditional user interface — zero UI.
- [super bowl advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2018/02/super-bowl-ads.html) - 64% of Super Bowl viewers are unable to connect a memorable ad to the brand it was advertising, according to research from research consultancy Communicus. They also found less than 20% of Super Bowl ads produce significant impact on the brand.
- [facebook news feed](https://marketoonist.com/2018/01/facebook-news-feed.html) - Marketers are scrambling to figure out the implications of Facebook’s announcement in early January that it will overhaul its news feed.
- [whack-an-idea](https://marketoonist.com/2018/01/whack.html) - I first played around with this cartoon idea nearly a decade ago and decided to redraw for a conference in Amsterdam last week. Organizations are designed to minimized risk. It’s in their DNA. Organizations develop all sorts of antibodies to neutralize threats to the status quo. A natural byproduct is that it can be hard
- [culture of innovation](https://marketoonist.com/2018/01/culture-of-innovation.html) - I’m giving a talk this week in Amsterdam about building a culture of innovation and I stumbled across a recent innovation report from Capgemini that I found interesting.
- [retail in the age of amazon](https://marketoonist.com/2017/12/retail-amazon.html) - “In the age of Amazon, retailers must leverage assets that Bezos doesn’t have: When Amazon zigs, retails must zag.”
- [customer-centric](https://marketoonist.com/2017/12/centric.html) - “There is a lot of talk about creating customer-centric organizations but not nearly enough action," a recent Forrester report said.
- [client-agency relationships](https://marketoonist.com/2015/04/client-agency.html) - I’ve worked on both sides of the client-agency fence and have seen the power of deeply collaborative relationships between brands and their creative partners. Mutual respect and trust leads to more engaging work.
- [machine learning](https://marketoonist.com/2017/11/machine-learning.html) - Farhad Manjoo, technology columnist for the New York Times, went to the Google I/O conference earlier this year and joked, “I have been counting occurrences of the phrase ‘now, we use machine learning’ and I got to 70 trillion.’”
- [the evolution of advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2017/11/evolution-of-advertising.html) - A few weeks ago, I drew a cartoon on the Future of Advertising, imagining increasingly invasive advertising in our homes, thanks to technology and IOT. The cartoon seemed to strike a chord, and even popped up in the Wall Street Journal.
- [trying to appeal to millennials](https://marketoonist.com/2017/11/millennials.html) - Marketers often fall into the trap of treating generations as monoliths. “How to Appeal to Millennials” has appeared on many a conference agenda and marketing plan, often accompanied by a stereotypical checklist of what defines a millennial mindset and what it takes for brands to resonate with them.
- [the large print giveth, the small print taketh away](https://marketoonist.com/2013/06/largeprint.html)
- [the future of advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2017/11/futureofadvertising.html) - The 2002 movie “Minority Report” portrayed a futuristic vision of advertising as the lead character, John Anderton, enters a shopping mall that identifies him from retina scans and pitches personalized ads to him as he walks by: “John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right about now.” That scene influenced a generation of marketers.
- [Social Media R.O.I.](https://marketoonist.com/2016/10/social-media-roi-2.html)
- [designing by committee](https://marketoonist.com/2017/10/committee.html) - Sir Alec Issigonis, designer of the original Mini in 1959, famously said, “a horse is a camel designed by committee.”
- [New Book Launch and 15 Years of Marketoons](https://marketoonist.com/2017/10/your-ad-ignored-here.html) - My new book collection has launched — "Your Ad Ignored Here: Cartoons from 15 Years of Marketing, Business, and Doodling in Meetings." You can find more detail on the book and where to buy it here.
- [Presenting your Ideas](https://marketoonist.com/2017/10/presenting-your-ideas.html) - Presenters often apologetically refer to overly busy slides in their presentations as “eye charts”. If you ever feel compelled on-stage to apologize for showing an “eye chart”, that’s a good sign to rework your slides.
- [How to Write a PowerPoint Pitch](https://marketoonist.com/2017/09/powerpointpitch.html) - The surest way to stifle an idea is to write a longwinded presentation deck about it. PowerPoint, Keynote, and Prezi are powerful tools, but the power comes in how they’re used. A weighty presentation deck can get in the way of the idea itself.
- [marketing attribution](https://marketoonist.com/2017/07/attribution-2.html)
- [7 Deadly Sins of Innovation](https://marketoonist.com/2017/09/7-deadly-sins-of-innovation.html) - One of the easiest ways to gauge the culture of innovative in an organization is to see how that organization deals with failure. If unchecked, failure carries a stigma that can paralyze companies from trying new things.
- [How to Write a Creative Brief](https://marketoonist.com/2017/08/how-to-write-a-creative-brief.html) - Marketing creative can only be as good as the creative brief that went into it. Yet creative briefs are often one of the more overlooked parts of the creative process. Creative briefs are frequently neither creative nor brief.
- [snackable content](https://marketoonist.com/2017/08/snackable-content.html) - Havas Media recently reported that 60% of content created by the world’s leading 1,500 brands is “just clutter,” defined as “poor, irrelevant or fails to deliver.”
- [the problem with focus groups](https://marketoonist.com/2017/07/focusgroups.html) - “The correlation between stated intent and actual behavior is usually low and negative,” HBS Professor Gerald Zaltman wrote in his classic textbook, How Customers Think.
- [brand love](https://marketoonist.com/2017/07/brandlove.html) - Marketing is full of myths, anecdotes, and long-held beliefs of what drives growth. I think part of our job as marketers is to continually question these assumptions.
- [marketing procurement](https://marketoonist.com/2017/07/procurement.html) - In my marketing career, I’ve worked on both sides of the client-agency relationship. I’ve experienced genuine strategic partnerships where the resulting work was greater than the sum of its parts and I’ve experienced dysfunctional alliances that were transactional and even combative.
- [unsung advertising awards](https://marketoonist.com/2017/07/adawards.html) - I love this statement from David Droga as he accepted Lifetime Achievement recognition at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity a week or so ago:
- [extreme market research](https://marketoonist.com/2017/06/extrememarketresearch.html) - I first drew a version of this cartoon years ago sitting for hours behind the focus group one-way mirror while working at General Mills. We held a lot of focus groups, many of them in a Minneapolis suburb called Eden Prairie. We used to jokingly refer to those focus group respondents as “The Oracles of Eden Prairie.”
- [8 types of annoying ads](https://marketoonist.com/2017/06/annoying-ads.html) - When digital advertising first emerged, technology seemingly offered a utopian future for marketers — the ability to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. Marketers talked about an eventual end to one-size-fits-all advertising seen as irrelevant, interruptive, and annoying.
- [targeting generation z](https://marketoonist.com/2017/06/genz.html) - After a decade of Millennial obsession, the marketing world is increasingly buzzing about the next generation around the corner — Generation Z.
- [the emperor's new marketing plan](https://marketoonist.com/2017/05/emperor.html) - In these fast-paced days of digital marketing, there’s a continuous stream of new technologies for marketers to get excited about.
- [chatbots and the future of customer experience](https://marketoonist.com/2017/05/chatbots.html) - I spoke at a conference last week called MarTech, which focuses on the intersection of marketing and technology. One of their founding insights is that technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically.
- [bringing ideas to life](https://marketoonist.com/2017/04/ideastolife.html) - Bringing ideas to life in an organization can be a bumpy ride. We're all familiar with the myth of Isaac Newton sitting under the apple tree, waiting for inspiration to fall on his head. Newton's apple is one of the more common symbols of innovation, right up there with Archimedes shouting Eureka from his bathtub. Metaphorically, that's what we do when go to a brainstorming meeting to come up with new ideas. If the conditions are right, and the coffee strong enough, the next great idea just might fall on our heads.
- [social media monitoring](https://marketoonist.com/2011/11/social-media-monitoring.html) - This cartoon is part of a series I developed with Motista to parody the state of traditional market research. Motista is giving away a signed print of this cartoon to the first five readers who share a comment or suggest a cartoon idea at the Motista blog.
- [8 Types of Corporate Apologies](https://marketoonist.com/2017/04/corporateapologies.html) - When last month’s “Communicator of the Year” can turn into this month’s PR disaster, there’s a lesson for any brand on the perils of flubbing a corporate apology. Any brand can go from hero to zero.
- [brand onion](https://marketoonist.com/2007/06/brand-onion.html)
- [digital natives](https://marketoonist.com/2017/04/digital-natives.html) - I was struck by a recent Marketing Week poll that 65% “believe older marketers are being edged out by digital natives in the job market.”
- [native advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2017/04/native-ad.html) - Native advertising is increasingly touted as the future. A new eMarketer study estimates that native advertising in the US will reach $22 billion this year, making up more than half of digital display spend.
- [optimizing content](https://marketoonist.com/2017/03/optimizing-content.html) - In content marketing, I think there can be too much emphasis on writing for search engines, and not enough on writing for people.
- [one-to-one marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2017/03/one-to-one-marketing.html) - One-to-one marketing has long been a holy grail for business. Marketers strive to perfectly personalize the right message to the right consumer at the right time.
- [content marketing overload](https://marketoonist.com/2017/03/content-marketing-overload.html) - A few years ago, Mark Schaefer mapped the supply-and-demand of content marketing and predicted diminishing returns as the volume of content grows.
- [brand safety](https://marketoonist.com/2017/02/brand-safety.html) - Last week, I shared Marc Pritchard’s manifesto on the state of digital advertising and some of the hazards of a murky and fragmented programmatic media supply chain. One of the challenges is the lack of clarity about where digital ads show up.
- [digital advertising and media transparency](https://marketoonist.com/2017/02/digitaladvertising.html) - This cartoon was inspired from the talk P&G CMO Marc Pritchard gave on the state of digital advertising at the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting a few weeks ago. His talk is worth reading or seeing in its entirety. Professor and pundit Mark Ritson called it the most important speech about marketing in the last 20 years.
- [designing for mobile](https://marketoonist.com/2017/02/mobiledesign.html) - In 2015, Google introduced an algorithm update known as “Mobilegeddon” that prioritized mobile-friendly websites and was a wakeup call for marketers.
- [super bowl advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2017/02/superbowl.html) - Super Bowl ads are running $5 million for a 30 second spot this year, twice what they cost 10 years ago. But the ad itself is increasingly only the start.
- [health-washing](https://marketoonist.com/2017/01/health-washing.html) - It’s a tricky time to be a food marketer. Consumers are scrutinizing more than ever to what goes into the foods they buy. And what constitutes “healthy” to consumers is in flux.
- [predictive analytics for marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2016/12/predictive-analytics.html) - “A lot of direct marketing activity is retrospective; it’s about trying to replicate the past. With predictive analytics, you’re being proactive. It can turn the tables,” Simon Kaffel at HSBC said recently in a MarketingWeek article, touching on the excitement many marketers feel about the promise of predictive analytics.
- [brand loyalty](https://marketoonist.com/2016/12/brand-loyalty-3.html) - I originally drew a version of this cartoon back in 2005 and it’s still one of my more frequently licensed and referenced cartoons. I wanted to redraw it in color and because my drawing style has evolved.
- [PowerPoint-itis](https://marketoonist.com/2016/11/powerpoint-itis.html) - When James Thompson started his job as Diageo CMO, he tallied the number of presentation slides he was exposed to in his first two months of meetings. The final count — more than 12,000.
- [market your bliss](https://marketoonist.com/2016/11/market-your-bliss.html) - I recently hit the six-year anniversary of leaving my job to start Marketoonist full-time. It was the culmination of a childhood dream to become a cartoonist. It came after drawing a weekly cartoon for ten years, dreaming of the point that I could do it full-time.
- [digital transformation](https://marketoonist.com/2016/11/digitaltransformation.html) - "It is not about doing ‘digital marketing’, it is about marketing effectively in a digital world."
- [content marketing engagement](https://marketoonist.com/2016/10/engagement-2.html) - We can’t break through the clutter by adding to it.
- [Spinning a PR Crisis](https://marketoonist.com/2016/10/pr-crisis.html) - The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 debacle is a master class in how not to handle a crisis. Much will be investigated in the months ahead. But what I find particularly interesting is how Samsung communicated what was happening at each stage of the crisis.
- [full-service agencies](https://marketoonist.com/2016/10/full-service-agencies.html) - It’s an age-old decision point in marketing — work with a range of specialized agencies, or find a full-service agency that can handle everything. In the last couple years, we’ve seen an ever-expanding tick-box approach to agency services. This decision point has only gotten more complicated.
- [the future of smart devices](https://marketoonist.com/2016/09/smart-devices.html) - The Internet of Things is coming soon to consumer packaged goods.
- [brand newsletters](https://marketoonist.com/2016/09/newsletters.html) - Most brands have some form of newsletter to connect with customers. But for many brands, more emphasis is placed on getting people to sign up than on giving them a reason to sign up.
- [marketing targeting](https://marketoonist.com/2016/09/targeting.html) - The marketing world is buzzing about P&G’s announcement last month that they’re moving away from Facebook ads that target specific consumers.
- [pokemon go, AR, and location-based marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2016/08/pokemon.html) - The Pokemon Go phenomenon may have peaked, but it sure lit a fuse for marketers to think about augmented reality, location-based marketing, and how their brands might fit in.
- [purpose-driven advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2016/08/purpose-driven.html) - There has been an explosion in purpose-driven brand communication the last few years. As Matthew Gardner at Droga5 put it, “Because of the challenge for people’s attention, purpose is the only thing that will get brands to break through. This is not a trend but more of an imperative and should be top of mind for every company.”
- [media planning](https://marketoonist.com/2016/08/media-planning.html) - Marketers often build their communication plan around three distinct types of media: Paid (buying ads), Owned (creating branded content), and Earned (social and word of mouth) Media.
- [lead generation and gated content](https://marketoonist.com/2016/07/lead-generation.html) - “For many people the first interaction they have with a company is via a sterile, lifeless lead gen ad that takes you to a prison landing page where you are forced to enter in your life’s information and you know you will get immediately called by an overbearing sales rep before you are ready to have that conversation.”
- [influencer marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2016/07/influencer.html) - Influencer marketing is all the rage, but there’s not a clear understanding of what constitutes influence. A few years ago, I participated in an influencer event for a consumer brand. It was an expensive affair put on by the brand’s agency. There were a few dozen “influencers” there, which, it turned out, meant a collection
- [marketing storytelling](https://marketoonist.com/2016/07/storytelling.html) - It’s in vogue for marketers to think of themselves as storytellers. But much of what marketers pass off as “storytelling” really isn’t that much of a story.
- [the marketing echo chamber](https://marketoonist.com/2016/07/echochamber.html) - Marketers talk too much to ourselves. As demonstrated at Cannes, SXSW, and every other festival where marketers congregate, there’s a well-insulated marketing echo chamber.
- [snapchat marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2016/06/snapchat.html) - Snapchat is the hottest advertising ticket right now. With 150 million daily users, they reach 41% of consumers 18-34 in the US. And, just in time for Cannes, they unveiled a new advertising strategy last week, including an API that will allow Snapchat ads to be sold by third parties.
- [influencer stalking](https://marketoonist.com/2010/02/influencer-stalking.html) - I doubt there's a marketing plan in the world nowadays without some form of influencer marketing focus. Reaching influencers is part of every agency pitch. With mainstream media becoming less effective over time and widespread recognition that influencers play a big role in buying decisions, the influencer hunt is on. The challenge is how to
- [email marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2016/06/email-marketing.html) - Few marketers think they spam. Spamming is often thought of as using email addresses from a bought list. But spamming is more expansive than that. Spam really just means an unsolicited or unwanted message.
- [who else should we target?](https://marketoonist.com/2014/08/targetmarket.html) - Many brands try to be all things to all people. It can be tempting for marketers to try to target everyone, particularly if you want to reach scale. Yet brands that try to appeal to the vast majority won’t be that meaningful to any one group in particular.
- [mobile ads and fat finger syndrome](https://marketoonist.com/2016/05/fatfinger.html) - I was struck by the recent research that 60% of clicks on mobile banner ads are accidental. The main contributing factor was identified as fat finger syndrome.
- [rebranding](https://marketoonist.com/2016/05/rebranding-2.html) - Instagram caught a lot of flak for its rebranding last week, but it’s only the most recent in a string of companies that have gone through an identity makeover. Uber, Airbnb, and Yahoo each debuted new brand identities in the last couple years that were widely lampooned.
- [8 types of innovation](https://marketoonist.com/2016/05/8-types-of-innovation.html) - In innovation, the path of least resistance leads to mediocrity. A form of Darwinism drives organizations as they decide which ideas to launch. But instead of “survival-of-the-fittest,” it’s “survival-of-the-safest.”
- [millennial brand makeover](https://marketoonist.com/2016/04/millennial-brand-makeover.html) - Marketers are tripping over themselves to reach Millennials. Advertisers spend five times as much on reaching Millennials as they do on all other generations combined.
- [customer journey mapping](https://marketoonist.com/2016/04/customer-journey.html) - Many marketers were schooled in the marketing funnel. In the funnel framework, consumers move lockstep in uniform sequential stages from awareness to purchase. The specific stages might vary, but the journey was pretty much the same. The goal for marketers was simply to nudge consumers step-by-step to a purchase. Loyalty was often tacked on at the end.
- [disruptive innovation](https://marketoonist.com/2016/03/disruptive.html) - When every innovation claims to be disruptive, disruptive loses its meaning. This is particularly the case in startups, where the word “disruption” is almost a business pitch requirement nowadays.
- [virtual reality marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2016/03/virtualreality.html) - SXSW has turned into the Superbowl of “brand experiences.” This year, virtual reality was the main technology focus. McDonalds even created a virtual reality experience where attendees could paint the inside of a giant Happy Meal box.
- [trojan horse marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2016/03/trojanhorse.html) - The Trojan Horse metaphor is regularly used to describe content marketing. I’ve used it frequently myself. I like the idea of marketers sharing content so good that an audience would welcome it for its own sake. By sponsoring the content, the marketer’s brand comes along for the ride.
- [interruptive advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2016/03/interrupt.html) - “People don’t want to be interrupted by advertising. They want to engage with it on their own terms, when they’re in consumer mode and thus in the proper mindset to listen to a brand’s messaging.”
- [marketing vanity metrics](https://marketoonist.com/2016/02/marketing-vanity-metrics.html) - Marketing is increasingly data-driven. But the data we choose matters. It’s tempting to cherry-pick the data that makes us look or feel good. Or the easiest data to persuade an audience to buy into whatever we want them to believe.
- [buyer personas](https://marketoonist.com/2016/02/personas.html) - Are your buyer personas saying more about the marketing team than about the buyer? It can be difficult to wade through all of the insights that marketers collect on their customers. Buyer personas are a tool to give customer profiles a human face. They synthesize all of the observations, insights, and data into a fictionalized character sketch.
- [ambush marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2016/02/ambush.html) - “Ambushes done right can deliver instant fame and talk value, but the unpredictability of catching lightning in a bottle is not suited for everyone or every brand,” Innocean’s Eric Springer said in a recent Adweek article called “How to Win the Super Bowl Without Spending $5 Million on a 30-Second Spot.”
- [social media engagement](https://marketoonist.com/2016/01/socialengagement.html) - Marketers are increasingly eyeing Tinder, the dating and hookup app, as a potential advertising platform. With 50 million users and 1 billion-plus swipes, the numbers are attractive, particularly to reach Millennials. And as Brian Norgard, VP of Advertising at Tinder, put it, “If you think about the way Tinder works, with ‘like’ and ‘pass’, we have a really amazing signal for advertisers.”
- [is it on brand?](https://marketoonist.com/2016/01/on-brand.html) - Considering that clients and agencies both work in communication, it’s amazing how dysfunctional they can be at communicating with each other.
- [native advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2013/11/native-advertising.html) - The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing. Native advertising is one of the more significant marketing trends of 2013. As consumers get progressively better at ignoring banner ads (or any other ad for that matter), marketers are experimenting with new ways to deliver advertising as content.
- [authentic marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2016/01/authentic.html) - “This generation doesn’t dislike brands. What they don’t like is advertising,” said Maker Studios’ Erin McPherson about Millennials at an IAB event last year. She continued, “The new authority is authenticity.”
- [social marketing hype](https://marketoonist.com/2016/01/social_media.html) - It’s tempting to look at any new marketing trend as a cure-all. It’s just as tempting to completely give up on that trend when it doesn’t immediately live up to all of the hype.
- [marketing resolutions](https://marketoonist.com/2016/01/resolutions.html) - It’s the time of year to make vague resolutions that we’ll forget by February. According to Statistic Brain, 45% of Americans make New Year’s resolutions and only 8% of those are actually successful.
- [marketing attribution](https://marketoonist.com/2015/12/attribution.html) - In the early 1900s, Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker famously quipped, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." In a way, he’s the grandfather of marketing attribution — the science of giving credit to each marketing touchpoint that a customer was exposed to before a purchase.
- [the future of digital advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2015/12/digitalads.html) - The New York Times ran an article last week on digital ad formats that are technologically designed to be annoying:
- [digital marketing buzzwords](https://marketoonist.com/2015/12/buzzwords.html) - Marketing has always been prone to lingo that many people don’t understand. But in the world of digital marketing, it feels like we’re getting into “emperor has no clothes” territory.
- [advertising clutter](https://marketoonist.com/2015/11/adclutter.html) - Advertising can’t break through the clutter by adding to it. Yet marketers often treat media as an arms race. With the rise of digital, marketers have never had more tools in their arsenal. Getting consumer attention is often referred to as “capturing eyeballs” as if impressions are the only goal. At the same time, consumers
- [live streaming marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2015/11/live-streaming-marketing.html) - When Meerkat and Periscope debuted as the next big thing at SXSW in the Spring, marketers started salivating over the potential of live streaming video.
- [branded content](https://marketoonist.com/2015/11/content.html) - Content marketing is on the rise. The latest content marketing studies from CMI and MarketingProfs cite that 86% of B2B marketers (76% of B2C marketers) use content marketing, 28% of marketing budgets are allocated to it, and 51% plan to increase spending on it.
- [banner ads](https://marketoonist.com/2015/11/banner-ads.html) - The average click through rate of a banner ad is 0.06%, which I’ve heard described as lower than the average failure rate of birth control. In the vein of my last post on Ad Blockers, I stumbled across a fascinating article from one of the creators of the first banner ad, in 1994.. That first banner ad, for AT&T, boasted a whopping click-through rate of 44%. Joe McCambley wrote “my children tell me that’s like inventing smallpox.”
- [ad blocking](https://marketoonist.com/2015/10/ad-blocking.html) - The Interactive Advertising Bureau issued a remarkable mea culpa last week about the state of online advertising. In response to the rise of ad-blocking software, IAB VP Scott Cunningham said digital advertisers should take responsibility for annoying people and driving people to use ad blockers:
- [brand reputation](https://marketoonist.com/2015/10/brand-reputation.html) - "It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute," according to Will Rogers.
- [optimized for mobile](https://marketoonist.com/2015/09/optimized-for-mobile.html) - I’m speaking at a Google conference on mobile marketing this week and came across their recent study on the shift to mobile and what it means for brands. This takeaway jumped out at me: “People are more loyal to their need in the moment than to any particular brand.”
- [viral brand videos](https://marketoonist.com/2015/09/viral-brand-videos.html) - Sometimes our marketing instincts get in the way of what’s most likely to be shared. When putting together a creative brief, marketers often take a tick box or laundry list approach. We throw in everything including the kitchen sink. We’re then surprised when it doesn’t land with our audience.
- [creative review](https://marketoonist.com/2015/09/creative-review.html) - If last week’s cartoon was about dysfunctional creative briefs, this week’s cartoon is about the dysfunctional creative review.
- [the idea factory](https://marketoonist.com/2009/01/the-idea-factory.html) - This cartoon isn't a critique of factories per se. Some of the sharpest people I've ever worked with have been factory engineers. Instead, this cartoon is about factory-thinking as a business metaphor. I just finished Seth Godin's new book on Tribes, where Seth frames the danger of being factory-centric as a business. Factories are designed
- [trading up-manship](https://marketoonist.com/2009/01/trading-upmanship.html) - I remember learning about "trading up" when I worked on the Häagen-Dazs brand a few years ago. Our VP was a big fan of the book Trading Up, which described how middle-market consumers felt affluent and were starting to trade up up higher premium products. We baked "trading up" into our brand strategy. Afterall, we
- [the paradox of thrift](https://marketoonist.com/2009/02/the-paradox-of-thrift.html) - "Risk aversion, prudence and frugality - these are rational short-term responses to a serious global recession but will in the longer term make it much worse." This quote comes from an interesting management journal editorial that inspired this cartoon. From a Baroness no less. Like many of us, I've been playing armchair macro-economics lately. I've
- [gallery of management consulting](https://marketoonist.com/2009/02/gallery-of-management-consulting.html) - I've been thinking about presentation style lately. I'm gearing up for a big customer meeting and trying to avoid the "death by PowerPoint" trap. Fortunately, I have a few cartoons up my sleeve. Somehow the preparation reminded me of management consulting. In business school, I was first blown away by the technical skill of ex-consultants
- [value elves](https://marketoonist.com/2008/12/value-elves.html) - 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
- [business day care](https://marketoonist.com/2008/12/silo-day-care.html) - 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,
- [nose so bright](https://marketoonist.com/2008/11/nose-so-bright.html) - 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
- [shopping support group](https://marketoonist.com/2008/11/shopping-support-group.html) - 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
- [the winning hand](https://marketoonist.com/2008/11/the-winning-hand.html) - 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
- [point of difference](https://marketoonist.com/2008/11/point-of-difference.html) - 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.
- [the 8 types of retail buyers](https://marketoonist.com/2008/11/the-8-types-of-retail-buyers.html) - (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
- [budget cut barbecue](https://marketoonist.com/2008/10/budget-cut-barbecue.html) - 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
- [eco cheap: the new eco chic](https://marketoonist.com/2008/10/eco-cheap-the-new-eco-chic.html) - 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
- [trick or treat](https://marketoonist.com/2008/10/trick-or-treat.html) - 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
- [traditional marketing mix](https://marketoonist.com/2008/09/traditional-mar.html) - 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
- [brand ego tripping](https://marketoonist.com/2007/09/brand-ego-tripp.html) - This cartoon was partly inspired by my chat with David Taylor. He introduced me to the wonderful phrase, "brand ego tripping", which is when a brand team gets a little too full of itself and forgets why consumers liked the brand in the first place. A brand ego trip can be dangerous, because it can
- [a day in the life of a brand manager](https://marketoonist.com/2003/02/brand-manager.html)
- [evolution of retail](https://marketoonist.com/2009/02/evolution-of-retail.html) - I was fortunate to hear Seth Godin give a talk in London this last week. He led a packed room through a whirlwind tour of his ideas on marketing, business, and leadership at large. This cartoon was inspired by something Seth covered early in the talk. He put up a few slides with photos
- [the abominable no-men](https://marketoonist.com/2009/03/the-abominable-nomen.html) - I met Simon Clift a few weeks ago and he introduced me to the wonderful expression, "the abominable no-men". The longer the corporate ladder, the more people there are to veto or sandpaper an idea. And the harder becomes to usher an idea through the gauntlet unscathed. Simon is CMO at Unilever after 25 years
- [zero degree feedback](https://marketoonist.com/2009/03/zero-degree-feedback.html) - Performance reviews can be incredibly dehumanizing. I recently stumbled across this telling depiction from software luminary, Joel Spolsky: First, you gave “anonymous” upward reviews for your direct manager (as if that could be done in an honest way). Then, you filled out optional “self-evaluation” forms, which your manager “took into account” in preparing your performance
- [recession washing](https://marketoonist.com/2009/04/recession-washing.html) - I stumbled across "recession washing" as a useful expression in this presentation and thought it captured so much of the advertising bandwagon right now. Six months ago, I was at a conference on marketing in the credit crunch and several speakers stressed the importance of showing empathy to consumers. Of course, sincerity is crucial too.
- [the tension of glocalization](https://marketoonist.com/2009/06/the-tension-of-glocalization.html) - 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
- [the value proposition](https://marketoonist.com/2009/04/the-value-proposition.html) - I came across a Brandweek article called "Enough with the Value Messages Already" and it made me think of the song-and-dance that many businesses are doing to demonstrate value nowadays. The primary knee-jerk reaction for brands in the recession has been to radically drop price (either permanently or through deep discounting). With many retailers ramping
- [goliath envy](https://marketoonist.com/2009/06/goliath-envy.html) - 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
- [social media makeover](https://marketoonist.com/2009/09/social-media-makeover.html) - 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
- [the viral video bandwagon](https://marketoonist.com/2009/10/viral-video-marketing.html) - 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
- [the caged bird tweets](https://marketoonist.com/2009/11/the-caged-bird-tweets.html) - 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
- [driving by the rear view mirror](https://marketoonist.com/2009/11/rear-view-mirror.html) - I get most of my cartoon ideas in meetings. I was in a strategy discussion recently that became stuck in a competitive debate. We charted the minutia of each recent competitive action and overdosed on two-by-two matrices. In the middle of this war-gaming, someone observed, “We’re trying to drive by the rear view mirror.” It was
- [the six types of twitter users](https://marketoonist.com/2009/12/the-six-types-of-twitter-users.html) - This cartoon sprung fully formed from a great post from Guy Kawasaki. I always learn something from Guy's blog, so it's a tribute of sorts to put together a cartoon entirely inspired by one of his posts. Twitter can be overwhelming at first, like drinking through a firehouse. It definitely helps to understand the different
- [the career trapeze](https://marketoonist.com/2010/01/the-career-trapeze.html) - My mentor Jim Lawrence inspired this cartoon with an insight he shared recently that a career is more like riding a trapeze than climbing a ladder. Most careers are not rung-by-rung linear paths. Instead, they involve a series of flying leaps, not knowing whether those leaps will take you up, down, or sideways. Or if
- [communication etiquette](https://marketoonist.com/2010/01/communication-etiquette.html) - I was struck by a recent Joel Spolsky column in Inc. magazine on dysfunctional communication in growing companies. “What used to work with three people in a garage all talking to one another about everything just doesn’t work when your head count reaches 10 or 20 people. Everybody who doesn’t need to be in that
- [game changing innovation](https://marketoonist.com/2010/03/gamechanging-innovation.html) - I'm gearing up to speak at SXSW in Austin on Friday, so my mind is racing. My talk is called "Drawing Board: Innovation Lessons from Cartooning". I'm sharing the many ways that cartoonists come up with ideas and find ways to break through the clutter. I think these lessons can apply to any form of
- [the new product waterfall](https://marketoonist.com/2010/04/the-new-product-waterfall.html) - Most products are developed like a waterfall. Waterfall development is the classic sequential linear process where you finish one stage before moving on to the next one. You aim never to revisit a stage once you’ve finished it, so you’d better get that brief right the first time. When I worked in web development in
- [where the creatives are](https://marketoonist.com/2010/04/where-the-creatives-are.html) - It cracks me up whenever I hear a creative director referred to as "the Creative". It makes it sound like creative directors belong to a different species. We wouldn't refer to "the Supply" or "the Accounting". But "the Creative" is often referred to in this strange third person (as parodied in this clever video from
- [quality (out of) control](https://marketoonist.com/2010/05/quality-out-of-control.html) - I’m enjoying Rework, the entrepreneurial handbook by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanson, founders of 37signals. I was inspired to read it after meeting Mark Rohde, who drew all of the illustrations. One of the brilliant riffs in the book is titled, “Nobody likes plastic flowers”. Jason and David lobby for the beauty of imperfection
- [law of the brainstorm](https://marketoonist.com/2010/05/law-of-the-brainstorm.html) - We can thank adman Alex Osbourne for the Brainstorm (he's the O in the agency BBDO). Alex invented the Brainstorm in 1939 as an alternative to the usual meetings of "discouragement and criticism which so often cramp imagination". Alex Osbourne realized that an environment is needed where judgement is suspended and ideas have space to
- [lost in translation](https://marketoonist.com/2010/06/lost-in-translation.html) - I had a "Lost in Translation" moment a couple weeks ago in a meeting with 20 French and Russian executives. It was the first time I'd ever been in a meeting where someone simultaneously translated the discussion into ear pieces. I spent the whole meeting wondering if they really understood what we were trying to
- [post-production](https://marketoonist.com/2010/07/in-postproduction.html) - If you're ever on a video shoot, you'll no doubt hear someone say, "we'll fix it in post-production". This usually happens toward the end of a long day, when everyone is tired and there's a sticking point preventing everyone from going home. Sometimes the client hasn't seen what they're looking for. Sometimes there's a stalemate
- [for immediate release](https://marketoonist.com/2011/02/for-immediate-release.html) - PR is called earned media for a reason. You have to earn it. If you earn it, PR can be far more valuable than paid media. But earned media follows different rules than paid media, and certainly different rules than spam. Some PR agencies forget that the "R" in PR stands for relations. They instead
- [idea camouflage](https://marketoonist.com/2009/03/idea-camouflage.html) - I think that how you share ideas is just as important as the idea itself. The most revolutionary idea, poorly articulated, will come across as mediocre and humdrum. I've been playing around with this theme lately. I think that many businesses struggle with how to share ideas. We've all found ourselves in the audience in
- [innovation planet](https://marketoonist.com/2009/03/innovation-planet.html) - I've been thinking lately about the entrepreneurial anthem, "it's not the big that eat the small, it's the fast that eat the slow." I once did a field study with Fast Company magazine, which epitomized that sentiment. It was a year after the dot-com bubble popped, and they were facing a big identity crisis. They
- [marketing to younger generations](https://marketoonist.com/2015/08/generations.html) - A marketing friend shared with me that one of her brand’s biggest challenges was how to stay relevant with the next generation of consumers.
- [cartooniversary](https://marketoonist.com/2007/10/cartooniversary.html) - It’s my cartooniversary this week. I thought it would be fun to take a little cartoon walk down memory lane and post some of my personal favorites. But first I want to thank my fabulous wife, Tallie, for being my cartoon sounding board, collaborator, editor, coach, reviewer, friend, advisor, accountant, conspirator, ego-stroker, sales rep, muse, and
- [design thinking](https://marketoonist.com/2015/08/design-thinking-2.html) - Design Thinking is one of the more hyped (and frequently misunderstood) terms in business. Many companies have jumped on the Design Thinking bandwagon without really knowing what it means. The term is frequently trotted out to describe just about any organization -- even organizations with a pretty superficial appreciation of Design.
- [Instagram advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2015/08/instagram-advertising.html) - There are suddenly many more marketers trying to figure out how to resonate on Instagram. Last week Instagram opened the advertising floodgates, dropping the minimum spend and switching on an Ads API so that brands can start campaigns without talking to a rep. This is after a lengthy trial-and-error period with pilot campaigns.
- [master brand](https://marketoonist.com/2014/03/master-brand.html) - It’s an irresistible temptation for marketers to see how far their brands can stretch. In the endless search of brand growth, extending into new categories as a master brand can seem like a slam dunk.
- [ad viewability](https://marketoonist.com/2015/08/ad-viewability.html) - This is one of of those rare cartoons where I didn’t have to exaggerate anything to make a situation sound ridiculous. The digital ad world has been is a state of disarray since Google shared the results of a study 18 months ago that a whopping 56.1% of display ad impressions are not even seen
- [the 8 types of managers](https://marketoonist.com/2010/10/the-8-types-of-manager.html) - I recently heard someone referred to as a "seagull manager", a term Ken Blanchard coined in 1985: "seagull managers fly in, make a lot of noise, dump on everyone, then fly out." This conversation prompted a discussion on bad managers of all stripes. Everyone at the table had a top-of-mind example. I grouped some of
- [the power of polarization](https://marketoonist.com/2015/07/polarization.html) - Labeling an idea polarizing can be the marketing kiss of death. Businesses often avoid ideas that are polarizing, whether new products, ad campaigns, or promotions. It’s always easier to launch the next flavor of vanilla.
- [8 types of bad creative critics](https://marketoonist.com/2015/07/creativecritics.html) - I originally drew a version of this cartoon back in 2006 and it's still one of my more requested and licensed. There's an ad agency in Australia that has a wall-sized version hanging in the room where they review creative with clients.
- [brand engagement](https://marketoonist.com/2015/04/engagement.html) - Brand engagement is treated as the holy grail for marketers. Marketers sometimes operate as if consumers are just waiting around to have a relationship with their brand.
- [viral marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2015/05/viral.html) - Last week, I made my kids jealous by giving a talk at Disney. One of the themes from my talk was the topic of trying to create marketing that “goes viral”.
- [engage with the brand](https://marketoonist.com/2015/06/engage.html) - June 21st, 2015 • advertising • No Comments cross-functional collaboration 150622.engage Consumers don’t spend as much time thinking about brands as marketers think they do. Marketers often operate as if their consumers are just waiting around to engage with the brand. Yet the way many brands communicate isn’t that engaging.
- [marketing worth sharing | Google keynote](https://marketoonist.com/2012/09/marketing-worth-sharing-google-keynote.html) - I'm giving the keynote presentation today at Google's "Think Branding" event in New York. I want to share my slides and notes. I'm speaking about the power of "Marketing Worth Sharing". Many thanks to Google for inviting me. There has never been a better time for marketing. New technologies give us an unparalleled opportunity to
- [how I became a cartoonist](https://marketoonist.com/2011/10/cartoonis.html) - I spoke at the Do Lectures about pursuing a lifelong dream to become a cartoonist. Some of you asked for more details, so here are the notes from my talk. I’ll share the video when it’s live. There have been some nice articles in Wired, Treehugger, and the Harvard Business School newspaper too.
- [content worth sharing: what marketers can learn from cartoons](https://marketoonist.com/2012/03/content-worth-sharing-what-marketers-can-learn-from-cartoons.html) - I gave a talk today at the MarketingProfs conference on Content Marketing. I think they will post an archive if you missed it. In the meantime, here are my notes.
- [innovation worth sharing: two-day workshop in Dubai](https://marketoonist.com/2012/10/innovation-worth-sharing-two-day-workshop-in-dubai.html) - I wanted to share that I'm putting on a a two-day workshop in Dubai next month called "Innovation Worth Sharing: Beyond New and Improved". I'm partnering with Training Hotline, a Training & Development company based in Dubai Knowledge Village. Here's a little background on the workshop on November 27 and 28.
- [cartoons and marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2014/01/leoburnett.html) - Recently Leo Burnett invited me to be artist-in-residence for a day. I gave a talk about marketing worth sharing, and then answered a few questions about Marketoon Studios and the future of cartoons and social. Here's a two-minute summary.
- [truth in advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2014/10/truth.html) - Jerry Seinfeld recently recently started a harsh, but funny, rant about advertising at the CLIO awards by saying, “I love advertising because I love lying.”
- [silo farming](https://marketoonist.com/2008/07/silo-farming.html) - 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
- [little miss corporate](https://marketoonist.com/2008/07/for-fathers-day.html) - 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
- [your brand in a recession](https://marketoonist.com/2008/07/your-brand-in-a.html) - 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
- [the organizational bullwhip](https://marketoonist.com/2008/07/the-organizatio.html) - 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
- [shades of green](https://marketoonist.com/2008/06/shades-of-green.html) - 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
- [the cause marketing brandwagon](https://marketoonist.com/2008/06/the-cause-marke.html) - 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
- [the consumer's dilemma](https://marketoonist.com/2008/06/the-consumers-d.html) - 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
- [truth in labeling](https://marketoonist.com/2008/06/truth-in-labeli.html) - 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
- [the five stages of missing plan](https://marketoonist.com/2008/06/the-five-stages.html) - 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
- [emotional brands](https://marketoonist.com/2008/05/emotional-brand.html) - 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
- [the wizard of ad](https://marketoonist.com/2008/05/the-wizard-of-a.html) - 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
- [the csr fashion show](https://marketoonist.com/2008/05/i-just-started.html) - 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
- [(out of) control freak](https://marketoonist.com/2008/04/out-of-control.html) - 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
- [poser marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2008/04/poser-marketing.html) - 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 process pendulum](https://marketoonist.com/2008/04/the-process-pen.html) - 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
- [criticism sandwich](https://marketoonist.com/2008/04/criticism-sandw.html) - 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
- [ideation nation](https://marketoonist.com/2008/03/ideation-nation.html) - 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
- [dance of the retail partners](https://marketoonist.com/2008/03/dance-of-the-re.html) - 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,
- [how to come up with a product name](https://marketoonist.com/2008/03/how-to-come-up.html) - 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
- [the target market](https://marketoonist.com/2009/05/the-target-market.html) - I'm in San Francisco this week, and was invited by Alice at Clorox to give a talk while I'm in town. My talk is titled "everything I needed to know about innovation, I learned by drawing cartoons" and one of my themes is the importance of finding a niche. I once heard Mark Addicks, the
- [share of wallet](https://marketoonist.com/2009/05/share-of-wallet.html) - I've been thinking about how consumers are spending (or not spending) in this environment. With wallets under lock-and-key, one might think that a premium brand wouldn't have much of a chance. This is a time when consumers are evaluating where their money goes. With low consumer confidence, there is less that is being spent in
- [the five stages of recession](https://marketoonist.com/2009/04/the-five-stages-of-recession.html) - I've been thinking about how the recession is sinking into the collective business psyche. It feels like we're all going through some form of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief.
- [the linkedin support group](https://marketoonist.com/2009/03/the-linkedin-support-group.html) - I think LinkedIn can be a meaningful tool. It just cracks me how many invitations we all get with the default "since you are a person I trust" greeting. Particularly when they come from people we don't actually know. A friend of mine who used to run a high profile investment fund told me he
- [blend into the herd](https://marketoonist.com/2009/01/blend-into-the-herd.html) - I originally started this cartoon as a series of panels on "recession survival tactics". I started thinking about different brands as "species" and I sketched a few panels with examples of how different brands approach the threat of recession: a turtle hiding in its protective shell, an ostrich with its head in the sand, etc. Then
- [brand drought](https://marketoonist.com/2008/12/brand-drought.html) - 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
- [after green](https://marketoonist.com/2008/09/after-green.html) - 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
- [bogo till we drop](https://marketoonist.com/2008/09/bogo-till-we-dr.html) - 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
- [green fatigue](https://marketoonist.com/2008/08/green-fatigue.html) - 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
- [evolution of marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2008/08/evolution-of-ma.html) - 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
- [pavlov's promotions](https://marketoonist.com/2008/08/pavlovs-promoti.html) - 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
- [the fishbowl](https://marketoonist.com/2008/08/the-fishbowl.html) - 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
- [how brands talk](https://marketoonist.com/2010/09/how-brands-talk.html) - Whether on package copy, TV ads, or websites, most brands talk in the same self-referential and self-absorbed way. It’s by design. That’s usually the first filter of a creative review: run through a checklist to make sure that all the key benefits from the brief are there. The problem is that there’s rarely a filter
- [idea prevention department](https://marketoonist.com/2010/09/idea-prevention-department.html) - I recently heard someone refer to their legal department as a "Sales Prevention Department". I realized that most businesses have some sort of "idea prevention department", whether they nickname it the "VP of We Can't" or the "Abominable No Men". These are the alarmists who are so focused on what can go wrong that they
- [the art of planning](https://marketoonist.com/2010/08/the-art-of-planning.html) - For many businesses, planning for 2011 is in full swing, particularly the horse-trading, haggling, and negotiating to choose the revenue target. The core business team develops a bottoms-up plan they feel is achievable. The leadership team sets an top-down stretch target that is much higher. Then everyone bickers over the gap between the two numbers.
- [always in beta](https://marketoonist.com/2010/08/always-in-beta.html) - Beta releases used to be restricted to small groups of Beta testers. A Beta release allowed you to work out the bugs before a general market release. When a product shipped, it was considered final until the next release. Nowadays, many products are in perpetual Beta (and we're all Beta testers). Gmail, Flickr and del.icio.us carry
- [jumping the shark](https://marketoonist.com/2010/08/jumping-the-shark.html) - My friend Michelle introduced me to the expression, Jumping the Shark, which is used to describe "the moment of downturn for a previously successful enterprise." It comes from the fifth season of the classic American sitcom, Happy Days, when Fonzie donned swim trunks and his trademark leather jacket to perform a ridiculous water ski jump
- [make the logo bigger](https://marketoonist.com/2010/08/make-the-logo-bigger.html) - The quickest way to rankle a creative director is to ask to make the logo bigger. It's an age-old feud that has existed since the dawn of advertising. It's often the first piece of feedback shared, and has even led to its own song: "Make the logo as big as you can. And make the
- [devil's advocate](https://marketoonist.com/2010/07/devils-advocate.html) - I've been hooked this week by Seth Godin's latest book, Linchpin. Seth briefly profiles the Devil's Advocate, which he describes as a "card-carrying member of the Resistance" -- a force that prevents remarkable ideas from coming to life. In his blog, Seth occasionally advises his readers to "uninvite the devil's advocate, since the devil doesn't
- [brand archetypes](https://marketoonist.com/2010/07/brand-archetypes.html) - I learned the power of archetypes from Joseph Campbell's classic interview with Bill Moyers. The explore the universal themes, characters, and stories that repeat throughout history, appearing in every form of human expression from the Bible to Star Wars. These archetypes repeat because they resonate deeply with human consciousness. I first saw Joseph Campbell's work
- [new-featuritis](https://marketoonist.com/2010/06/newfeaturitis.html) - The very first Saturday Night Live in 1975 featured a mock-commercial with George Carlin making fun of the Gillette Trac II, which was the first two-blade razor. SNL spoofed it with a fake three-blade razor called the Triple-Trac, and closed with a tagline, "The Triple-Trac. Because You'll Believe Anything". Twenty-three years later, in 1998, Gillette
- [after the brainstorm](https://marketoonist.com/2010/06/after-the-brainstorm.html) - Last week I joined one of the better idea generation exercises I've experienced in a while. We split into small groups and toured the San Francisco Ferry Building to scout out retail merchandising ideas. The Ferry Building is packed with novel, funky shops like a Far West Fungi, which only sells mushrooms: dried mushrooms, fresh
- [shiny new thing](https://marketoonist.com/2010/05/shiny-new-thing.html) - ADHD isn’t just for teenagers. It afflicts businesses and teams too. I once heard a venture capitalist offer to prescribe Ritalin to one of his portfolio companies. It’s easy to get distracted by the Shiny New Thing. It’s particularly easy to get distracted when the going gets tough on your core plan and energy starts to
- [the emperor's new tweets](https://marketoonist.com/2010/05/the-emperors-new-tweets.html) - In London last week, I happened across Mark Ritson’s column in Marketing Week: “Hoodwinked by the Emperor’s New Tweets”. The title alone sparked this cartoon idea. Mark lampoons the social media bandwagon, particularly the herd mentality to incorporate social media into each and every marketing plan and the gullibility of marketing directors to believe all
- [poking the bear](https://marketoonist.com/2010/05/poking-the-bear.html) - “Poking the Bear” belongs on a marketing lingo bingo card alongside “Low Hanging Fruit” and “Share of Voice”. It’s one of my favorite marketing buzz phrases because it’s so vivid. “Poking the Bear” means going up against a competitive giant knowing the potential response will be massive. Schwans innovation guy Marc Coudeyre, who I knew
- [mission: impersonal](https://marketoonist.com/2010/04/mission-impersonal.html) - Last year, I heard Swedish axe maker Gabriel Branby speak at the DO Lectures. Gabriel’s company, Gränsfors, makes the finest forged axes in the world. He spoke about the essence of product development as craft. His company takes axe-making very personally. To underscore that commitment, each of his axes is forged by a smith who
- [this little piggy](https://marketoonist.com/2010/03/this-little-piggy.html) - As Jerry Garcia once said, "You do not merely want to be considered the best of the best. You want to be the only ones who do what you do." That quote was part of Rule #24 in Alan Webber's inspiring Rules of Thumb book, and partly inspired this cartoon (except I played with toes,
- [iProcrastinate](https://marketoonist.com/2010/03/iprocrastinate.html) - Last week, I happened across Tim Ferriss handing out copies of 4-Four Hour Workweek at SXSW. I first read the book two years ago after hearing Tim speak at the Do Lectures in Wales. We were the only two Americans there and I was inspired by his talk. I reread some of the book on
- [the ivory tower](https://marketoonist.com/2010/02/the-ivory-tower.html) - Last week I traveled to snowy Toronto with a sales director. Over two days, we saw more than 30 Canadian stores and talked with dozens of consumers, retail buyers, store managers, and shelf stockers. It reminded me that I need to get out of the office a lot more often. It’s easy to think of
- [the art of package design](https://marketoonist.com/2010/02/the-art-of-package-design.html) - Working at method has taught me that package design is the single most important part of your marketing plan. Founder Eric Ryan likes to say that he views cutting steel as a marketing expense. Once a consumer told me that he buys method because the package design makes him want to lick the bottles. Remarkable
- [the six types of ideas](https://marketoonist.com/2010/01/the-six-types-of-ideas.html) - Missy Carvin emailed me this week asking if I had any cartoons about Zombie ideas, "those terrible ideas that exist within an organization that never, ever die, just resurface every few years". It struck me that there are different types of ideas in organizations. Most time is spent chasing the elusive "Eureka" moment, where the
- [the critical path](https://marketoonist.com/2010/01/the-critical-path.html) - I'm gearing up to talk at SXSW in Austin in March. My topic is titled "Drawing Board: Innovation Lessons from Cartooning" and it's loosely based on a few talks I gave last year about cartooning as a metaphor for innovation. Both activities involve coming up with ideas and bringing them to life. As I prepare
- [definition of insanity](https://marketoonist.com/2010/01/definition-of-insanity.html) - I’ve always liked the Albert Einstein quote, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." I recently started following the witting observations of @MeetingBoy ("Say or do something stupid in a meeting and I'll tweet it"). He's putting out a 2010 MeetingBoy calendar in the next week
- [voice of the brand](https://marketoonist.com/2009/12/voice-of-the-brand.html) - As businesses wade into social media, there's an interesting choice to make about the voice of the brand. The falacy is that social media is free. But the people costs to do it properly are important to understand going into it. As much as I love Tony Hsieh's approach at Zappos, not every CEO is
- [innovation stew](https://marketoonist.com/2009/12/innovation-stew.html) - Last year, business battened down the hatches and prepared for a hunger year. As I parodied in another cartoon at the time, a few companies with deep pockets used this opportunity to invest, but most companies cut back and slashed budgets. Some tightened their belts more than others. Budget cuts test to force priorities, and
- [efficiency farming](https://marketoonist.com/2009/11/efficiency-farming.html) - 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
- [feature creep](https://marketoonist.com/2009/11/feature-creep.html) - 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,
- [managing the brand](https://marketoonist.com/2009/10/managing-the-brand.html) - 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
- [the large print giveth](https://marketoonist.com/2009/10/driveby-advertising.html) - 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
- [the corporate firewall](https://marketoonist.com/2009/09/the-corporate-firewall.html) - 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
- [priority soup](https://marketoonist.com/2009/09/priority-soup.html) - 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
- [the silent designers](https://marketoonist.com/2009/08/the-silent-designers.html) - 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
- [mixed signals](https://marketoonist.com/2009/08/mixed-signals.html) - 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
- [think outside the bin](https://marketoonist.com/2009/07/think-outside-the-bin.html) - 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
- [corporate twitter](https://marketoonist.com/2009/07/corporate-twitter.html) - 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
- [art by committee](https://marketoonist.com/2009/07/art-by-committee.html) - 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
- [social media bandwagon](https://marketoonist.com/2009/07/social-media-bandwagon.html) - 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
- [where's waldo marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2009/06/wheres-waldo-marketing.html) - 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
- [view from marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2009/06/view-from-marketing.html) - 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
- [the agency bid](https://marketoonist.com/2009/05/the-agency-bid.html) - 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
- [urban spam](https://marketoonist.com/2009/05/urban-spam.html) - I was in Paris over the long weekend for the first time in eight years. It's my favorite city in the world and my favorite activity is to leisurely people-watch at the outdoor cafés. In France, there's a lot of talk about the "American McDonaldization" of culture and I was curious to see what had
- [the marketing rosetta stone](https://marketoonist.com/2009/05/the-marketing-rosetta-stone.html) - I love that George Bernard Shaw quote about the UK and US as "two countries separated by a common language". I think that the same can be said of functions within companies. And marketers are the worst offenders. I doubt any function produces more jargon and buzzwords each year than marketers (in case you're wondering,
- [dance of the silos](https://marketoonist.com/2007/11/dance-of-the-si.html) - 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
- [inside retail partnerships](https://marketoonist.com/2007/12/inside-retail-p.html) - 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
- [the problem with carbon labeling](https://marketoonist.com/2007/12/the-problem-wit.html) - 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,
- [find your brand purpose](https://marketoonist.com/2015/03/brandpurpose.html) - Everything I needed to know about marketing, I learned from Mark Addicks, who retired as CMO of General Mills in January. Mark is one of the main reasons I went into marketing as a career, so I want to share a few of my memories as a tribute to one of marketing’s great thinkers and inspiring mentors.
- [cross-functional collaboration](https://marketoonist.com/2015/06/collaboration.html) - This cartoon came out of a conversation with a marketer recently about the silos in her company. Her company was trying to encourage more collaboration across teams and divisions. They wrote values statements and held off-sites on the importance of cross-functional collaboration.
- [health food marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2015/05/health-food-marketing.html) - It’s a tricky time to be a food marketer. How consumers define what’s healthy is in flux. As a food marketing friend pointed out, consumers are increasingly prioritizing food purity over calorie count.
- [ad creative checklist](https://marketoonist.com/2015/05/ad-creative-checklist.html) - Ad creative usually runs a gauntlet to get approved. Marketers often evaluate ads by ticking creative checklists to make sure ads are effective.
- [marketing seat at the table](https://marketoonist.com/2015/05/marketing-seat-at-the-table.html) - Around the executive table, marketing has traditionally had the hardest time proving their value. The correlation between marketing investment and revenue impact has often been fuzzy.
- [it's called advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2015/04/advertising.html) - Everything my younger daughter needed to know about advertising, she learned by buying Sea Monkeys with her allowance a few years ago. The ad pitch (which hasn't changed since the version they ran in comic books when I was a kid) promises this whole world of smiling cartoon creatures and then the actual product is a dried pouch of brine shrimp.
- [targeted ads](https://marketoonist.com/2015/02/targetedads.html) - Marketers spend a lot of time and effort trying to infer consumer behavior through the signals they leave online and offline.
- [how we consume media](https://marketoonist.com/2015/02/media.html) - Our media habits have changed irrevocably. But much of today's marketing is still biased toward how we consumed media in the past.
- [technology can’t save a boring marketing idea](https://marketoonist.com/2015/03/tech.html) - Last week was the annual pilgrimage to SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. Increasingly, SXSW is attracting big brands as a marketing venue to influencers (this year, even McDonalds has a presence) and as part of the search of the next new thing.
- [corporate hackathons](https://marketoonist.com/2015/03/hackathons.html) - Hackathons have gone mainstream. Originally the domain of scrappy tech start ups, hackathons are now hosted by large corporations and governments. This week’s cartoon was partly inspired by a very funny video from Vooza on the dark side of hackathons.
- [5 stages of data-driven marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2015/02/datadriven.html) - The road of data-driven marketing is bumpy. For all the promise, there’s also a lot of resistance. Many marketers are being dragged kicking and screaming into a world very different than where they started their careers.
- [more with less](https://marketoonist.com/2015/02/morewithless.html) - While some brands plunked down $4.5 million for a 30-second spot this Superbowl Sunday, most marketers are being asked to do more with less. This can feel like an impossible task.
- [stage gate innovation](https://marketoonist.com/2015/01/stage-gate-innovation.html) - Innovation is not for the faint of heart. At times, managing innovation can feel like the myth of Sisyphus, repeatedly pushing a boulder up hill. Particularly when navigating the stage gate process.
- [social ads](https://marketoonist.com/2015/01/social-ads.html) - The old adage goes, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. This has long been true of our data. Consumers pay for “free” services like search engines and social networks by letting companies collect and package their data so that marketers can target them more effectively.
- [marketing funnel](https://marketoonist.com/2015/01/funnel.html) - Many marketers have funnel-vision. We learn to see our customers in a linear path. Our job is to systematically move customers from step to step. The rise of data-driven marketing has made it easier to measure and improve the performance of each stage.
- [social media stars](https://marketoonist.com/2014/12/social-media-stars.html) - YouTube has been increasingly promoting its homegrown talent to advertisers. YouTube vlogger Michelle Phan partnered with Lancome, Bethany Mota partnered with Aeropostale, and the Fine Brothers partnered with Friskies.
- [targeted holiday advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2014/12/targeted.html) - ’Tis the season of targeted advertising. According to the AA/Warc Expenditure Report, brands spend 35% of their annual ad budget in the Christmas period in the UK, more than any other time of the year. Christmas advertising spend in 2014 is setting records (up 24% in the UK over the last 5 years), with much of that moving online and to mobile.
- [marketing data pitfalls](https://marketoonist.com/2014/11/marketing-data.html) - Marketers are increasingly driven by data. But as I touched on a couple weeks ago, we have to be careful with what data we choose to listen to.
- [innovation catch-22](https://marketoonist.com/2014/11/innovation.html) - Organizations often give mixed signals with innovation. There is a constant drumbeat to come up with the new ideas that will take a business forward. Yet, there is also resistance to change and pressure to maintain the status quo. It’s an innovation catch-22.
- [personalization](https://marketoonist.com/2014/11/personalization.html) - Marketing is getting increasingly personalized. Mobile technology is particular is making it easier than ever for marketers to personalize their message to consumers. But “personalization” doesn’t necessarily mean “personal.” Personalization is a blunt instrument. It’s often inaccurate. And when marketing tries to personalize, but misses the mark, the effect can be more annoying that not personalizing at all.
- [programmatic advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2014/11/programmatic.html) - Programmatic technology is fundamentally changing advertising. Programmatic is an auction-based system where ads are bought and served across the web to a specific audience in real time.
- [consumer attention span](https://marketoonist.com/2014/10/attentionspan.html) - In 2000, the attention span of the modern consumer was 12 seconds. It’s now 8 seconds. The average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds.
- [retargeting ads](https://marketoonist.com/2014/10/retargeting-ads.html) - Retargeting has taken the advertising world by storm. No longer do advertisers have to hope that an audience they want will be found at a particular publisher. They can chase audiences everywhere based on some signal of intent, independent of publishers.
- [our startup idea](https://marketoonist.com/2014/10/our-startup-idea.html) - It has never been easier to start a business. The infrastructure is in place to get businesses going for lower investment than just about any time in history.
- [7 deadly sins of social media marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2014/09/socialmedia.html) - Last week, the new social network Ello sparked a tremendous amount of attention with its promise to become the Anti-Facebook. Ello is now receiving 45,000 hourly requests to join, based primarily on a short manifesto on advertising and social media:
- [new and improved](https://marketoonist.com/2014/09/new.html) - If a brand has to shout that it's "new and improved", it's probably not all that new or improved. "New and improved" is the easiest and lamest of marketing claims. Marketers use it to create new spin on an old brand, but it's often not much more than label-deep. It’s the easiest marketing lever to pull.
- [product bundles](https://marketoonist.com/2014/09/bundling.html) - “There are only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is to unbundle,” Jim Barksdale said 20 years ago at Netscape. I was struck by a recent HBR interview with Jim and fellow Netscape alum Mark Andreessen about the role of bundling and unbundling in business.
- [the power of "word of mouth"](https://marketoonist.com/2005/09/the-power-of-word-of-mouth.html)
- [rebranding](https://marketoonist.com/2014/09/rebranding.html) - Brand teams are quick to rebrand when they hit a rough patch. But they sometimes forget that a brand is more than a company name, logo, tagline, or ad creative. And that a shiny new brand identity won't automatically solve all of the problems of the business.
- [marketing authenticity](https://marketoonist.com/2014/08/authenticity-2.html) - Marketers are increasingly pushing for “transparency” and “authenticity” in their brand communication. But, for many brands, this is surface-deep. They want advertising that makes them look authentic and transparent without actually being authentic and transparent.
- [ice bucket challenge](https://marketoonist.com/2014/08/icebucket.html) - No sooner had the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge started trending than social media marketers were trying to reverse-engineer it to figure out what made it go viral. It’s been dubbed “the viral event of the summer”. I’ve seen a several write ups on how brands can apply the lessons of the Ice Bucket Challenge to their marketing and create the “next” ice bucket challenge (but to benefit their brands rather than a worthy cause like ALS).
- [product placement](https://marketoonist.com/2014/08/productplacement.html) - Product placement has been around since the early days of entertainment, but it feels like we’re in an awkward adolescent period, weird growth spurts and all. As the entire nature of entertainment shifts and watchers can more easily tune out commercial breaks, marketers are leaping head-first into the shows themselves.
- [creative review](https://marketoonist.com/2014/07/creative.html) - How we review creative is as valuable a part of the creative process as the creative itself. Yet the creative review is often overlooked and frequently misunderstood. The most talented designers in the world will create mediocre work if the creative process is managed in a mediocre way.
- [sharing personal data with marketers](https://marketoonist.com/2014/07/personaldata.html) - Consumers are increasingly aware just how much personal data they’re sharing with marketers. Whether browsing online or shopping in a store with a loyalty card, consumers reveal a lot of themselves every time they interact with a brand.
- [how a brief becomes an ad](https://marketoonist.com/2014/06/im-just-a-brief.html) - The ad creative process can be just as circuitous and political as the classic Schoolhouse Rock video about how a bill becomes a law.
- [marketing technobabble](https://marketoonist.com/2014/06/technobabble.html) - Marketers can go a little trademark crazy. Sometimes we focus so much on the trademarked features of a product that we lose sight of the actual consumer need.
- [the art of product management](https://marketoonist.com/2012/08/the-art-of-product-management.html) - Feature creep is the ongoing addition of new features, over-complicating the original idea. It often comes from committees making compromises. It seems like there's always room for one more feature. At Square, Jack Dorsey's payment company, they call their product managers "Product Editors". Deciding what not to put into a product is more important than deciding what to put in.
- [brand guidelines](https://marketoonist.com/2014/06/brand-guidelines-2.html) - How Draconian are your Brand Guidelines? Many brands focus so much on maintaining consistency that they forget one of the most important goals of Brand Guidelines — inspiring creative work.
- [push marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2014/06/mobile.html) - There’s a fine line between Push and pushy. Marketers have an extraordinarily powerful tool in reaching consumers through their mobile devices. There is potential to deliver messaging to consumers that is perfectly matched to their intent.
- [marketing with a/b testing](https://marketoonist.com/2014/06/marketing-with-ab-testing.html) - The rise of A/B testing has transformed marketing. Marketers can now instantly test and adapt messaging based on live data. A change in something as minor as the color of a call-to-action button can lead to performance improvements though the whole marketing funnel.
- [sponsored posts](https://marketoonist.com/2014/05/sponsored-posts.html) - Hugh MacLeod once cartooned “If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they’d punch you in the face.” Nowhere is this more apparent than in social media, particularly as brands migrate their commercial messages from ads on the side to sponsored posts in the center. I had a chance to go to Facebook’s headquarters recently and was struck by something I heard. When your brand message sits in someone’s news feed between a friend’s birth announcement and another friend’s wedding pictures, your brand message had better be worth it.
- [pivot](https://marketoonist.com/2014/05/pivot.html) - My post last week on the innovation buzzword “disruptive” got me thinking about another overused and abused example in our corporate lexicon — “pivot”.
- [innovation strategery](https://marketoonist.com/2014/04/innovation-strategery.html) - Marketers are full of buzzwords, particularly when talking about innovation. Even the term “innovation” is a cliché in danger of losing its meaning.
- [big data analytics](https://marketoonist.com/2014/04/big-data-analytics.html) - Marketers have never had more data at their disposal. The opportunity to glean insights by crunching all of these new sources of data is pretty intoxicating. Yet having access to the data is only one part of the equation. Making sense of the data is the harder part.
- [mobile app](https://marketoonist.com/2014/04/mobile-app.html) - Marketers increasingly see mobile as an integral part of the marketing mix and have invested significantly in mobile apps. 92 of the world’s top 100 brands have at least one app on Apple’s app store.
- [the meeting after the meeting](https://marketoonist.com/2014/03/the-meeting-after-the-meeting.html) - The meeting after the meeting sometimes has more impact that the meeting itself. In many organizations, that’s where people share their real opinions and where the real decisions are made. A team might agree around the conference table, but then express doubts in the “safer” environment of the hallway or coffee shop.
- [ad retargeting](https://marketoonist.com/2014/03/retargeting.html) - Ad retargeting is on the rise — those ads that stalk you across the internet after you’ve even briefly visited a company’s site. Google is even testing cross-platform ad retargeting, so a site that you visit from your desktop can lead to ads served on your mobile devices.
- [growth hackers](https://marketoonist.com/2014/03/growth-hacking.html) - There’s a growing movement in Silicon Valley to replace “Marketers” with a new position called “Growth Hackers”. Some are claiming that startups should eliminate their marketing teams altogether.
- [a better mousetrap](https://marketoonist.com/2011/08/a-better-mousetrap.html) - “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” This is one of the most quoted innovation credos. Yet it’s also untrue. Innovation experts call this the “Better Mousetrap Fallacy”, because the credo focuses solely on the technology and not on the consumer. Consumers really don’t care about a better mousetrap. They care about fewer mice. Or s HBS marketing professor Ted Levitt put it, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”
- [multi-screen marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2014/02/multi-screen-marketing.html) - Arguably the biggest shift in consumer behavior in the last few years has been the explosion of devices and the number of screens in a consumer’s life. That has a major impact on media consumption and how marketers reach consumers.
- [pop-up advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2014/02/pop-up-advertising.html) - Few marketing tactics are as hated as the pop-ad ad. A Harris Interactive poll last year showed that Americans find irrelevant pop-up ads even more annoying than ads for male or female enhancement. Yet marketers continue to use them, aggressively. Pop-up ads are 49% more noticeable than other online ads types. I’ve heard marketers tout the high conversion rates from pop-up ads. It’s hard to argue with the numbers.
- [real-time marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2014/02/real-time-marketing.html) - Superbowl is always a showcase of the state of marketing. This year’s Superbowl was dominated by social media war rooms all trying to replicate last year’s Oreo moment. During the Superbowl power outage in 2013, Oreo tweeted “Power out? No problem” with an image that simply said “You can still dunk in the dark”.
- [math men and data-driven marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2013/05/mathmen.html) - This week, I'm traveling to Cincinnati to speak at Signal P&G. The theme of the event is "winning brand building at the speed of digital". I'm looking forward to visiting the birth place of brand management to reflect on all of the seismic changes happening in marketing.
- [inside the mind of the consumer](https://marketoonist.com/2014/01/mind-of-the-consumer.html) - It’s common for marketers to exaggerate the importance of their brands in consumers’ lives. Brand positioning statements are often written as if consumers constantly think and obsess about the brand. Social media from brands can make it sound like every consumer is a cult follower.
- [internet of things](https://marketoonist.com/2014/01/internet-of-things.html) - Last week’s news that Google would buy Nest triggered a lot of discussion on the future of marketing (this cartoon was inspired by a joking tweet from Valleywag’s Sam Biddle). Nest makes smart home devices like learning thermostats (which I personally love) and smoke alarms, with the goal of creating a conscious home. It also collects a lot of data.
- [brand butterfly](https://marketoonist.com/2010/11/brand-butterfly.html) - Every brand has some form of a brand butterfly, whether they call it a brand onion, a brand architecture, a brand key, a brand pyramid, a brand d.n.a, or a brand unicorn. It's the one-page blueprint of the brand. When written well, it can be an invaluable resource. It sparks new ideas and helps guide
- [branded hashtags](https://marketoonist.com/2014/01/branded-hashtags.html) - Marketers have gone hashtag crazy. Beyond Twitter and Instagram, Facebook recently incorporated hashtags into its platform. Hashtags are appearing in TV ads and on packaging. Some marketers are referring to hashtags as the new URL.
- [push notification marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2013/12/push-notification-marketing.html) - Forrester recently released a report on the future of push notifications (those messages that mobile apps send to your mobile device). “Moving forward, we expect to see push notifications integrated as a core component of any direct marketing and relationship program.”
- [naughty or nice](https://marketoonist.com/2013/12/naughty-or-nice.html) - Santa's not the only one who keeps a list of naughty and nice. We live in the age of consumer empowerment. Consumers can instantly share feedback on a meal at Yelp, a plumber at Angie's List, even an ex-boyfriend at Lulu. A Harvard Business School study showed that a one-star increase in Yelp leads to a 5 to 9 percent increase in revenue for restaurants. I stayed a hotel recently where the manager literally pleaded with me to leave a five-star review on TripAdvisor.
- [social network adoption](https://marketoonist.com/2013/12/social-network-adoption.html) - Marketers have been closely watching the explosive growth of the latest social network, Snapchat. The social app now shares more that 350m photos every day. Because of the one-to-one messaging and pictures that self-destruct after just a few seconds, it hasn't been obvious how brands could use Snapchat.
- [Christmas creep](https://marketoonist.com/2013/12/christmas-creep.html) - It's only a matter of time before holiday deals start lapping themselves. Last year, Target kicked off the Christmas shopping season with a holiday ad on October 7th, 79 days before Christmas and 3 weeks before Halloween. This year, Kmart upped the ante with a holiday ad on September 10th, 106 days before Christmas and right in the midst of back-to-school.
- [customer acquisition](https://marketoonist.com/2013/11/acquisition.html) - Many brands place far more emphasis on new customer acquisition than on customer retention. Yet it costs five times more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing customer. According to Bain, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company's profitability by 75%.
- [focus group](https://marketoonist.com/2013/11/focus-group.html) - Market research is a vital part of marketing. Understanding the consumer is the foundation of every meaningful brand. Yet market research can go overboard. Focus groups are frequently called as a knee-jerk response to just about everything. Not every question needs to be validated with a focus group. And not every focus group needs to run the same way.
- [interruption marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2013/11/interruption.html) - I'm in Turkey this week to speak at Brand Week Istanbul. I always love seeing how things are merchandized, marketed, and sold in different countries. The Grand Bazaar is a dizzying experience with over 3,000 shops trying to get the attention of between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors on a typical day (I preferred the smaller bazaars tucked in smaller streets around the city). With so much competition, shopkeepers can be pretty aggressive, trying every technique to interrupt people before they get to the next shopkeeper.
- [making the leap](https://marketoonist.com/2010/10/making-the-leap.html) - I recently decided to take my cartooning to the next level. Ten years ago this week, I started drawing cartoons in business school. Since then, I've doodled nights, weekends, and early mornings, dreaming of a day when I could do it full-time. The hard part wasn't finding the idea to turn my cartooning into a business.
- [brand purpose](https://marketoonist.com/2013/10/brand-purpose.html) - Partly to appeal to Millennials, many brands are reframing what they do to sound purpose-driven. Many marketers are feeling pressure to define their “brand purpose” and create campaigns with a higher cause.
- [marketing flash mob](https://marketoonist.com/2013/10/flashmob.html) - Marketing flash mobs peaked with T-Mobile's famous "Life is for Sharing" series in 2009, but they are still going strong. Samsung did one earlier this year. My local farmer's market staged a flash mob. There's even a turnkey flash mob agency.
- [online reviews](https://marketoonist.com/2013/09/online-reviews.html) - The rise of the online review is one of the more transformative shifts in marketing. Giving or reading feedback on just about any brand (personal or corporate) is only a smartphone touch away. Brand communication is increasingly coming from sources other than the brand.
- [cmo of the month](https://marketoonist.com/2013/10/cmo-of-the-month.html) - "As a CMO, you get one shot, then you're pushed out," said Tony Pace, CMO at Subway. The tenure of the average Chief Marketing Officer has been increasing, but it's still the shortest tenure of any executive role. As recently at 2006, the average CMO lasted only 23 months. Starbucks replaced their head of marketing five times in seven years. Coca-Cola replaced theirs four times in six years. FedEx Kinko's changed theirs three times in five years.
- [branded content](https://marketoonist.com/2013/09/branded-content.html) - One of the takeaways from Advertising Week in New York last week is the rise of "branded content". Brands are embracing the potential of their roles as publishers and the potential of branded content to blur the lines between advertising and entertainment. It seems like every week, I hear the expression, "Content is King".
- [working with designers](https://marketoonist.com/2013/09/working-with-designers.html) - The design community has been in a tizzy since Marissa Mayer shared the shallow design process that led to the new Yahoo logo. Over a weekend, Marissa personally rolled up her sleeves to micromanage the logo design with a small team.
- [marketing stunts](https://marketoonist.com/2013/09/marketing-stunts.html) - RedBull achieved marketing nirvana last year when they sponsored Felix Baumgartner's jump from a helium balloon in the stratosphere to become the first human to break the sound barrier without vehicular power.
- [short attention span marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2013/09/short-attention-span-marketing.html) - Marketers are increasingly challenged to create short-form media. Some of this shift is driven by new standards. Facebook will start offering 15-second video ads this Fall. Instagram video is capped at 15 seconds and Vine from Twitter is capped at only six seconds.
- [loyalty programs](https://marketoonist.com/2013/08/loyalty-programs.html) - Marketers often confuse loyalty with getting consumers to carry one more plastic card in a wallet already filled with plastic loyalty cards.
- [open innovation](https://marketoonist.com/2013/08/open-innovation.html) - Businesses have increasingly realized that they can't do innovation alone. Many have implemented open innovation programs to make it easier to bring in ideas from the outside world. As Nanako Mura from Kraft put it, "we recognize that we don't know everything."
- [marketing to millennials](https://marketoonist.com/2013/08/marketing-to-millennials.html) - Marketers are in a mad rush to target Millennials. They are the largest consumer group in history and expected to spend more than Baby Boomers by 2017. Millennials also came of age with a different relationship to marketing and brands. This creates tension as marketers figure out how to communicate to a new wave of consumers who can be resistant to marketing communication.
- [lifestyle brand](https://marketoonist.com/2013/07/lifestyle-brand.html) - Many brands aspire to become lifestyle brands. Lifestyle brands are seen as the pinnacle of marketing. Marketers elevate these brands beyond functional attribute to higher-order benefits. Consumers express their identities through these brands. This strategy promises differentiation and growth.
- [brand conversations](https://marketoonist.com/2013/07/brand-conversations.html) - Many brands are hardwired for one-way conversations. These brands work hard to limit the time actually engaging with consumers. They consider call centers as cost centers. They sometimes program the call center computer voice to say that "0" is not a valid option because they don't want to pay for anyone to talk to a live person.
- [multicultural marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2013/07/multicultural-marketing.html) - Walmart projects that 100% of its sales growth will come from multicultural customers. They are doubling their multicultural advertising spend. Marketers can't ignore the demographic trends. In the US, 93% of population growth is multicultural, nearing 40% of the population, and one in four babies born is Hispanic. To grow, marketers clearly need a strategy to drive penetration with multicultural consumers.
- [ad retargeting](https://marketoonist.com/2013/07/ad-retargeting.html) - If you have the feeling that ads are stalking you more than ever, you're right. Facebook pioneered advertising based on social signals (clicking "Like us on Facebook"). Recently they've embraced old-school ad retargeting too. Ads are popping up in news feeds and sidebars not just based on Likes, but also because of other websites users visited in the past. Twitter recently announced a similar move.
- [purpose-driven branding](https://marketoonist.com/2013/06/purpose.html) - "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it," Simon Sinek famously said. Marketers are all taught to define a "brand promise". The deeper opportunity is to understand our "brand purpose" - an ideal that drives everything a brand does.
- [authenticity and transparency](https://marketoonist.com/2013/06/authenticity.html) - Authenticity and transparency are two of the biggest marketing buzzwords right now (and have been gaining steam for a while). Nearly every case study and talk coming out of Cannes last week seemed to reference authenticity as a theme.
- [innovation funnel](https://marketoonist.com/2011/03/innovation-funnel.html) - Every company has some form of innovation funnel. The funnel is wide at the front to capture potential ideas and narrows to the select few that launch. Projects progress from the idea stage through design and ultimately to market. Amazingly, the average new product success rate is less than 10%. So companies spend a lot
- [skip this ad](https://marketoonist.com/2013/06/skip-this-ad.html) - In advertising, there's no such thing as a captive audience. It's easier than ever for people to tune out experiences they don't like (although, sadly, this doesn't apply to boring meetings). YouTube codified this with the "Skip This Ad" buttons on the ads that run before the content you actually want to see.
- [mobile is the new end cap](https://marketoonist.com/2013/06/mobile-is-the-new-end-cap.html) - Last week I spoke at Signal P&G, an event put on by P&G and Federated Media that brought a variety of tech thinkers (from Google, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.) to the birth place of brand management to talk about the future of marketing. Margo Georgiadis from Google shared an insight that struck me in particular: "mobile is the new end cap".
- [word-of-mouth marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2013/05/word-of-mouth-marketing.html) - Brand owners never really own the brand. Consumers do. I recently spoke at two events for Destination Marketing Association International. Their members are marketers tasked with driving tourism to their regions. I came across a tourism case study about who really "owns" a brand.
- [crowdsourcing ads](https://marketoonist.com/2013/05/crowdsourcing.html) - Marketers are increasingly crowdsourcing aspects of their campaigns and bringing fans into the creative process. Over 20% of the ads in the last Super Bowl used some form of crowdsourcing. In February, Hasbro let a Facebook survey pick which Monopoly piece would replace the iron. Surprise, surprise, the Internet picked a cat. Crowdsourcing can bring higher levels of engagement to a campaign and extend the buzz before and after the actual media buy.
- [controversy marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2013/05/controversy-marketing.html) - There's a old marketing axiom that advertising's greatest enemy isn't rejection; it's indifference. Mountain Dew and Hyundai both tested this philosophy in the last two weeks with ads they ultimately pulled for being too offensive.
- [cost-cutting](https://marketoonist.com/2013/04/cost-cutting.html) - There is constant pressure in business to improve margins through cost-cutting. This is particularly true in 2013, when consumer confidence is shaky and many community costs (particularly in food) are on the rise.
- [memevertising](https://marketoonist.com/2013/04/memevertising.html) - Lately, every new Internet meme seems to attract a stampede of brands eager to get in on the action. Memevertising is joining more and more marketing plans as the latest "get viral quick" scheme. Internet memes by definition tap the popular psyche. This creates an opportunity for brands to have a voice in cultural conversations. Yet as more brands gatecrash the party, often late and without bringing much that's interesting or new, the results can fall flat.
- [target market](https://marketoonist.com/2013/04/target-market-2.html) - Identifying a target market for a brand is one of the trickiest but most essential aspects of marketing. Yet it can feel like a police dragnet. Too often, marketers define target markets as everyone who could conceivably buy a particularly product: "women, aged 18-49".
- [april fools](https://marketoonist.com/2013/03/april-fools.html) - Marketers have long embraced April Fool's Day. But lately, more and more marketers have been taking April Fool's to consumers. Brand hoaxes can be great ways to connect to audiences with humor. They are also risky because they can so easily backfire.
- [when traditional advertising goes digital](https://marketoonist.com/2013/03/digital.html) - We're in the awkward adolescent stage of integrated media. There is still a great divide between traditional and digital brand communication. This becomes obvious in the disjointed way that many brands talk to consumers offline and online and the clumsy calls-to-action from traditional media to digital.
- [like us](https://marketoonist.com/2013/03/like-us.html) - We're still figuring out what it means to be a social brand. This month, Facebook redesigned its News Feed to provide even more real estate to advertising. They also announced that the sponsored stores they've created in News Feeds haven't turned off users the way they feared. That means that opportunities will continue to increase for brands to elbow in front of their audiences socially.
- [where complacent brands go](https://marketoonist.com/2013/03/where-complacent-brands-go.html) - I heard once that there are three types of companies: rule makers, rule followers, and rule breakers. It's easy for rule makers and rule followers to get complacent, particularly in industries that have been around for a while.
- [ads worth spreading](https://marketoonist.com/2013/03/ads-worth-spreading.html) - Last week, I had the great fortune of going to TED in person after watching the talks online for years. As a marketer, I was struck by a TED project called "Ads Worth Spreading". Each year, TED and YouTube award ten ads that are "worth spreading". As TED Curator Chris Anderson put it, "We're seeking to reverse the trend of ads being aggressively forced on users. We want to nurture ads so good you choose to watch -- and share."
- [brand loyalty](https://marketoonist.com/2013/02/brand-loyalty-2.html) - Brand loyalty can be pretty fickle. Marketers often overestimate the motivations of their brand loyalists and how prominent their brands are in their consumers' lives.
- [super bowl advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2013/02/super-bowl-advertising.html) - Super Bowl ads have long rivaled the Big Game. Thanks to social media, the ads now spread far beyond the game itself. The actual Super Bowl media time is an increasingly smaller part of the campaign. Many brands release their ads (or at least a teaser) in advance. YouTube recently shared that ads that ran online before the Super Bowl generated 9 million views compared to 1.3 million for those that waited (600% more views).
- [brainstorming ideas](https://marketoonist.com/2013/01/brainstorming-ideas.html) - Idea generation at many companies is sporadic and haphazard. It often starts with a random one-off brainstorming meeting. Then a handful of ideas run the organizational gauntlet. A very small number of those ideas ever see the light of day.
- [showrooming](https://marketoonist.com/2013/01/showrooming.html) - One of the biggest threats to traditional retail is "showrooming", where consumers check out products in a store, but then go online to buy. Mobile devices have made prices fully transparent to everyone. Since traditional retailers carry higher overhead than online retailers, it's a real marketing challenge. Do retailers drop their prices and cut their margins, or do they find a way to justify the premium versus online?
- [packaging redesign](https://marketoonist.com/2013/01/packaging-redesign.html) - A packaging redesign is often the first lever that marketers pull when they are either new to a brand or facing a marketing challenge. If all else fails, redesign the packaging and slap a "New Look. Same Great Taste" burst on it.
- [terms of use](https://marketoonist.com/2012/12/terms-of-use.html) - The large print giveth and the small print taketh away. Consumers rarely read the small print. That's partly because so much of it is written in legalese that is not easily understood. Who honestly reads the lengthy "terms of use" disclaimers we have to accept before using a mobile app or the iTunes clickthrough agreement?
- [our social plan](https://marketoonist.com/2012/12/our-social-plan.html) - Brands are historically hardwired to communicate in one direction. Ever since P&G invented brand management in the 1930′s, brands have been designed to hammer home their single-minded propositions as efficiently as possible.
- [creative brief](https://marketoonist.com/2012/11/creative-brief-2.html) - This cartoon follows this theme of the Marketing Strategy post a couple weeks ago. Jennifer Nelson shared a comment on that post that struck a particular chord with me: "If you can’t invest the time in developing and aligning on a good brief, why should your company invest (potentially) millions of dollars in A&P to execute it?"
- [attila the manager](https://marketoonist.com/2012/11/attila-the-manager.html) - Apple and Microsoft both ousted executives in the last few weeks. Scott Forstall was Apple's head of iOS software and Steven Sinofsky ran Windows. Both managers caused a lot of friction because of their abrasive management styles, but their approaches were overlooked for many years because they got results. The shakeups got me thinking about the management archetype of the "Brilliant Jerk".
- [marketing strategy](https://marketoonist.com/2012/11/marketing-strategy.html) - In an ad shoot, we often hear someone say, "we'll fix it in post-production". This usually happens when there's been a mistake, but not severe enough to reshoot the scene. Yet we learn the hard way that there's only so much that we can actually fix in post-production. Our source footage limits how much we can do later. It's often worth the extra effort of reshooting the scene to make sure we get it right.
- [disaster marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2012/11/disaster-marketing.html) - Marketers often try to tap what's happening in the news. The reasoning is that if they can take over water cooler conversations, their brand message will travel that much faster. Yet many brands misfired last week during Hurricane Sandy. In an attempt to capitalize on the storm news, they outraged consumers with self-serving and insensitive promotions.
- [marketing funnel](https://marketoonist.com/2012/10/marketing-funnel.html) - The marketing funnel (sometimes called the purchase funnel or customer funnel) maps a consumer's journey toward the purchase of a product or service. Marketers spend a lot of time thinking about the stages of that journey and how to maximize the number who make it from one stage to the next.
- [holiday advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2012/10/holiday-advertising.html) - It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and it's not even Halloween. Many retailers like Restoration Hardware are already decorating for the winter holidays. Target even aired a Christmas TV ad on October 14, three weeks before Halloween and six weeks before Thanksgiving. The Target voice-over announces, "The holidays are coming and they're gonna be big".
- [six types of advertisements](https://marketoonist.com/2012/10/five-types-of-advertisements.html) - Facebook debuted its first ad campaign ten days ago to celebrate its one billion user milestone. The ad has been ridiculed and parodied for it's confusing and overwrought story centered on the message, "Chairs are like Facebook". It's one of the more inadvertently hilarious pieces of marketing communication I've seen.
- [cannibalize](https://marketoonist.com/2012/10/cannibalize.html) - "If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will," Steve Jobs famously said. Cannibalization risk is a major factor in evaluating innovation. No product is 100% incremental so we have to decide whether new products will more than offset the sales loss of what's already on the shelf. What's often left out of the equation though is the risk of our current products becoming obsolete no matter what we do.
- [corporate apologies](https://marketoonist.com/2012/09/corporate-apologies.html) - Most corporate apologies sound the same. They're driven more by risk management than by empathy. That's why genuine corporate apologies are so surprising, and powerful. Apple CEO Tim Cook's apology for the Maps App last week was unusually good. Apple even went so far as to recommend alternatives from rivals Microsoft and Google.
- [location marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2012/09/location-marketing.html) - Now that everyone carries a GPS-enabled supercomputer in their pockets, the marketing possibilities are endless. Location-based marketing is the new frontier. But, as with any new technology at a marketer's disposal, the value is not in the technology, it's in what great marketing ideas the technology enables. Location-based marketing won't work if the goal is just to interrupt more effectively. The big ideas matter more than ever.
- [agreed on the hashtag](https://marketoonist.com/2012/09/agreed-on-the-hashtag.html) - Last week, I gave the keynote at Google’s marketing conference in New York (which you can read as a cartoon-filled post here). I spoke about how to create “marketing worth sharing” and that technology can’t save a boring idea. One of the bigger themes of the day was the shift needed in how marketers tell stories. Many of us were trained in the Single Minded Proposition school of marketing, where you succinctly repeat what your brand stands for in every brand communication: “Volvo equals safety”, “Volvo equals safety”, “Volvo equals safety”.
- [truth in advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2012/09/truth-in-advertising.html) - "Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story," the maxim goes. Aside from politicians, marketers have the worst rap for bending (or breaking) the truth. We're so used to disingenuous marketing that we come to expect it. The large print giveth what the small print taketh away. Quotes in political ads are always taken out of context. The fast food sandwich never looks like the photo. No wonder consumers don't trust most of the marketing they see.
- [earned media](https://marketoonist.com/2012/09/earned-media.html) - Earned media is on the rise as marketers scrutinize the effectiveness of traditional paid media. Marketing plans have always juggled some form of paid media (buying an ad), owned media (building a web site or store), and earned media (coverage in press or word of mouth). But the lines have blurred between these three forms of media. Some ad agencies have started hiring Earned Media Directors. Some PR agencies have started placing media buys.
- [5 types of social media strategies](https://marketoonist.com/2012/08/types-of-social-media-strategies.html) - "It does not matter how awesome your product is or your presentation or your post. Your awesome thing matters ONLY to the extent that it serves the user's ability to be a little more awesome". I stumbled across this quote from Kathy Sierra and it struck me how important this rule is for social media, yet how rarely it's followed.
- [we appreciate your business](https://marketoonist.com/2012/08/we-appreciate-your-business.html) - Southwest Airlines describes itself as a customer service company that happens to fly planes. Contrast the Southwest philosophy with the Grinch mentality of many other airlines. I heard recently that "SLF" is aircrew slang for "passengers". It stands for "Self-Loading Freight". Many brands outwardly market themselves very differently from the actual brand experience.
- [the power of ambush marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2012/08/the-power-of-ambush-marketing.html) - One of the great marketing campaigns from the 2012 Olympics didn't come from an official sponsor. It came from a headphone brand called Beats by Dr. Dre. The Beats brand customized headphones in national colors and then strategically sampled them to athletes. Athletes wore Beats everywhere in the games, particularly in swimming. This is "ambush
- [agency pitch](https://marketoonist.com/2012/07/agency-pitch.html) - The right client/agency fit can make all the difference in marketing. Yet the typical RFP cattle call used to make that match is broken. The hoops clients give agencies to jump through in a pitch don't really mimic the working relationship. Agencies are also often asked to create actual campaigns for free that may never
- [one size fits none](https://marketoonist.com/2012/07/one-size-fits-none.html) - "People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole," an HBS professor named Theodore Levitt famously told his students. Too often, marketers get wrapped up in the features and functions of their products, rather than solving the actual problems of the consumer. That leads to pointless one-upmanship versus competition and over-bundled products that don't handle any one feature particularly well. Marketers also tend to average out all of the feedback from consumers, ending up with one-size-fits-none products.
- [single-minded proposition](https://marketoonist.com/2012/07/single-minded-proposition.html) - At the heart of a great marketing story is usually a "single-minded proposition", or SMP. The SMP sums up the most important thing you can say about the brand or product. It ignites creative briefs and serves as a rally cry for marketing communication. Most single-minded propositions resemble a peace treaty more than a rally cry however.
- [new product adoption](https://marketoonist.com/2007/02/new-product-adoption.html)
- [brand loyalist](https://marketoonist.com/2012/07/brand-loyalist.html) - Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts described our goal as marketers is to inspire "loyalty beyond reason". What better proof point than consumers who get a brand permanently tattooed on their skin? Last week, a rum brand called Sailor Jerry held a marketing event in Brooklyn where they gave away free drinks to everyone willing to get a Sailor Jerry tattoo. Two hundred people lined up. One fan named Sebastian said..."
- [our mission](https://marketoonist.com/2012/07/our-mission.html) - Every brand needs an anthem. Most settle for a humdrum mission statement or competitive benchmark instead. In my recent "Brand Laddering" cartoon, I parodied brands that stretch too far beyond believability, trying to make corn chips stand for world peace. I think there's just as much to make fun of with brands that don't try to stand for anything at all.
- [brand laddering](https://marketoonist.com/2012/06/brand-laddering.html) - "Brand Laddering" is one of the most common marketing tools. To drive growth and loyalty, marketers frequently work to elevate benefits of the brand from technical to functional to emotional. But there's a risk of over-reaching, particularly when brands aim for abstract emotional benefits not really supported by the product story. Brandgym founder David Taylor calls this phenomenon "brand ego tripping".
- [your ad here](https://marketoonist.com/2012/06/your-ad-here.html) - I heard recently that the average click-through-rate of a banner ad is less than the average failure rate of birth control. I stumbled across this eye tracking study showing how people look at web content. Whether a quick scanning, partial reading, or thorough reading, the eyes rarely took in the ads. The study calls this "banner blindness".
- [groupon](https://marketoonist.com/2012/06/groupon.html) - The last time I tried to redeem a Groupon, I arrived at the sushi restaurant to find an "out of business" sign in the window. The restaurant had launched a daily deal promotion six months before. Half-price sushi at a good restaurant is a great deal for consumers (more interesting than the eyebrow waxing and air duct cleaning deals I usually see). Sure enough, the restaurant was suddenly and constantly full, and I saw Groupon printouts on most of the tables every time I went. From all the traffic, it looked like a very successful restaurant -- until the moment they went out of business.
- [our facebook page](https://marketoonist.com/2012/05/our-facebook-page.html) - The unrequited hype of the Facebook IPO last week echoes the unrequited hype many brands experience with social media in general. There's a get rich quick mentality - a "Like Grab". Many brands believe if you just build it, the audience will come. The problem is that this sets the false expectation that social media is easy. Social media holds tremendous potential, but it requires a long-term commitment. Many brands give up early when social media doesn't immediately live up to the stratospheric hype.
- [join my network](https://marketoonist.com/2012/05/join-my-network.html) - I heard someone say recently that the difference between networking and not working is one letter. I'm amazed how many LinkedIn requests are indiscriminately sent to acquaintances or strangers without even personalizing the generic message. Many of these interactions start and end with that LinkedIn invitation. LinkedIn makes networking easier, but it can also make us lazy. LinkedIn makes networking easier, but can also make us lazy. I'm amazed how many LinkedIn requests are indiscriminately sent to acquaintances or strangers without even personalizing the generic message. Many of these invitations start and end with that LinkedIn invitation.
- [where the wild ideas are](https://marketoonist.com/2012/05/where-the-wild-ideas-are.html) - The world needs wild ideas. But every wild idea faces a road of obstacles to bring it to life. The hard work comes after the brainstorming rumpus when you have to bring others along. Few of these obstacles are as rough as the devil's advocate. IDEO founder Tom Kelley once called the devil's advocate the single greatest threat to innovation:
- [a good idea](https://marketoonist.com/2012/04/a-good-idea.html) - One of my favorite idea killers is the statement, "if it were really a good idea, someone would already be doing it." In innovation, we often fixate too much on the competition. We benchmark and validate ideas based what everyone else is doing. This cycle of one-upmanship makes it hard to launch something truly new and different. It also creates a lot of me-toos.
- [planned obsolescence](https://marketoonist.com/2012/04/planned-obsolescence.html) - Every time I buy a new technology product, I wonder how long it will last. I salivate over anything new from Apple. But, I've had a number of Apple products fail recently. My Apple Time Capsule, marketed as a "revolutionary storage device", died after just two years, unfixable, losing all the files it was designed to store. My two-year old iPhone seems as clunky and quirky as an old car. The iPhone battery is one of the quickest components to fail, but there's no easy way to change it.
- [gamify](https://marketoonist.com/2012/04/gamify.html) - The gamification bandwagon continues, promising customer engagement and loyalty. What some marketers miss is that gamification means a lot more than badges, points, mayorships, and leader boards. Those game mechanics don't necessarily create experiences worth playing. If you build it, they won't necessarily come.
- [powerpoint the idea](https://marketoonist.com/2012/03/powerpoint-the-idea.html) - We all know the IDEO maxim, "Fail Faster, Succeed Sooner". Rapid prototyping is a key principle of successful innovation. The sooner we make prototypes, the sooner we figure out what works, what doesn't, and what to make in the next prototype. Yet marketers are quicker to PowerPoint than to prototype. We spend more time on PowerPoint decks to articulate and communicate ideas than actually bringing them to life.
- [creativity by committee](https://marketoonist.com/2012/03/creativity-by-committee.html) - It is a lot easier to kill an idea than to create one. Groups are often better equipped to critique than to create. I was struck by a recent NY Times article on the challenges of group creativity: "The Rise of the New Groupthink": "Decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases … The reasons brainstorming fails are instructive for other forms of group work too. People in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work; they instinctively mimic others' opinions and lose sight of their own; and, often succumb to peer pressure."
- [go viral](https://marketoonist.com/2012/03/go-viral.html) - The Kony video famously generated 70 million views last week. It left many marketers thinking of the "viral video" as a silver bullet. If a viral video could raise so much awareness of an Ugandan warlord, then maybe a viral video could raise awareness of a brand's single minded proposition. Marketers often add viral videos to marketing plans as if "viral" is as predictable as the circulation in a coupon drop or the number of samples in a sampling event. What marketers forget is that no one can create a viral video. We can only create quality content that may or may not go viral.
- [pinterest marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2012/03/pinterest-marketing.html) - Pinterest is the talk of the marketing town. It's the fastest growing social network, stars a highly engaged high-income audience, and is driving more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, and MySpace combined. As brands jump on the Pinsanity bandwagon, remember the lesson from every social network that preceded it. What's more important than the platform is what we're asking our audiences to share. It's not about the network. It's about the content. More than ever, brands need a plan for content worth sharing.
- [design thinking](https://marketoonist.com/2012/02/design-thinking.html) - Design thinking is regularly talked about in business, but design is often relegated to a supporting role. Two years ago, I spent a couple days at IDEO, seeing their approach to design thinking first hand. IDEO pioneered much of what the business world knows about design thinking. IDEO calls it human-centered design. In contrast, many organizations follow heritage-centered design.
- [what ads say](https://marketoonist.com/2012/02/what-ads-say.html) - This cartoon is inspired by one of my favorite Gary Larson cartoons, showing two panels of a dog owner scolding his pet to stay out of the garbage. The first panel illustrates "what we say to dogs". The second panel shows "what they hear", with every word (except the dog's name) replaced by "blah blah blah". Consumers have this same type of selective hearing.
- [social media ROI](https://marketoonist.com/2012/02/social-media-roi.html) - Few topics generate as many deer-in-headlight looks from marketers as social media ROI. It's hard to know what to measure and it's tricky to tie social media efforts directly to business results. A recent survey from the Chartered Institute of Marketers showed that very few marketers can measure the effectiveness of social media. Nearly a third describe social media as not at all effective.
- [the five stages of a PR disaster](https://marketoonist.com/2012/02/the-five-stages-of-a-pr-disaster.html) - I started sketching this cartoon weeks ago after hearing that Carnival offered a voucher for 30% off future cruises to passengers of the Costa Condordia. Coincidentally this was before last week's dramatic blunders of Susan G Komen for the Cure.
- [the social super bowl](https://marketoonist.com/2012/01/the-social-super-bowl.html) - Next Sunday’s Super Bowl will be one of the most social media integrated events ever, including a 2,800-square-foot social media command center built for the game. Super Bowl advertisers are building social into their campaigns like never before. GM created a Chevy Game Time mobile app to answer trivia, win prizes, and engage during the game. Coke is hosting a live game day watching party on Facebook with its polar bears reacting to the Super Bowl and social media in real time. Others have been drip-feeding teasers of their ads on social media for weeks leading up the games.
- [free sample](https://marketoonist.com/2012/01/free-sample.html) - How we execute matters a lot more than which tactics we execute. A few years ago, we thought sampling would help tell the brand story person-to-person. We soon discovered that most in-store sampling treated all brands the same. The sampling staff did their jobs, but it was obvious that our brand was just one of many. They had sampled oatmeal the day before and were sampling a new potato crisp flavor the next day. We were just the brand du jour.
- [a surefire hit](https://marketoonist.com/2007/06/a-surefire-hit.html) - The inspiration for this week's cartoon came courtesy of Satyam Viswanathan, who works in brand management in India. I just love getting emails like his from other parts of the world. It goes to show that dysfunctional marketing shenanigans are universal.
- [market research](https://marketoonist.com/2012/01/market-research.html) - My big brand training taught me the “test, test, test, test, launch big” school of market research. I’m a big believer in the power of market research when done well. But I’ve also experienced the purgatory of over-testing. Over-testing limits our ability to move quickly and delays getting our ideas into the real world. I find inspiration in the philosophy of Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress: “Usage is like oxygen for ideas.
- [loyalty](https://marketoonist.com/2012/01/loyalty.html) - The holy grail of marketing is loyalty. Every marketing plan includes a flow chart on how to migrate consumers from awareness to trial to repeat to loyalty. Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts even defines a brand as "loyalty beyond reason". Yet many brands approach loyalty primarily through loyalty programs and loyalty cards that bear little relationship to true loyalty.
- [product proliferation](https://marketoonist.com/2012/01/product-proliferation.html) - Some brands are line extension machines. To jockey for shelf space, they launch waves of new SKUs each year, often without meaningful differentiation from what is already there. I'm sure there are category management justifications for every niche item, but most supermarket shelves are cluttered and hard to shop. Does Crest really need 40 varieties of toothpaste? Clutter causes confusion and confusion causes paralysis.
- [on the 12th day of Christmas, retailers gave to me](https://marketoonist.com/2011/12/12thday.html) - It's beginning to look a lot like January, even with nearly a week left until Christmas. Retailers started post-Christmas markdowns extra early this year.
- [mobile strategy](https://marketoonist.com/2011/12/mobile-strategy.html) - I heard Crossing the Chasm author Geoffrey Moore share that the most important moment in mobile adoption was December 25, 2010, when executives around the world opened up the new iPads their families had given them for Christmas. Suddenly, mobile made the corporate agenda, because the iPads made it personal, in ways that even smart phones hadn't. One year later, we all know the pervasive role of mobile in our own lives. No surprise that mobile is one of the top focus areas in 2012 marketing plans.
- [death by powerpoint](https://marketoonist.com/2011/12/death-by-powerpoint.html) - PowerPoint presentations may not have actually killed anyone, but they've sure killed many an idea. Our ideas are only as good as how we communicate them. Yet it is common to neuter ideas with mind-numbing slide presentations. We sometimes assume the longer and more verbose the slide deck, the more credibility our idea will have.
- [social media snake oil](https://marketoonist.com/2011/11/social-media-snake-oil.html) - Social media is not a cure-all. Yet it is often treated as a marketing magic elixir. It can be difficult to sort the promise from the hype. In Hierarchy of Contagiousness, Dan Zarrella poses the question, “are you a snake-oil salesman or are you a scientist?”
- [health claims](https://marketoonist.com/2011/11/health-claims.html) - I thought the "Treats ED" juice claim in this cartoon was an exaggeration until I learned that the FDA warned POM Wonderful last year to stop making that exact claim. The FDA also sited POM for claims related to LDL cholesterol, promoting a healthy heart and prostate, reducing the length and severity of colds, and slowing prostate tumor growth. There's a health claim arms race underway in food marketing. One of the fastest growing food categories today is functional foods, which are fortified to give extra health benefits.
- [carve by committee](https://marketoonist.com/2011/10/carving-by-committee.html) - It can be tempting to push for consensus from a wide team in a creative project. Yet consensus makes no one happy. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington shared this perspective: "There’s a saying I love: “a camel is a horse designed by committee.” A variation is “a Volvo is a Porsche designed by committee.” When there are too many cooks in the kitchen all you get is a mess."
- [8 types of leader](https://marketoonist.com/2011/10/8-types-of-leader.html) - Last week I talked to a former Harvard Business School professor about leadership. He said he he was surprised how little leadership appears on the business school curriculum. Sure, there's one required leadership class first year, but it's often not taken as seriously as the other subjects. It is sometimes perceived as a soft, fuzzy, even unteachable, skill. Yet, leadership is the single most important thing we can do. Great leaders can move mountains. So why is it so often treated as an afterthought?
- [7 deadly sins of marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2011/10/7-deadly-sins-of-marketing.html) - This cartoon was partly inspired by a small irreverent San Francisco clothing company called Betabrand. They compete against far larger fashion companies and can't win on traditional media spending, so they are forced to do things differently. On Thanksgiving last year, Betabrand created the very funny Gluttony Pants, launched to "honor the rich American tradition of overindulgence." It includes three buttons for waistline expansion during the Thanksgiving meal and comes with its own napkin. Betabrand didn't have a traditional marketing budget, but the Gluttony Pants inspired Conan O'Brien to talk about them in his monologue that week.
- [content marketing 101](https://marketoonist.com/2011/10/content-marketing-101.html) - I talked with Content Rules co-author Ann Handley last week about content marketing. She shared this insight: "With businesses jumping on the Content bandwagon, they have a tremendous opportunity to do some great thing, to connect with their audiences, to be creative! But instead I usually see press releases recycled as blog posts. Or Twitter stream full of broadcast ad messages. And the like."
- [direct marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2011/07/direct-marketing.html) - Not all direct marketing is spam, but a lot of it is. Whether delivered by email, phone, text, post (or mafia henchman), a lot of direct mail is unwanted and unsolicited. To give a sense of scale, at least 85% of all email now sent is spam. Yet the response rate is absurdly low. The
- [evolution of creativity](https://marketoonist.com/2011/10/evolution-of-creativity.html) - "All children are artists," Pablo Picasso famously said. "The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." As adults, I think we often forget how creative we are, and were.
- [trojan horse](https://marketoonist.com/2011/09/trojan-horse.html) - I just spent several days at the Do Lectures, a magical event in Wales with the motto "ideas + energy = change". We talked a lot about the process of bringing ideas to life, and the barriers that stand in the way. A physician and technologist named Mohammed Al-Ubaydli shared the concept of "Trojan mice", which I found inspiring for anyone trying to introduce radical ideas to an organization or a market.
- [brand stretching](https://marketoonist.com/2011/09/brand-stretching.html) - One of the greatest temptations for a brand is whether to stretch into another category. When I worked on the Yoplait brand ten years ago, there was a debate whether to extend beyond yogurt into chocolate pudding. By a few measures, it made sense. Both yogurt and chocolate pudding are dairy products that sit in the refrigerated case. The market size for pudding is large. It would be efficient to spread brand investment across two categories. Yet the big question remained. Could the Yoplait brand stretch that far? How would pudding consumers feel about a Yoplait pudding? How would pudding affect the health halo that was part of the Yoplait brand?
- [gamification](https://marketoonist.com/2011/09/gamification.html) - Gamification is the latest shiny new object for marketers. It's the practice of adding game dynamics into your campaigns in order to drive participation and engagement. Badges, points, leader boards, and titles like "mayor" are no longer relegated to Foursquare or Farmville. They are popping up everywhere in marketing campaigns, rewarding consumers for all types of desired behavior. While the promise is high, most marketing applications I've seen have been very superficial, as if gameplay can magically make a non-engaging brand engaging.
- [what would Steve Jobs do?](https://marketoonist.com/2011/08/what-would-steve-jobs-do.html) - Following last week's news, it is hard to overstate the impact of Steve Jobs on the business psyche. He is arguably the most mythic business leader of our time. It has become almost cliche to reference Apple in a presentation. Apple and Steve Jobs are used as inspiration in every imaginable industry and domain. Articles have been written on the Steve Jobs of bicycles, of China, of meat (which is particularly funny because the real Steve doesn't even eat meat). Businesses often ponder "what would Steve do?"
- [advertising with QR codes](https://marketoonist.com/2011/08/qr.html) - Some marketers are calling 2011 "The Year of the QR code", predicting that mobile tagging will become mainstream. Those little black and white tags are popping up everywhere: in billboards, magazine ads, and even tombstones. QR codes carry the potential of connecting the offline world to the online world, giving a call to action to just about anything. And they use technology that is now in everyone's pockets. Yet, as with any new technology, QR codes are merely a means to an end for marketers. They are…
- [what the agency hears](https://marketoonist.com/2006/05/what-the-agency-hears.html)
- [target market](https://marketoonist.com/2011/08/target-market.html) - In marketing, one size does not fit all. One size fits none. Many brands try to be all things to all people. General Mills CMO Mark Addicks once commented that too many brands were targeted to "women, ages 25-49, with a pulse".
- [corporate telephone](https://marketoonist.com/2008/02/corporate-telep.html) - 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
- [outside the box](https://marketoonist.com/2011/07/outside-the-box.html) - All innovation occurs in some kind of box. It's always framed by some constraint, whether from the organization, the marketplace, or the consumer. In some cases, those constraints can spark even greater creativity. They can provide focus and a tangible challenge to rally the team. Think about the famous scene in Apollo 13, when an engineer briefed the team trying to save the astronauts: "We've got to find a way to make this [square CSM LiOH canister] fit into the hole for this [round LEM canister] using nothing but that [spare parts on board the ship]." Yet some constraints can preemptively hamper innovative thinking. It all depends on
- [social fatigue](https://marketoonist.com/2011/07/social-fatigue.html) - With the recent launch of Google+, marketers are excited to have a shiny new social network. Even though brands aren’t technically allowed on Google+ yet, some (like Ford Motor) are setting up personal profiles to get started and the marketing world is buzzing with possibilities.
- [evolution of an idea](https://marketoonist.com/2011/07/evolution-of-an-idea.html) - There is a natural selection to ideas. Ideas can be strengthened or weakened, launched or killed outright. Any organization is a Galapagos of ideas in various stages of evolution. The Survival of the Fittest law applies too, yet what is deemed "fittest" is in the eye of the organization. Very often, "fittest" means "safest". Those
- [improving service](https://marketoonist.com/2011/07/improving-service.html) - We often treat service as a cost center and promotions as a profit center. Yet amazing service can spread faster than any advertising and there can be a hidden cost from too many promotions. Years ago, I first discovered Utrecht, an art supply chain with stores usually staffed by artists. After an uncommonly helpful artist/salesperson
- [one night brand](https://marketoonist.com/2007/06/one_night_brand.html) - Have you ever experienced customer service so unsettling that you had to write a letter about it? Well, my therapy was this week's cartoon. I won't go into details (it's too painful to relive in full), but I think that "vonage" should be a new verb in Webster's to denote a really bad customer service
- [your call is very important](https://marketoonist.com/2011/02/your-call-is-very-important.html) - I sketched this cartoon while on hold with United Airlines last week. I spent a total of two hours and 12 minutes with United over four separate phone calls trying to get home from New York after the storm, so I had a lot of time to think about service. Many brands fall down on
- [compromise with legal](https://marketoonist.com/2011/06/compromise-with-legal.html) - A friend told me recently that if she listened to her lawyers on a new product launch, the packaging would be blank. Marketing and legal are often the functions with the greatest friction. A legal review of an idea is akin to running the gauntlet. There is inevitably risk in any idea. Removing the risk
- [marketing fairy dust](https://marketoonist.com/2011/06/marketing-fairy-dust.html) - There is no marketing fairy dust. Yet. However, we marketers often get excited about the marketing fad du jour. Kathy Sierra wrote a wonderful post recently called, "Pixie Dust and the Mountain of Mediocrity". It includes these insights: "We’re always searching for that secret formula, that magic pixie dust to sprinkle over our products, services,
- [holy groupon](https://marketoonist.com/2011/06/holy-groupon.html) - Before running any marketing promotion, give some thought to who you're attracting to your brand's congregation. Are they the customers you want? Are they in it for the long haul? These questions are particularly important with daily deal sites like Groupon, LivingSocial, and Google Offers. The sales windfall is tempting, but cautionary tales abound. One
- [whack-an-idea](https://marketoonist.com/2011/06/whack-an-idea.html) - So much of management is Whack-A-Mole, the classic arcade game where you club moles that pop up randomly. As soon as you've whacked one problem, another rears its head. I'm speaking at an innovation conference this week in Silicon Valley. It struck me that the trouble-shooting mentality in management is related to the idea-shooting mentality
- [creative brief](https://marketoonist.com/2011/05/creative-brief.html) - Creative briefs may be brief, but often they aren't very creative. Rupal Parekh wrote an AdAge article on poor creative briefs last week: "Marketers, Quit Blaming Your Agency -- It's Your Brief at Fault". It includes this illustrative quote from Casey Jones: "If you rated the industry on a scale from one to 10, with
- [still on facebook](https://marketoonist.com/2011/05/still-on-facebook.html) - Many brands bring an advertising campaign mindset to social media. A campaign has a start date and an end date. One campaign ends to make way for another. Yet success at social media requires sustained involvement. Social media doesn't start and end with a "Like". It grows over time. There can be individual campaigns as
- [news of the brand](https://marketoonist.com/2011/05/news-of-the-brand.html) - "Brands must be made into 'media properties'", announced Unilever CMO Keith Weed a couple months ago. Keith oversees the second largest marketing budget in the world at $3 billion, so his words carry a lot of weight. Brands are in the midst of recasting themselves as publishers. This shift conjures examples of self-serving advertorials, which
- [tower of eco babel](https://marketoonist.com/2007/09/tower-of-eco-ba.html) - I find many eco labels incredibly confusing (and I'm probably a lot closer to them than the average consumer). Because there are few regulatory standards, there seem to be a lot of "eco labels of the week". Even the standard ones are confusing, as you can see when the Vegan Society recently withdrew its certification
- [brand storytelling](https://marketoonist.com/2011/04/brand-storytelling.html) - Most brand storytelling wouldn't pass the bedtime story test. Yet there's never been a greater time for brands that can tell a story well. Content marketing is rapidly becoming a key plank of many marketing plans (now at 33% of the average marketing budget, according to Junta42). However, much of that content, whether distributed in
- [crisis management](https://marketoonist.com/2011/05/crisis-management.html) - Crisis management may not be one of the 4 Ps, but it is every much a part of marketing. How a company deals with a crisis is a far greater litmus test for the brand than how it executes an advertising campaign. Yet often the loudest voice in the midst of a crisis is legal.
- [social merit](https://marketoonist.com/2011/04/social-merit.html) - Social badges are not merit badges. Yet many brands treat social media as checking a box, rather than making a commitment. There's a "Like grab" underway to accumulate as many friends, fans, followers, and likes as possible. Social proof is not necessarily proof of quality. It's easy for brands to feel encouraged as a campaign
- [crossing the chasm cafe](https://marketoonist.com/2011/04/crossing-the-chasm-cafe.html) - I just learned I'm speaking at a conference this summer with Geoffrey Moore, author of "Crossing the Chasm". Geoffrey wrote the book with high-tech products in mind but I find the model useful when thinking about brands as well. Innovations progress across five distinct customer groups: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.
- [brandtube](https://marketoonist.com/2011/04/brandtube.html) - On Friday, I spoke at a social media conference with Aaron Calloway, a brand manager from Axe. He shared the story of the provocative Axe Detailer CYB Campaign, which earned Axe a Cannes Gold Lion and propelled the brand to major growth. It was ranked the single most viral video of 2010. At one point,
- [like us on facebook](https://marketoonist.com/2011/03/like-us-on-facebook.html) - The Facebook "Like" land grab is in full swing. Fan acquisition is becoming an increasing part of many marketing plans, in the midst of a lot of debate on the value of Facebook fans. Different pundits are increasingly trying to pinpoint a universal value to fans. As one observer summarized, "Your Facebook fans are worth
- [outsourcing social media](https://marketoonist.com/2011/03/outsourcing-social-media.html) - This week, brand marketers descended on Austin for SXSW Interactive in a bigger mass than ever before. Most are grappling with how to incorporate social media into their marketing plans. They face a decision on how much to insource and how much to outsource. Last week, Chrysler revealed some of the risks of outsourcing, when
- [low interest category](https://marketoonist.com/2011/03/low-interest-category.html) - There are no low interest categories. Only low interest brands. That's the main lesson I took away from five years at method. Even in a category as mundane as household cleaning products, you can create a brand with deep emotional connections. Marketers often limit ourselves by the conventional rules of a particular category. When we
- [return on indecision](https://marketoonist.com/2011/02/return-on-indecision.html) - I spent a few days in Vermont last week with Eureka Ranch founder, Doug Hall. At one point, Doug said, "if you're not meaningfully unique, you better be cheap". Any idea that is "meaningfully unique" is inherently risky because by definition you can't point to a precedent in the market. You have to step into
- [the marketers superbowl party](https://marketoonist.com/2003/01/the-marketers-superbowl-party.html)
- [mission statement](https://marketoonist.com/2011/01/mission-statement.html) - There's an interesting disagreement between Jim Stengel and Simon Clift, former CMOs of P&G and Unilever: "Who is Right: P&G or Unilever?". Jim is in the process of writing a book and teaching a UCLA class on the role of purpose and ideals in business. He invited Simon Clift to talk to students last week
- [idea voodoo](https://marketoonist.com/2011/01/idea-voodoo.html) - The founder of Geek Squad once described advertising as a "tax for unremarkable products". No one wants to launch unremarkable products, so why do the vast majority of new products fall into this camp? We've all come across idea killers, those behaviors and attitudes that sand the edges of ideas as they are brought to
- [social coupon bandwagon](https://marketoonist.com/2011/01/social-coupon-bandwagon.html) - Many marketers asked Santa for a social coupon campaign for 2011. The explosive growth of Groupon and Groupon clones (BuyWithMe, LivingSocial, SocialBuy, and Tippr), offering “ridiculously huge” coupons (50-90% off), is taking marketing plans by storm. These social coupon sites promise high customer demand in return for a deep discount and a share of the
- [blamestorming](https://marketoonist.com/2011/01/blamestorming.html) - Many organizations are better at blamestorming than brainstorming. It is far easier to critique than to create. No one wants to end up on the wall of failure. Blamestorming not only hampers big ideas. It creates a debilitating cycle of pointing the finger. Sales blames Marketing. Marketing blames R&D. R&D blames Operations. Operations blames Sales.
- [social media ghost town](https://marketoonist.com/2011/01/social-media-ghost-town.html) - There's a diner in my town with a huge "Follow us on Facebook" sign in the window. Yet if you go to their Facebook page, there's nothing worth following there. They haven't updated it in months. It's a social media ghost town. Nashville marketer Laura Click recently posed the question, "Is your company creating a
- [i just want baseline growth](https://marketoonist.com/2003/12/i-just-want-baseline-growth.html)
- [monetize it](https://marketoonist.com/2010/12/monetize-it.html) - "Monetize" is one of the top 10 buzz words for 2010. Many businesses are retooling their business models and figuring out new revenue streams. Last week, I spent a few thought-stirring days in Portland at a publishing workshop organized by Todd Sattersten. We talked about the future of publishing, which is in the middle of
- [the wiki wall](https://marketoonist.com/2010/12/the-wiki-wall.html) - We can thank adman Alex Osborn for the brainstorm (he's the O in agency BBDO). In 1948, Alex noted that most offices were full of "discouragement and criticism which so often cramp imagination". So he invented the brainstorm as a break from the day-to-day office environment. In a brainstorm, ideas could blossom safely before being
- [fad men](https://marketoonist.com/2010/12/fad-men.html) - The famous Cannes Festival is adding a new category of Creative Effectiveness in 2011 "to establish a direct correlation between creativity and effectiveness … now more than ever ROI is paramount to the client." This change touches on a long-standing grievance that clients have with ad agencies: a weak appreciation for the business results of
- [eureka moments](https://marketoonist.com/2010/11/eureka-moments.html) - I've been thinking lately about where ideas come from and the conditions and environments that inspire creativity. I came across an inspiring article from Scott Belsky who writes on the importance of deep thinking and the "creative pause": "This phenomenon is the seed of the break-through “a-ha!” moments that people so frequently report having in
- [wall of failure](https://marketoonist.com/2010/11/wall-of-failure.html) - David Kelley at IDEO once said that you have to "fail faster to succeed sooner". You can tell a lot about an organization by how they treat failure. Do they focus on the learning or do they focus on the punishment? When I worked at General Mills, they launched a new snack brand called Wahoos
- [garden of innovation](https://marketoonist.com/2007/10/garden-of-innov.html) - I recently heard the expression, "you can't cut your way to top-line growth", and it prompted this cartoon. I've certainly felt at times that more companies are equipped with "cutting tools" than "growing tools". Also, the typical Stage Gate process seems better designed for trimming rather than for boosting ideas. I also think that companies
- [app of dreams](https://marketoonist.com/2010/11/app-of-dreams.html) - I've heard mobile apps described as the new web site. And that having a mobile app is essential to gaining "share of conversation". There are more than 300,000 mobile apps today on Apple's platform alone, up from 200,000 just last year. Many of these apps are launched by brands as a new way to reach
- [the antisocial network](https://marketoonist.com/2010/10/the-antisocial-network.html) - Brands are flocking to Facebook in greater herds than ever before. Facebook has become an integral tick box on just about every marketing plan. Yet setting up a Facebook page alone won't suddenly make a brand more social. The question for a brand to ask is not whether to use social media. The question to
- [inside the mind of the consumer](https://marketoonist.com/2007/09/inside-the-mind.html) - This is on a similar theme as an earlier cartoon I drew in July. I have to remind myself sometimes that my brand is not the most important thing in a target consumer's life. I think a lot of brand positioning statements are written as if the consumers are constantly thinking and obsessing about the
- [the 8 types of creative directors](https://marketoonist.com/2008/02/the-8-types-of.html) - 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
- [the art of greenwashing](https://marketoonist.com/2007/07/the-art-of-gree.html) - This cartoon idea sprang fully formed from a New York Times piece on the ridiculous lengths that some brands are going to be considered for the Home Depot Eco Options promotion (including, yes, a brand of electric chainsaw). It's a good example of some of the outlandish greenwashing we're all starting to see. And, how
- [advertising by committee](https://marketoonist.com/2003/04/advertising-by-committee.html)
- [the “product has no clothes” phenomenom](https://marketoonist.com/2003/04/the-product-has-no-clothes-phenomenom.html)
- [“embedded” market researchers](https://marketoonist.com/2003/04/embedded-market-researchers.html)
- [plight of the small brand](https://marketoonist.com/2003/04/plight-of-the-small-brand.html)
- [the timeline tango](https://marketoonist.com/2003/03/the-timeline-tango.html)
- [when brand managers go bad](https://marketoonist.com/2003/02/when-brand-managers-go-bad.html)
- [marketing in late december](https://marketoonist.com/2002/12/marketing-in-late-december.html)
- [when marketers “rock out”](https://marketoonist.com/2002/12/when-marketers-rock-out.html)
- [the director pitch template](https://marketoonist.com/2002/11/the-director-pitch-template-2.html)
- [friends, fans, and followers](https://marketoonist.com/2010/09/friends-fans-and-followers.html) - In the social media bandwagon, brands place a lot of emphasis on the absolute number of friends, fans, and followers. They treat that number as a proxy for how well the brand is reaching its audience. The assumption is the bigger the number, the more effective the outreach. Six years ago, Häagen-Dazs followed a consumer
- [all-knowing focus group](https://marketoonist.com/2010/10/all-knowing-focus-group.html) - Henry Ford famously said, "if I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said 'a faster horse'". Many businesses treat focus groups as prophetic. Whether looking for inspiration or validation, they give staggering authority to eight strangers gathered on the other side of a one-way mirror. After one particularly idea-sapping focus group, a creative director leaned
- [waterfall planning](https://marketoonist.com/2010/10/waterfall-planning.html) - Crafting an annual plan is like getting a bill through Congress. Behind the final numbers and strategies lie countless hours of spreadsheet crunching, hallway meetings, and waterfall charts. We debate assumptions, broker compromises, and eventually settle on a plan that is wrong the moment it's inked. A finance director once told me that "spending more
- [eco claim arms race](https://marketoonist.com/2008/02/eco-claim-arms.html) - 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
- [attribute soup](https://marketoonist.com/2008/02/attribute-soup.html) - 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
- [offline decisions](https://marketoonist.com/2008/01/offline-decisio.html) - 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
- [pharmer's market](https://marketoonist.com/2008/01/pharmers-market.html) - 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
- [brand resolutions](https://marketoonist.com/2008/01/brand-resolutio.html) - '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
- [sisyphus revisted](https://marketoonist.com/2007/11/sisyphus-revist.html) - 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
- [wall street cred](https://marketoonist.com/2007/11/wall-street-cre.html) - 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
- [focus group divas](https://marketoonist.com/2007/10/focus-group-div.html) - 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
- [check point stage gate](https://marketoonist.com/2007/10/check-point-sta.html) - I met Doug Hall at an event last month and he skewered the entire Stage Gate process as "the primary cause of the 86% decline in US innovation success rates over the last 20 years." He called it an out-dated "command and control" process and said that the innovation process needed as much of an
- [the brand's new clothes](https://marketoonist.com/2007/10/the-brands-new.html) - Another cartoon on the theme of greenwashing. I came across this article in Ad Age about companies getting caught by consumers committing "green murder". It talked about marketers putting out "green briefs" to agencies to find something worth talking about their environmental impacts without actually changing anything. In this rush to reposition everyday brands as
- [when marketers dream](https://marketoonist.com/2007/08/when-marketers.html) - This week was a big cartoon milestone for me. My email subscriber list for Brand Camp surged past 3,000. Really exciting. When I started Brand Camp, I just emailed it to the 30-odd Associate Marketing Managers in my class at General Mills, and the list has just grown on it's own since then. This cartoon
- [brand identity crisis](https://marketoonist.com/2007/07/brand-identity.html) - This cartoon idea came mostly from the play on words in the title. It just cracked me up to think of someone having a crisis with their brand identity. Marketers tend to write brand positioning statements as if the brand was the single most important thing in the consumer's life.
- [brand hook-ups](https://marketoonist.com/2007/07/brand-hook-ups.html) - So many brand cross-promotions wind up feeling a bit shallow and opportunistic to me (embarassingly including a few from my past). Plus, there's always that funny, slightly awkward conversation when two brand managers first feel each other out to do a promotion. It got me thinking of it all as a kind of singles bar.
- [the war room](https://marketoonist.com/2007/05/the-war-room.html)
- [new superfoods on the block](https://marketoonist.com/2007/05/new-superfoods-on-the-block.html)
- [the last mile](https://marketoonist.com/2007/03/the-last-mile.html)
- [marketers without borders](https://marketoonist.com/2007/03/marketers-without-borders.html)
- [nouveau green](https://marketoonist.com/2007/03/nouveau-green.html)
- [big agency syndrome](https://marketoonist.com/2007/02/big-agency-syndrome.html)
- [superbowl advertising](https://marketoonist.com/2007/02/superbowl-advertising.html)
- [target market practice](https://marketoonist.com/2007/01/target-market-practice.html)
- [new product success](https://marketoonist.com/2007/01/new-product-success.html)
- [the powerpoint pitch supply chain](https://marketoonist.com/2006/12/the-powerpoint-pitch-supply-chain.html)
- [brand positioning](https://marketoonist.com/2006/12/brand-positioning.html)
- [the brand plan calendar](https://marketoonist.com/2006/12/the-brand-plan-calendar.html)
- [greener than thou](https://marketoonist.com/2006/11/greener-than-thou.html)
- [the 8 types of bad creative critics](https://marketoonist.com/2006/11/the-8-types-of-bad-creative-critics.html)
- [brand promise](https://marketoonist.com/2006/11/brand-promise.html)
- [survival of the safest](https://marketoonist.com/2006/10/survival-of-the-safest.html)
- [good moderator, bad moderator](https://marketoonist.com/2006/10/good-moderator-bad-moderator.html)
- [shopper vision](https://marketoonist.com/2006/10/shopper-vision.html)
- [brand architecture](https://marketoonist.com/2006/09/brand-architecture.html)
- [ego-stroking](https://marketoonist.com/2006/09/ego-stroking.html)
- [changing the game](https://marketoonist.com/2006/09/changing-the-game.html)
- [setting brand strategy](https://marketoonist.com/2006/08/setting-brand-strategy.html)
- [the petunia test](https://marketoonist.com/2006/07/the-petunia-test.html)
- [brand p&l](https://marketoonist.com/2006/06/brand-pl.html)
- [death by a thousand cuts](https://marketoonist.com/2006/06/death-by-a-thousand-cuts.html)
- [too polarizing](https://marketoonist.com/2006/05/too-polarizing.html)
- [development funnel](https://marketoonist.com/2006/05/development-funnel.html)
- [fast followers](https://marketoonist.com/2006/04/fast-followers.html)
- [the decision matrix](https://marketoonist.com/2006/04/the-decision-matrix.html)
- [baseline whiplash](https://marketoonist.com/2006/03/baseline-whiplash.html)
- [30 minute brainstorm](https://marketoonist.com/2006/03/30-minute-brainstorm.html)
- [sneaky ways to boost your product margins](https://marketoonist.com/2006/02/sneaky-ways-to-boost-your-product-margins.html)
- [the peace treaty](https://marketoonist.com/2006/02/the-peace-treaty.html)
- [dance of the 800 pound gorillas](https://marketoonist.com/2006/01/dance-of-the-800-pound-gorillas.html)
- [buzz marketing](https://marketoonist.com/2006/01/buzz-marketing.html)
- [attack of the feature creep](https://marketoonist.com/2005/12/attack-of-the-feature-creep.html)
- [requiem for a thirty](https://marketoonist.com/2005/11/requiem-for-a-thirty.html)
- [trendios](https://marketoonist.com/2005/11/trendios.html)
- [psychographic profiling](https://marketoonist.com/2005/11/psychographic-profiling.html)
- [frankenconcept](https://marketoonist.com/2005/10/frankenconcept.html)
- [stage gate bill](https://marketoonist.com/2005/10/stage-gate-bill.html)
- [marketing karma](https://marketoonist.com/2005/09/marketing-karma.html)
- [magic bullet](https://marketoonist.com/2005/08/magic-bullet.html)
- [in search of the next low carb](https://marketoonist.com/2005/08/in-search-of-the-next-low-carb.html)
- [evolution of organic](https://marketoonist.com/2005/08/evolution-of-organic.html)
- [the nutraceutical revolution](https://marketoonist.com/2005/07/the-nutraceutical-revolution.html)
- [the dot carb bubble](https://marketoonist.com/2005/07/the-dot-carb-bubble.html)
- [life without package design](https://marketoonist.com/2005/06/life-without-package-design.html)
- [the marketing kiss of death](https://marketoonist.com/2005/06/the-marketing-kiss-of-death.html)
- [brand loyalty](https://marketoonist.com/2005/05/brand-loyalty.html)
- [guerilla marketers in the mist](https://marketoonist.com/2005/04/guerilla-marketers-in-the-mist.html)
- [brand evangelists](https://marketoonist.com/2005/04/brand-evangelists.html)
- [how slotting fees work](https://marketoonist.com/2005/03/how-slotting-fees-work.html)
- [swiss army brand](https://marketoonist.com/2005/03/swiss-army-brand.html)
- [the scarlet number](https://marketoonist.com/2005/03/the-scarlet-number.html)
- [trickle-down management](https://marketoonist.com/2005/02/trickle-down-management.html)
- [food marketing campfire stories](https://marketoonist.com/2005/01/food-marketing-campfire-stories.html)
- [extreme catalina](https://marketoonist.com/2004/12/extreme-catalina.html)
- [evolution of convenience](https://marketoonist.com/2004/11/evolution-of-convenience.html)
- [the c.y.a. parachute](https://marketoonist.com/2004/11/the-c-y-a-parachute.html)
- [the new product handoff to sales](https://marketoonist.com/2004/11/the-new-product-handoff-to-sales.html)
- [plant fashion makeovers](https://marketoonist.com/2004/10/plant-fashion-makeovers.html)
- [elephant in the board room](https://marketoonist.com/2004/10/elephant-in-the-board-room.html)
- [the little plan that could](https://marketoonist.com/2004/09/the-little-plan-that-could.html)
- [trade deal chicken](https://marketoonist.com/2004/09/trade-deal-chicken.html)
- [the quarterly profit drive](https://marketoonist.com/2004/09/the-quarterly-profit-drive.html)
- [disco inferno](https://marketoonist.com/2004/08/disco-inferno.html)
- [the nascarization effect](https://marketoonist.com/2004/08/the-nascarization-effect.html)
- [the management team](https://marketoonist.com/2004/07/the-management-team.html)
- [the new product pipeline](https://marketoonist.com/2004/07/the-new-product-pipeline.html)
- [target identity crisis](https://marketoonist.com/2004/07/target-identity-crisis.html)
- [mystery focus group theater 3,000](https://marketoonist.com/2004/06/mystery-focus-group-theater-3000.html)
- [analysis paralysis](https://marketoonist.com/2004/06/analysis-paralysis.html)
- [let's all clap our hands and say "I believe in the volume fairy](https://marketoonist.com/2004/06/lets-all-clap-our-hands-and-say-i-believe-in-the-volume-fairy.html)
- [absolut cube farm](https://marketoonist.com/2004/06/absolut-cube-farm.html)
- [tug-o-planagram](https://marketoonist.com/2004/05/tug-o-planagram.html)
- [elimiplan](https://marketoonist.com/2004/05/elimiplan.html)
- [brand team action figures](https://marketoonist.com/2004/05/brand-team-action-figures.html)
- [bonfire of the vanities](https://marketoonist.com/2004/05/bonfire-of-the-vanities.html)
- [we encourage all our teams to think outside the box](https://marketoonist.com/2004/04/we-encourage-all-our-teams-to-think-outside-the-box.html)
- [how to discover your brand promise](https://marketoonist.com/2004/04/how-to-discover-your-brand-promise.html)
- ["scrappy" marketing tactics](https://marketoonist.com/2004/04/scrappy-marketing-tactics.html)
- [mind to market in 3,000 days](https://marketoonist.com/2004/03/mind-to-market-in-3000-days.html)
- [one database to rule them all](https://marketoonist.com/2004/03/one-database-to-rule-them-all.html)
- [the senior management toolbox](https://marketoonist.com/2004/03/the-senior-management-toolbox.html)
- [the low water mark of consumer spending](https://marketoonist.com/2004/03/the-low-water-mark-of-consumer-spending.html)
- [is the glass half full or half empty](https://marketoonist.com/2004/02/is-the-glass-half-full-or-half-empty.html)
- [the future of food labeling](https://marketoonist.com/2004/02/the-future-of-food-labeling.html)
- [marketing lingo bingo](https://marketoonist.com/2004/02/marketing-lingo-bingo.html)
- [the high carb support group](https://marketoonist.com/2004/02/the-high-carb-support-group.html)
- [just one of those days](https://marketoonist.com/2004/01/just-one-of-those-days.html)
- [the project funding request](https://marketoonist.com/2004/01/the-project-funding-request.html)
- [the management update](https://marketoonist.com/2004/01/the-management-update.html)
- [the office most wanted](https://marketoonist.com/2004/01/the-office-most-wanted.html)
- [marketing clutter](https://marketoonist.com/2004/01/marketing-clutter.html)
- [the unbiased voice of the category captain](https://marketoonist.com/2003/12/the-unbiased-voice-of-the-category-captain.html)
- [the marketing ivory tower](https://marketoonist.com/2003/11/the-marketing-ivory-tower.html)
- [marketers gone wild](https://marketoonist.com/2003/11/marketers-gone-wild.html)
- [countdown to the big pitch](https://marketoonist.com/2003/11/countdown-to-the-big-pitch.html)
- [atkins nation](https://marketoonist.com/2003/11/atkins-nation.html)
- [the power of bentonville](https://marketoonist.com/2003/10/the-power-of-bentonville.html)
- [the open door (lights out, never around) policy](https://marketoonist.com/2003/10/the-open-door-lights-out-never-around-policy.html)
- [the art of the boondoggle](https://marketoonist.com/2003/10/the-art-of-the-boondoggle.html)
- [the marketing tchocki fall line](https://marketoonist.com/2003/09/the-marketing-tchocki-fall-line.html)
- [brand character has beens](https://marketoonist.com/2003/09/brand-character-has-beens.html)
- [when people say they're "working from home"](https://marketoonist.com/2003/09/when-people-say-theyre-working-from-home.html)
- [how staffing decisions are really made](https://marketoonist.com/2003/08/how-staffing-decisions-are-really-made.html)
- [descent into focus group hell](https://marketoonist.com/2003/08/descent-into-focus-group-hell.html)
- [marketing one upmanship](https://marketoonist.com/2003/08/marketing-one-upmanship.html)
- [I am an individual](https://marketoonist.com/2003/07/i-am-an-individual.html)
- [five day priority forecast](https://marketoonist.com/2003/07/five-day-priority-forecast.html)
- [client agency counseling](https://marketoonist.com/2003/07/client-agency-counseling.html)
- [practical jokes at the flavor house](https://marketoonist.com/2003/06/practical-jokes-at-the-flavor-house.html)
- [the market research zoo](https://marketoonist.com/2003/06/the-market-research-zoo.html)
- [extreme market research](https://marketoonist.com/2003/06/extreme-market-research.html)
- [how the agency perceives the client](https://marketoonist.com/2003/06/how-the-agency-perceives-the-client.html)
- [marketers poker](https://marketoonist.com/2003/06/marketers-poker.html)
- [flanker madness](https://marketoonist.com/2003/05/flanker-madness.html)
- [cuckolding the brand manager](https://marketoonist.com/2003/05/cuckolding-the-brand-manager.html)
- [how to decipher the priority line](https://marketoonist.com/2003/05/how-to-decipher-the-priority-line.html)
- [how to discipline a kid marketer](https://marketoonist.com/2003/03/how-to-discipline-a-kid-marketer.html)
- [if andy warhol were alive today](https://marketoonist.com/2003/03/if-andy-warhol-were-alive-today.html)
- [how to start a health food store riot](https://marketoonist.com/2003/02/how-to-start-a-health-food-store-riot.html)
- [how to give creative feedback to the agency](https://marketoonist.com/2003/02/how-to-give-creative-feedback-to-the-agency.html)
- [the "focus group of one" syndrome](https://marketoonist.com/2003/01/the-focus-group-of-one-syndrome.html)

## Pages

- [Home](https://marketoonist.com/) - Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne. Marketing cartoons, content marketing with a sense of humor, keynote speaking.
- [Welcome to Marketoonist](https://marketoonist.com/welcome) - Thank you for subscribing to my weekly newsletter! Nearly every Monday, you’ll get my latest hand-drawn cartoon and business insights. I started this newsletter in 2002, and I’m so glad that you are a part of it. And if you’d like to catch up on the whole Marketoonist series (or want an excuse to
- [Subscribe to the Marketoonist Newsletter](https://marketoonist.com/newsletter) - Each Monday, I send out a hand-drawn cartoon and my observations on marketing and business. I've been doing this nearly every week since 2002. This all started with a cartoon to co-workers, sent from my marketing cubicle. In the 20+ years since, I've explored all of the twists and turns in marketing and business.
- [Subscribe to the Marketoonist Newsletter](https://marketoonist.com/subscribe) - Nearly every Monday, I send out a hand-drawn cartoon and my observations on marketing and business. I've been doing this since 2002. I think we need our senses of humor more than ever to help make sense of the constantly changing world of marketing and business. It's free. Unsubscribe whenever you like. There's never any
- [bringing humor to business with cartoons](https://marketoonist.com/about) - Marketoonist is the thought bubble of Tom Fishburne, a marketer and cartoonist. Marketing cartoons, content marketing with a sense of humor, keynote speaking.
- [WFA Global Marketing Week](https://marketoonist.com/wfa-global-marketing-week) - On March 31, 2021, the World Federation of Advertisers invited me to speak as a build-up to Global Marketing Week. They asked me to address the three main themes of their agenda: Better Society, Better World, and Better Growth.
- [Easy Peasy Licensing](https://marketoonist.com/faq) - How do I license a cartoon? Search or browse by topic to find just the right cartoon Click the shopping cart and choose presentation, newsletter, corporate blog or corporate social media use Click "Add to Cart" Keep shopping, or follow the standard checkout with credit card or paypal Make a nice cup of tea What exactly
- [View Posts by Category](https://marketoonist.com/view-posts-by-category)
- [Campaigns](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns) - We create custom Marketoon® campaigns for content marketing, culture change, and thought leadership.
- [Shop](https://marketoonist.com/shop)
- [Conversation on humor in marketing](https://marketoonist.com/conversation-on-humor-in-marketing) - Here's a conversation with Alex Sandoval at MOI Global on the role of humor on in marketing. We talk about the importance of empathy, the respect in vulnerability, and the power of connection in laughing at ourselves — especial in times of crisis. Here's a longer 45-minute webinar with MarketingWeek on "Why Humor is Important
- [The Importance of Humor Right Now](https://marketoonist.com/the-importance-of-humor-right-now) - I was invited by Marketing Week this week to give a 45-minute webinar talk on “The Importance of Humor Right Now” and in particular how humor can be an act of empathy.
- [Bisnode Keynote on "Thriving in the Awkward Adolescence of Digital Transformation"](https://marketoonist.com/bisnode-3) - I recently spoke at the Bisnode conference in Stockholm, Sweden on the topic of digital transformation. Our organizations haven’t kept pace with the potential brought by technology. As Scott Brinker put it, “Technology changes exponentially; organizations change logarithmically.” There has never been greater urgency to change, yet, most organizations are allergic to that change. There
- [cartoon-powered keynote talks on marketing, innovation, and digital transformation](https://marketoonist.com/speaking) - Cartoon-fueled keynote talks on marketing, creativity, and innovation. Insightful, funny, and visual keynote talks and workshops.
- [Keynote at Braze LTR](https://marketoonist.com/brazeltr)
- [Keynote at Bisnode Unleashed](https://marketoonist.com/bisnode-2)
- [Keynote at Bisnode Unleashed](https://marketoonist.com/bisnode)
- [Your Ad Ignored Here, a Cartoon Book by Tom Fishburne](https://marketoonist.com/book)
- [Keynote at Engage Prague](https://marketoonist.com/engageprague) - I recently gave a 20-minute cartoon-filled keynote at Engage Prague. I talked about the mindset we need to be successful as marketers.
- [Keynote at Lithium User Conference](https://marketoonist.com/lithium) - I recently gave a 30-minute cartoon-filled keynote at Lithium's annual user conference. I talked about the mindset we need to be successful as marketers. There's more detail on my speaking here. Let me know if you'd like to talk about a keynote at your organization or conference.
- [Keynote at The Financial Brand Forum](https://marketoonist.com/the-financial-brand) - I recently gave a cartoon-filled keynote presentation at The Financial Brand Forum, a conference for marketers in the banking world. I talked about the mindset we need to be successful as marketers. There's more detail on my speaking here. Let me know if you'd like to talk about a keynote at your organization or conference.
- [Order "Your Ad Ignored Here" and get a free signed print](https://marketoonist.com/signedprint) - We created a limited-edition run of 5” x 7” prints of the Top 10 Most Popular Marketoons from the last 15 years.
- [Bulk Order Options for "Your Ad Ignored Here"](https://marketoonist.com/bulkorderoptions) - Several of you have asked about ordering bulk copies for clients, employees, or holiday gifts. So we put together a few options. Let us know what you have in mind and we'll put together a specific estimate.
- [Preorder "Your Ad Ignored Here" now and get a free signed print](https://marketoonist.com/preorder) - We created a limited-edition run of 5” x 7” prints of the Top 10 Most Popular Marketoons from the last 15 years. You’ll get a different signed print for each copy of Your Ad Ignored Here that you pre-order before it goes on-sale on 10/24/2017 (up to 10 unique prints for 10 books preordered). While supplies
- [help launch my new book and get an advance electronic copy, five signed prints, and my thanks](https://marketoonist.com/booklaunchteam) - As we get closer to the launch my new book, “Your Ad Ignored Here," on October 24th, I’m inviting 50 US-based Marketoonist readers to join my Book Launch Team and help get the word out about the book. I’m really proud of it and would love to get it in the hands of as many
- [This One Time at Brand Camp](https://marketoonist.com/brand-camp-books) - Includes over 100 cheeky business and marketing cartoons from 2005 to 2008, complete with liner notes on each one, and a forward by Jackie Huba, co-author of "Creating Customer Evangelists." Buy at Amazon.com
- [unsubscribe to Marketoonist newsletter](https://marketoonist.com/unsubscribe) - I'm sorry to see you go. Just enter your email address here to be removed from the Marketoonist newsletter list. If you have any feedback on why this wasn't your cup of tea, I would be very grateful if you'd share a few thoughts before you go.
- [Cartoons](https://marketoonist.com/cartoons) - A weekly marketing cartoon by Tom Fishburne since 2002. If a picture tells a thousand words, a marketoon tells a thousand boring powerpoint slides.
- [Marketing at the Speed of Technology | Keynote at CableLabs conference](https://marketoonist.com/cablelabs) - I recently gave an hour-long cartoon-filled keynote at the CableLabs conference for members of the cable industry. I talked about the mindset we need to be successful as marketers in a time of significant change driven by technology. There's more detail on my speaking here. Let me know if you'd like to talk about a
- [Cartoon Powered Marketing](https://marketoonist.com/b)
- [Cartoon Powered Marketing](https://marketoonist.com/c)
- [Keynote at Invoca's Call Intelligence Summit](https://marketoonist.com/invoca) - I gave the closing keynote at Invoca's Call Intelligence Summit in Santa Barbara. Invoca helps marketers turn inbound mobile calls into sales. Please let me know if you'd like to talk about a cartoon-fueled keynote. You can find more information on my speaking style and options here.
- [skydeck year two (2001 - 2002)](https://marketoonist.com/skydeckyear2) - Sky Deck was the cartoon I created the two years I was at Harvard Business School from 2000 to 2002 (there's a little more background in my cartooniversary post). HBS is where I first discovered that I like drawing cartoons. Thank you, CitiAssist. Incidentally, the "OB" after my name does not mean that I'm an
- [skydeck year one (2000 - 2001)](https://marketoonist.com/skydeckyear1) - Sky Deck was the cartoon I created the two years I was at Harvard Business School from 2000 to 2002 (there's a little more background in my cartooniversary post). HBS is where I first discovered that I like drawing cartoons. Thank you, CitiAssist. Year One | Year Two 10/30/00 11/6/00 11/13/00 11/20/00 12/4/00 12/11/00 1/15/01
- [Most Popular Marketoons](https://marketoonist.com/most-popular) - A weekly marketing cartoon by Tom Fishburne since 2002. If a pictures tells a thousand words, a marketoon tells a thousand boring powerpoint slides.
- [Deutsch](https://marketoonist.com/deutsch) - I gave a talk this week on 5 ways to overcome idea killers. Brainjuicer partnered with Deutsch in Los Angeles to put on "Invent Fest", a thought-provoking day on how we bring ideas to life. In my talk, I argued that coming up with ideas is relatively easy. The hard work comes after the flip
- [Bombardier Recreational Products](https://marketoonist.com/brp) - I gave the closing keynote to Bombardier Recreational Products, near Montreal, Canada. BRP makes the popular Ski-Doo skimobile and other cool recreational products. There has never been a better time for marketing. New technologies give us an unparalleled opportunity to connect with our consumers. Marketing has evolved and Don Draper is no longer in charge.
- [Game Marketing Summit](https://marketoonist.com/gms)
- [Interested? Let's Talk](https://marketoonist.com/contact) - CompanyThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Name*Email* CompanyPhoneMessage*CAPTCHA Δ
- [say hello](https://marketoonist.com/contact-old) - Please contact me to discuss a potential marketooning campaign, speaking opportunity, or just to share a cartoon idea. [contact-form 1 "Contact form 1"]
- [Posts by Date](https://marketoonist.com/posts-by-date)
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- [Transaction Failed](https://marketoonist.com/transaction-failed) - Your transaction failed, please try again or contact site support.
- [Purchase History](https://marketoonist.com/purchase-history) - [purchase_history]
- ["Marketing Worth Sharing" (Integrated Marketing Week)](https://marketoonist.com/imw) - I spoke recently at Integrated Marketing Week in New York, a thought leadership event put on by DMA and Econsultancy. I talked about marketing worth sharing. There has never been a better time for marketing. New technologies give us an unparalleled opportunity to connect with our consumers. Marketing has evolved and Don Draper is no
- ["Content Worth Sharing: What Marketers Can Learn From Cartoons" (Intelligent Content)](https://marketoonist.com/cws) - Recently I spoke to several hundred marketers at the Intelligent Content conference in San Francisco. I shared five take-aways for content marketing that I've learned up as both a marketer and as a cartoonist. Please contact us if you’d like to add a cartoon-fueled talk to your next event.
- ["Overcoming Idea Killers" (GOED)](https://marketoonist.com/goed) - I spoke at GOED Exchange, the leading organization for Omega-3 Food Science, about overcoming idea killers. Geek Squad described advertising as a “tax for unremarkable thinking.” The creative process shouldn’t end after the brainstorm, yet ideas often suffer a thousand cuts in the process of bringing them to life. He sheds light on the path
- ["Content Worth Sharing" (Marketing Profs)](https://marketoonist.com/speaking-mprofs) - I spoke at MarketingProf's B2B Marketing Forum in Boston. There has never been a better time for marketing. New technologies give us an unparalleled opportunity to connect with our consumers. Marketing has evolved and Don Draper is no longer in charge. Yet, the big marketing idea matters more than the available technology. Technology can’t save
- ["Marketing Worth Sharing" (Microsoft | Brainjuicer Fest)](https://marketoonist.com/speaking-microsoft) - I spoke to an audience of 400 at Microsoft organized by Brainjuicer.
- ["After The Brainstorm" (Deutsch Brainjuicer Fest)](https://marketoonist.com/speaking-deutsch) - I spoke to several hundred marketers at an event at Deutsch in New York organized by Brainjuicer.
- [What We Do](https://marketoonist.com/what-i-do) - We started Marketoon Studios to help marketers tell their stories with cartoons as content worth sharing. Case studies and more at marketoonstudios.com.
- ["David Within Goliath" (Johnson & Johnson)](https://marketoonist.com/speaking-johnson-johnson) - In March 2011, I talked about challenger brand thinking with 600 marketers at Johnson & Johnson. I shared a number of David against Goliath case studies to make the larger point about being David within Goliath inside a larger organization, and doing more with less.
- ["David within Goliath" (Nestle Purina)](https://marketoonist.com/speaking-purina) - In December 2011, I talked about challenger brand thinking in a keynote talk with 300 marketers at Nestle Purina. I shared a number of David against Goliath case studies to make the larger point about being David within Goliath inside a larger organization, and doing more with less.
- [Italy Sketchbook](https://marketoonist.com/italy) - We just finished exchanging houses with a family in Rome for a month. Here are a few of the sketches I drew on the trip. I love that this moped mechanic is tucked inside an ancient building in the heart of the city. Rome is such a fascinating combination of old and new. Rome was
- [Beekeeping](https://marketoonist.com/blog/beekeeping) - This week's Marin Independent Journal features the story of beekeeper Nicole Perullo as she fights a Corte Madera order to remove her bee hives. I'm a novice beekeeper, and was first inspired to keep bees after hearing beekeeper Gerald Cooper speak a few years ago at the Do Lectures in Wales: Gerald inspired me with
- [Archives](https://marketoonist.com/archives)

## Services

- [Speaking + Workshops](https://marketoonist.com/services/speaking-workshops)
- [Cartoons to License](https://marketoonist.com/services/cartoons-to-license)
- [Content Marketing Campaigns](https://marketoonist.com/services/content-marketing-campaigns)

## Team

- [Tom Fishburne](https://marketoonist.com/team/tom-fishburne) - Tom Fishburne started drawing cartoons on the backs of business cases as a Harvard Business School student. From an emailed cartoon to coworkers in 2002, Tom’s Marketoonist series has grown by word of mouth to reach half a million readers a week. His cartoons have been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and
- [Tallie Fishburne](https://marketoonist.com/team/tallie)
- [Rob Cottingham](https://marketoonist.com/team/rob)
- [Susan Camilleri Konar](https://marketoonist.com/team/susan-camilleri-konar)
- [Michael Jantze](https://marketoonist.com/team/michael)

## Testimonials

- [Pierre-Luc Paiement](https://marketoonist.com/testimonials/pierre-luc-paiement) - Tom Fishburne is by the far the best keynote speaker we've ever had. Tom has elevated our future expectations by making his presentation inspirational, insightful and very engaging. Tom was able to keep the audience captivated with genuine examples, funny tone and interacting with the crowd in a fluent way.
- [Russ Fliegler](https://marketoonist.com/testimonials/russ-fliegler) - Tom recently presented to over 200 PepsiCo marketers and it was absolutely fantastic! It was exactly what we needed to get motivated and to become better marketers: some humor, drawing exercises, and one truly engaging speaker. Tom’s message and enthusiasm was well received by the entire audience as the positive feedback continues to roll in.
- [Ellen Schutt](https://marketoonist.com/testimonials/ellen-schutt) - Tom provided the perfect mix of humor combined with company case studies and real-life examples that resonated with our audience, despite the fact that we had scientists and researchers as well as management and marketing executives in the crowd. The hands-on drawing workshop was also a big hit.
- [Patricia Erb](https://marketoonist.com/testimonials/patricia-erb) - Tom was the inaugural featured speaker at the Nestle CMO meeting and he set the benchmark very high. Through the use of insightful, clever cartoons, Tom challenged the group to be the David in the Goliath and market like a challenger brand. His engaging style coupled with real life practical experience made for a truly
- [Phil Edelston](https://marketoonist.com/testimonials/phil-edelston) - Tom was by far the best speaker we have had on our programe to date. His wealth of experience in the world of Marketing and brand building coupled with his infectious enthusiasm made for an unforgettable presentation. To sum-up in a word it was inspiring.
- [Sarah Neels](https://marketoonist.com/testimonials/sarah-neels) - Tom is a tremendously engaging speaker who not only delighted our audience with his witty insights, but also provided clear advice on what makes ‘marketing worth sharing’. We were hoping that Tom would excite and inspire our audience, and he did not disappoint. We were thrilled to have him and so was our audience!
- [Jennifer Nelson](https://marketoonist.com/testimonials/john-smith) - Tom's cartoons not only engaged and amused, but landed important lessons that stuck with people long after the day was done. He was – by a sizeable margin, our highest rated speaker. In fact, we’d run this event for many years prior, and been collecting speaker evaluation metrics since 2005 -- and he was actually

## Campaigns

- [Lenovo](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns/all/lenovo) - Finding humor in the pain points of cultural transformation for Lenovo Software Lenovo Software helps businesses through the digital transformation journey. We developed a series with Lenovo Software that focused on cultural transformation and found humor in some of the inefficient fads that some companies follow to drive productivity in work environments. The cartoons were
- [Dell](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns/all/dell) - Bringing humor to Dell’s “Incredibly Serious Sales Guide” Dell wanted to create an indispensable sales resource for their international sales team. They had serious information to communicate for their products and services, but they knew that levity would help people actually pay attention. We collaborated on “The Incredibly Serious Sales Guide”, weaving together cartoons and
- [Russell Reynolds](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns/all/russell-reynolds) - An Ongoing Marketoon® Series that Brings Humor to Leadership Issues for Russell Reynolds Russell Reynolds provides executive search and leadership advice to top companies around the world. In 2018, we developed an ongoing Marketoon series on the topic of leadership. Called “The 99th Floor”, the cartoons are a central focus of Russell Reynold’s content marketing.
- [Adobe](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns/all/adobe) - An ongoing content marketing series for Adobe on CMO.com Adobe publishes CMO.com, a robust content marketing platform to reach senior marketers. We developed an ongoing cartoon series to help bring to life some of the issues facing digital marketers in a weekly cartoon. Adobe publishes in the cartoons in a classic content marketing hub-and-spoke. The
- [LinkedIn](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns/all/linkedin) - Helping LinkedIn Banish the Buzzwords from our Profiles LinkedIn wanted to motivate people to rethink their LinkedIn profiles. We worked with LinkedIn on a cartoon series highlighting the inherent humor of profile buzzwords. If we wouldn’t use buzzwords in real life, why are we putting them on our LinkedIn profiles? Each cartoon visualized situations imagining
- [Kronos](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns/all/kronos) - Helping Kronos Show the Lighter Side of Workforce Management Every Week since 2010 Kronos is the leader in workforce management software and has a serious mission to improve productivity. In August 2010, we launched a weekly cartoon series called "Time Well Spent" to show the lighter side of workforce management. "Time Well Spent helps us
- [Schneider Electric](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns/all/schneider-electric) - Bringing humor to organizational development and change management Schneider Electric is a Fortune Global 500 company, specializing in electrical equipment. They wanted to implement a change management program to their 160,000 employees around the world. We developed a 30-cartoon series in a dozen languages on a wide range of cultural and leadership topics. The cartoons
- [DBS Bank](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns/all/dbs-bank) - Using humor to talk about culture change DBS Bank is Southeast Asia’s biggest bank. They have been on digital transformation journey to act more, as they put it, like “a 27,000-employee startup.” Yet, they identified cultural innovation blockers that were getting in the way. DBS engaged consulting company Innosight to help, and Innosight approached us
- [Pitney Bowes](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns/all/pitney-bowes) - Marketoon® Campaigns that outperformed other Pitney Bowes content marketing by 400% in half the time Pitney Bowes is a 100-year old global technology company with commerce solutions for e-commerce, shipping, mailing, and data. They wanted to lighten up their marketing with a series of cartoons bringing to life pain points that their customer face. Since
- [Deloitte](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns/all/deloitte) - Illustrating Deloitte thought leadership and books We’ve worked on multiple thought leadership cartoon series with Deloitte. In one example, Deloitte partners Geoff Tuff and Steven Goldblach wrote a business booked called “Detonate” to challenge conventional business practices. We collaborated with Geoff and Steven on the earliest days of the manuscript to help bring to life
- [IBM Watson Analytics](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns/all/ibm-watson-analytics) - Parodying data analytics for IBM Watson Analytics IBM launched Watson Analytics to give people the benefits of advanced analytics without the complexity. To introduce this powerful new software, we developed a marketoon series that illustrates a range of data challenges that Watson Analytics helps solve. We then asked IBM customers to share their own unique
- [Google](https://marketoonist.com/campaigns/all/how-google-works) - Marketoon® Series Illustrating Google Thought Leadership We’ve worked on several thought leadership projects with Google over the years. In one example, we collaborating with Google former CEO Eric Schmidt and former SVP of Products Jonathan Rosenberg to help launch their New York Times Best-selling book, “How Google Works.” The series of cartoons unpacked different lessons

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- [how we consume media](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-we-consume-media)
- [media planning](https://marketoonist.com/product/media-planning) - Media spend is rebounding in 2021 with a continued spending shift from traditional to digital channels. Zenith reported this week that digital ads will make up 58% of total ad spend in 2021, up from 48% in 2019 and 54% in 2020.
- [sea of sameness](https://marketoonist.com/product/sea-of-sameness) - When I worked on the method brand from 2006-2010, we often talked about about trying to stand out in a “sea of sameness.” Like many aisles in the grocery story, household cleaning was dominated by brands that looked and sounded alike — same stock bottle packaging, same messaging, same product benefits, same designs, same claims. There was very little differentiation or distinctiveness.
- [HiPPO: Highest Paid Person's Opinion](https://marketoonist.com/product/hippo)
- [personal branding](https://marketoonist.com/product/personal-branding-2) - Tom Peters ushered in the age of personal branding with a 1997 cover story in Fast Company titled “The Brand Called You.”
- [share of voice](https://marketoonist.com/product/share-of-voice) - Marketers are perpetually looking for the most useful metrics to guide marketing decisions. None are perfect and many are in flux.
- [Chasing Gen Z](https://marketoonist.com/product/chasing-gen-z) - Marketers are constantly obsessed with how to reach younger generations to stay relevant. This can lead to a lot of “cringey” marketing, to use a term my teenage daughters make fun of when older people like me use to try to speak their language.
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- [we're all aligned](https://marketoonist.com/product/were-all-aligned-3)
- [customer experience](https://marketoonist.com/product/customer-experience-4)
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- [the career path](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-career-path)
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- [voice of the customer](https://marketoonist.com/product/voice-of-the-customer)
- [what goes in an ad](https://marketoonist.com/product/what-goes-in-an-ad)
- [state of user experience design](https://marketoonist.com/product/state-of-user-experience-design)
- [marketing predictions for 2019](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-predictions-for-2019)
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- [shiny object syndrome](https://marketoonist.com/product/shiny-object-syndrome)
- [stage gate innovation](https://marketoonist.com/product/stage-gate-innovation)
- [personalization](https://marketoonist.com/product/personalization)
- [the marketing ivory tower](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-marketing-ivory-tower)
- [targeted ads](https://marketoonist.com/product/targeted-ads)
- [find your brand purpose](https://marketoonist.com/product/find-your-brand-purpose)
- [more with less](https://marketoonist.com/product/more-with-less)
- [one night brand](https://marketoonist.com/product/one-night-brand)
- [new product adoption](https://marketoonist.com/product/new-product-adoption)
- [what the agency hears](https://marketoonist.com/product/what-the-agency-hears)
- [the scarlet number](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-scarlet-number)
- [cross-functional collaboration](https://marketoonist.com/product/cross-functional-collaboration)
- [brand engagement](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-engagement)
- [tower of eco babel](https://marketoonist.com/product/tower-of-eco-babel)
- [technology can’t save a boring marketing idea](https://marketoonist.com/product/technology-cant-save-a-boring-marketing-idea)
- [internet of things](https://marketoonist.com/product/internet-of-things)
- [brand purpose](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-purpose)
- [interruption marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/interruption-marketing)
- [branded hashtags](https://marketoonist.com/product/branded-hashtags)
- [big data](https://marketoonist.com/product/big-data)
- [marketing flash mob](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-flash-mob)
- [multi-screen marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/multi-screen-marketing)
- [the meeting after the meeting](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-meeting-after-the-meeting)
- [naughty or nice](https://marketoonist.com/product/naughty-or-nice)
- [push notification marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/push-notification-marketing)
- [safe is risky](https://marketoonist.com/product/safe-is-risky)
- [real-time marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/real-time-marketing)
- [pop-up advertising](https://marketoonist.com/product/pop-up-advertising)
- [growth hackers](https://marketoonist.com/product/growth-hackers)
- [sponsored posts](https://marketoonist.com/product/sponsored-posts)
- [push marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/push-marketing)
- [sharing personal data with marketers](https://marketoonist.com/product/sharing-personal-data-with-marketers)
- [product placement](https://marketoonist.com/product/product-placement)
- [innovation strategery](https://marketoonist.com/product/innovation-strategery)
- [pivot](https://marketoonist.com/product/pivot)
- [consumer attention span](https://marketoonist.com/product/consumer-attention-span)
- [ice bucket challenge](https://marketoonist.com/product/ice-bucket-challenge)
- [marketing authenticity](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-authenticity)
- [controversy marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/controversy-marketing)
- [memevertising](https://marketoonist.com/product/memevertising)
- [terms of use](https://marketoonist.com/product/terms-of-use)
- [packaging redesign](https://marketoonist.com/product/packaging-redesign)
- [like us](https://marketoonist.com/product/like-us)
- [when traditional advertising goes digital](https://marketoonist.com/product/when-traditional-advertising-goes-digital)
- [april fools](https://marketoonist.com/product/april-fools)
- [cost-cutting](https://marketoonist.com/product/cost-cutting)
- [word-of-mouth marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/word-of-mouth-marketing)
- [math men and data-driven marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/math-men-and-data-driven-marketing)
- [mobile is the new end cap](https://marketoonist.com/product/mobile-is-the-new-end-cap)
- [purpose-driven branding](https://marketoonist.com/product/purpose-driven-branding)
- [open innovation](https://marketoonist.com/product/open-innovation)
- [loyalty programs](https://marketoonist.com/product/loyalty-programs)
- [crowdsourcing ads](https://marketoonist.com/product/crowdsourcing-ads)
- [cmo of the month](https://marketoonist.com/product/cmo-of-the-month)
- [brand conversations](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-conversations)
- [lifestyle brand](https://marketoonist.com/product/lifestyle-brand)
- [marketing to millennials](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-to-millennials)
- [focus group](https://marketoonist.com/product/focus-group)
- [working with designers](https://marketoonist.com/product/working-with-designers)
- [online reviews](https://marketoonist.com/product/online-reviews)
- [multicultural marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/multicultural-marketing)
- [customer acquisition](https://marketoonist.com/product/customer-acquisition)
- [short attention span marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/short-attention-span-marketing)
- [marketing stunts](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-stunts)
- [Christmas creep](https://marketoonist.com/product/christmas-creep)
- [a good idea](https://marketoonist.com/product/a-good-idea)
- [join my network](https://marketoonist.com/product/join-my-network)
- [our facebook page](https://marketoonist.com/product/our-facebook-page)
- [earned media](https://marketoonist.com/product/earned-media)
- [truth in advertising](https://marketoonist.com/product/truth-in-advertising)
- [powerpoint the idea](https://marketoonist.com/product/powerpoint-the-idea)
- [planned obsolescence](https://marketoonist.com/product/planned-obsolescence)
- [six types of advertisements](https://marketoonist.com/product/six-types-of-advertisements)
- [brand laddering](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-laddering)
- [brand loyalist](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-loyalist)
- [we appreciate your business](https://marketoonist.com/product/we-appreciate-your-business)
- [cannibalize](https://marketoonist.com/product/cannibalize)
- [holiday advertising](https://marketoonist.com/product/holiday-advertising)
- [your ad here](https://marketoonist.com/product/your-ad-here)
- [agency pitch](https://marketoonist.com/product/agency-pitch)
- [agreed on the hashtag](https://marketoonist.com/product/agreed-on-the-hashtag)
- [location marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/location-marketing)
- [corporate apologies](https://marketoonist.com/product/corporate-apologies)
- [disaster marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/disaster-marketing)
- [marketing strategy](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-strategy)
- [attila the manager](https://marketoonist.com/product/attila-the-manager)
- [our social plan](https://marketoonist.com/product/our-social-plan)
- [showrooming](https://marketoonist.com/product/showrooming)
- [brainstorming ideas](https://marketoonist.com/product/brainstorming-ideas)
- [ads worth spreading](https://marketoonist.com/product/ads-worth-spreading)
- [trojan horse](https://marketoonist.com/product/trojan-horse)
- [social fatigue](https://marketoonist.com/product/social-fatigue)
- [gamification](https://marketoonist.com/product/gamification)
- [still on facebook](https://marketoonist.com/product/still-on-facebook)
- [improving service](https://marketoonist.com/product/improving-service)
- [direct marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/direct-marketing)
- [evolution of an idea](https://marketoonist.com/product/evolution-of-an-idea)
- [outside the box](https://marketoonist.com/product/outside-the-box)
- [7 deadly sins of marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/7-deadly-sins-of-marketing)
- [8 types of leader](https://marketoonist.com/product/8-types-of-leader)
- [health claims](https://marketoonist.com/product/health-claims)
- [the social super bowl](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-social-super-bowl)
- [evolution of creativity](https://marketoonist.com/product/evolution-of-creativity)
- [content marketing 101](https://marketoonist.com/product/content-marketing-101)
- [on the 12th day of Christmas, retailers gave to me](https://marketoonist.com/product/on-the-12th-day-of-christmas-retailers-gave-to-me)
- [loyalty](https://marketoonist.com/product/loyalty)
- [the five stages of a PR disaster](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-five-stages-of-a-pr-disaster)
- [brand stretching](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-stretching)
- [creativity by committee](https://marketoonist.com/product/creativity-by-committee)
- [social media snake oil](https://marketoonist.com/product/social-media-snake-oil)
- [death by powerpoint](https://marketoonist.com/product/death-by-powerpoint)
- [free sample](https://marketoonist.com/product/free-sample)
- [groupon](https://marketoonist.com/product/groupon)
- [what ads say](https://marketoonist.com/product/what-ads-say)
- [pinterest marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/pinterest-marketing)
- [go viral](https://marketoonist.com/product/go-viral)
- [social media ROI](https://marketoonist.com/product/social-media-roi)
- [friends, fans, and followers](https://marketoonist.com/product/friends-fans-and-followers)
- [app of dreams](https://marketoonist.com/product/app-of-dreams)
- [mission statement](https://marketoonist.com/product/mission-statement)
- [how brands talk](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-brands-talk)
- [all-knowing focus group](https://marketoonist.com/product/all-knowing-focus-group)
- [waterfall planning](https://marketoonist.com/product/waterfall-planning)
- [the wiki wall](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-wiki-wall)
- [monetize it](https://marketoonist.com/product/monetize-it)
- [making the leap](https://marketoonist.com/product/making-the-leap)
- [your call is very important](https://marketoonist.com/product/your-call-is-very-important)
- [wall of failure](https://marketoonist.com/product/wall-of-failure)
- [eureka moments](https://marketoonist.com/product/eureka-moments)
- [fad men](https://marketoonist.com/product/fad-men)
- [blamestorming](https://marketoonist.com/product/blamestorming)
- [social coupon bandwagon](https://marketoonist.com/product/social-coupon-bandwagon)
- [return on indecision](https://marketoonist.com/product/return-on-indecision)
- [brand butterfly](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-butterfly)
- [crisis management](https://marketoonist.com/product/crisis-management)
- [news of the brand](https://marketoonist.com/product/news-of-the-brand)
- [idea voodoo](https://marketoonist.com/product/idea-voodoo)
- [brandtube](https://marketoonist.com/product/brandtube)
- [crossing the chasm cafe](https://marketoonist.com/product/crossing-the-chasm-cafe)
- [social merit](https://marketoonist.com/product/social-merit)
- [social media ghost town](https://marketoonist.com/product/social-media-ghost-town)
- [compromise with legal](https://marketoonist.com/product/compromise-with-legal)
- [low interest category](https://marketoonist.com/product/low-interest-category)
- [like us on facebook](https://marketoonist.com/product/like-us-on-facebook)
- [holy groupon](https://marketoonist.com/product/holy-groupon)
- [marketing fairy dust](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-fairy-dust)
- [the ivory tower](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-ivory-tower)
- [view from marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/view-from-marketing)
- [social media bandwagon](https://marketoonist.com/product/social-media-bandwagon)
- [corporate twitter](https://marketoonist.com/product/corporate-twitter)
- [innovation stew](https://marketoonist.com/product/innovation-stew)
- [the five stages of recession](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-five-stages-of-recession)
- [the marketing rosetta stone](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-marketing-rosetta-stone)
- [urban spam](https://marketoonist.com/product/urban-spam)
- [the corporate firewall](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-corporate-firewall)
- [feature creep](https://marketoonist.com/product/feature-creep)
- [efficiency farming](https://marketoonist.com/product/efficiency-farming)
- [the art of package design](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-art-of-package-design)
- [iProcrastinate](https://marketoonist.com/product/iprocrastinate)
- [the large print giveth](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-large-print-giveth)
- [managing the brand](https://marketoonist.com/product/managing-the-brand)
- [new-featuritis](https://marketoonist.com/product/new-featuritis)
- [voice of the brand](https://marketoonist.com/product/voice-of-the-brand)
- [mixed signals](https://marketoonist.com/product/mixed-signals)
- [idea prevention department](https://marketoonist.com/product/idea-prevention-department)
- [shiny new thing](https://marketoonist.com/product/shiny-new-thing)
- [after the brainstorm](https://marketoonist.com/product/after-the-brainstorm)
- [definition of insanity](https://marketoonist.com/product/definition-of-insanity)
- [this little piggy](https://marketoonist.com/product/this-little-piggy)
- [mission: impersonal](https://marketoonist.com/product/mission-impersonal)
- [poking the bear](https://marketoonist.com/product/poking-the-bear)
- [the antisocial network](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-antisocial-network)
- [brand archetypes](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-archetypes)
- [always in beta](https://marketoonist.com/product/always-in-beta)
- [the art of planning](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-art-of-planning)
- [jumping the shark](https://marketoonist.com/product/jumping-the-shark)
- [survival of the safest](https://marketoonist.com/product/survival-of-the-safest)
- [brand promise](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-promise)
- [brand architecture](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-architecture)
- [shopper vision](https://marketoonist.com/product/shopper-vision)
- [good moderator, bad moderator](https://marketoonist.com/product/good-moderator-bad-moderator)
- [the 8 types of bad creative critics](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-8-types-of-bad-creative-critics)
- [the war room](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-war-room)
- [target market practice](https://marketoonist.com/product/target-market-practice)
- [superbowl advertising](https://marketoonist.com/product/superbowl-advertising)
- [ego-stroking](https://marketoonist.com/product/ego-stroking)
- [greener than thou](https://marketoonist.com/product/greener-than-thou)
- [the brand plan calendar](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-brand-plan-calendar)
- [the powerpoint pitch supply chain](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-powerpoint-pitch-supply-chain)
- [new product success](https://marketoonist.com/product/new-product-success)
- [marketers without borders](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketers-without-borders)
- [new superfoods on the block](https://marketoonist.com/product/new-superfoods-on-the-block)
- [brand positioning](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-positioning)
- [the process pendulum](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-process-pendulum)
- [big agency syndrome](https://marketoonist.com/product/big-agency-syndrome)
- [nouveau green](https://marketoonist.com/product/nouveau-green)
- [think outside the bin](https://marketoonist.com/product/think-outside-the-bin)
- [blend into the herd](https://marketoonist.com/product/blend-into-the-herd)
- [garden of innovation](https://marketoonist.com/product/garden-of-innovation)
- [corporate telephone](https://marketoonist.com/product/corporate-telephone)
- [evolution of marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/evolution-of-marketing)
- [bogo till we drop](https://marketoonist.com/product/bogo-till-we-drop)
- [brand drought](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-drought)
- [a surefire hit](https://marketoonist.com/product/a-surefire-hit)
- [silo farming](https://marketoonist.com/product/silo-farming)
- [food marketing campfire stories](https://marketoonist.com/product/food-marketing-campfire-stories)
- [how slotting fees work](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-slotting-fees-work)
- [brand evangelists](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-evangelists)
- [frankenconcept](https://marketoonist.com/product/frankenconcept)
- [trickle-down management](https://marketoonist.com/product/trickle-down-management)
- [swiss army brand](https://marketoonist.com/product/swiss-army-brand)
- [evolution of organic](https://marketoonist.com/product/evolution-of-organic)
- [in search of the next low carb](https://marketoonist.com/product/in-search-of-the-next-low-carb)
- [magic bullet](https://marketoonist.com/product/magic-bullet)
- [requiem for a thirty](https://marketoonist.com/product/requiem-for-a-thirty)
- [the dot carb bubble](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-dot-carb-bubble)
- [the nutraceutical revolution](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-nutraceutical-revolution)
- [stage gate bill](https://marketoonist.com/product/stage-gate-bill)
- [trendios](https://marketoonist.com/product/trendios)
- [the marketing kiss of death](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-marketing-kiss-of-death)
- [life without package design](https://marketoonist.com/product/life-without-package-design)
- [fast followers](https://marketoonist.com/product/fast-followers)
- [the decision matrix](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-decision-matrix)
- [marketing karma](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-karma)
- [the peace treaty](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-peace-treaty)
- [sneaky ways to boost your product margins](https://marketoonist.com/product/sneaky-ways-to-boost-your-product-margins)
- [30 minute brainstorm](https://marketoonist.com/product/30-minute-brainstorm)
- [the petunia test](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-petunia-test)
- [attack of the feature creep](https://marketoonist.com/product/attack-of-the-feature-creep)
- [buzz marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/buzz-marketing)
- [dance of the 800 pound gorillas](https://marketoonist.com/product/dance-of-the-800-pound-gorillas)
- [too polarizing](https://marketoonist.com/product/too-polarizing)
- [setting brand strategy](https://marketoonist.com/product/setting-brand-strategy)
- [changing the game](https://marketoonist.com/product/changing-the-game)
- [death by a thousand cuts](https://marketoonist.com/product/death-by-a-thousand-cuts)
- [mind to market in 3,000 days](https://marketoonist.com/product/mind-to-market-in-3000-days)
- [we encourage all our teams to think outside the box](https://marketoonist.com/product/we-encourage-all-our-teams-to-think-outside-the-box)
- [the office most wanted](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-office-most-wanted)
- [the senior management toolbox](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-senior-management-toolbox)
- [one database to rule them all](https://marketoonist.com/product/one-database-to-rule-them-all)
- [how to discover your brand promise](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-to-discover-your-brand-promise)
- [tug-o-planagram](https://marketoonist.com/product/tug-o-planagram)
- [analysis paralysis](https://marketoonist.com/product/analysis-paralysis)
- [the future of food labeling](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-future-of-food-labeling)
- [the low water mark of consumer spending](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-low-water-mark-of-consumer-spending)
- [bonfire of the vanities](https://marketoonist.com/product/bonfire-of-the-vanities)
- [brand team action figures](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-team-action-figures)
- [absolut cube farm](https://marketoonist.com/product/absolut-cube-farm)
- [disco inferno](https://marketoonist.com/product/disco-inferno)
- [the quarterly profit drive](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-quarterly-profit-drive)
- [trade deal chicken](https://marketoonist.com/product/trade-deal-chicken)
- [elimiplan](https://marketoonist.com/product/elimiplan)
- [evolution of convenience](https://marketoonist.com/product/evolution-of-convenience)
- [extreme catalina](https://marketoonist.com/product/extreme-catalina)
- [the new product pipeline](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-new-product-pipeline)
- [the management team](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-management-team)
- [plant fashion makeovers](https://marketoonist.com/product/plant-fashion-makeovers)
- [mystery focus group theater 3,000](https://marketoonist.com/product/mystery-focus-group-theater-3000)
- [target identity crisis](https://marketoonist.com/product/target-identity-crisis)
- [guerilla marketers in the mist](https://marketoonist.com/product/guerilla-marketers-in-the-mist)
- [elephant in the board room](https://marketoonist.com/product/elephant-in-the-board-room)
- [the new product handoff to sales](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-new-product-handoff-to-sales)
- [the c.y.a. parachute](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-c-y-a-parachute)
- [the little plan that could](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-little-plan-that-could)
- [practical jokes at the flavor house](https://marketoonist.com/product/practical-jokes-at-the-flavor-house)
- [the timeline tango](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-timeline-tango)
- [advertising by committee](https://marketoonist.com/product/advertising-by-committee)
- [marketers poker](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketers-poker)
- [client agency counseling](https://marketoonist.com/product/client-agency-counseling)
- [how to discipline a kid marketer](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-to-discipline-a-kid-marketer)
- [descent into focus group hell](https://marketoonist.com/product/descent-into-focus-group-hell)
- [the marketing tchocki fall line](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-marketing-tchocki-fall-line)
- [how the agency perceives the client](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-the-agency-perceives-the-client)
- [the market research zoo](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-market-research-zoo)
- [five day priority forecast](https://marketoonist.com/product/five-day-priority-forecast)
- [marketing one upmanship](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-one-upmanship)
- [brand character has beens](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-character-has-beens)
- [flanker madness](https://marketoonist.com/product/flanker-madness)
- [marketers gone wild](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketers-gone-wild)
- [I am an individual](https://marketoonist.com/product/i-am-an-individual)
- [how staffing decisions are really made](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-staffing-decisions-are-really-made)
- [the project funding request](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-project-funding-request)
- [atkins nation](https://marketoonist.com/product/atkins-nation)
- [the unbiased voice of the category captain](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-unbiased-voice-of-the-category-captain)
- [i just want baseline growth](https://marketoonist.com/product/i-just-want-baseline-growth)
- [the high carb support group](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-high-carb-support-group)
- [the open door (lights out, never around) policy](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-open-door-lights-out-never-around-policy)
- [the power of bentonville](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-power-of-bentonville)
- [countdown to the big pitch](https://marketoonist.com/product/countdown-to-the-big-pitch)
- [the management update](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-management-update)
- [just one of those days](https://marketoonist.com/product/just-one-of-those-days)
- [marketing lingo bingo](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-lingo-bingo)
- [the art of the boondoggle](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-art-of-the-boondoggle)
- [how to do strategic planning](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-to-do-strategic-planning) - Traditional strategic planning is often neither “strategic” nor much of a “plan”. It usually resembles a peace treaty more than clear marching orders for an organization. Strategic planning also tends to be out-dated the moment it’s written.
- [consumer privacy comeback](https://marketoonist.com/product/consumer-privacy-comeback) - In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg famously said that privacy was no longer a “social norm.” New research this month showed that 94% of consumers are uncomfortable with how their personal data is shared online. Drew MacRae at the Financial Rights Legal Centre, said consumers’ expectations had shifted.
- [creating personas](https://marketoonist.com/product/creating-personas) - Marketers use personas as a tool to try to bring customers into the room — to help organizations be more customer-centric. They’re intended to help with everything from innovation to experience design to marketing and sales.
- [CX is more than a department](https://marketoonist.com/product/cx-is-more-than-a-department) - A Capgemini study found that 75% of organizations believed themselves to be customer-centric. Only 30% of customers agreed. The numbers were even more stark for consumer products companies — 80% believed they were were customer-centric and only 14% agreed.
- [lead nurturing isn’t a numbers game](https://marketoonist.com/product/lead-nurturing-isnt-a-numbers-game) - Gapingvoid creator Hugh MacLeod once observed, “If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they’d punch you in the face.” Hugh shared this insight years before the marketing automation revolution, but the same could be said for many forms of marketing, now more than ever.
- [branded content](https://marketoonist.com/product/branded-content-6) - There has never been a better time to take the stage as a brand and share content with our audience. Every night can be open mic night.
- [brand purpose marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-purpose-marketing)
- [business as usual](https://marketoonist.com/product/business-as-usual) - A Gartner study recently reported that more than half (57%) of CMOs expect to see a return to business as usual in the next 18-24 months. It made me think about what “business as usual” even means right now.
- [product choice overload](https://marketoonist.com/product/product-choice-overload) - From data plans to toothpaste to headache medicine, most categories seem to assume that more choice is better than less choice. But if you’re actually a shopper with a headache in a headache medicine aisle, the only thing a complicated product assortment will do is make your headache worse.
- [changing customer needs](https://marketoonist.com/product/changing-customer-needs) - In this time of change, I’ve been thinking about the gap between a desire to change and uncertainty on where or how to change. The pandemic has been a change accelerant, but the path isn’t always clear.
- [this is a test](https://marketoonist.com/product/this-is-a-test)
- [marketing in late december](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-in-late-december)
- [how to define your product](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-to-define-your-product)
- [trade deal junkies](https://marketoonist.com/product/trade-deal-junkies)
- [lifecycle of innovation](https://marketoonist.com/product/lifecycle-of-innovation)
- [the food marketers freshman 15](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-food-marketers-freshman-15)
- [the process of new packaging design](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-process-of-new-packaging-design)
- [when marketers “rock out”](https://marketoonist.com/product/when-marketers-rock-out)
- [when brand managers go bad](https://marketoonist.com/product/when-brand-managers-go-bad)
- [how to start a health food store riot](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-to-start-a-health-food-store-riot)
- [how to give creative feedback to the agency](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-to-give-creative-feedback-to-the-agency)
- [if andy warhol were alive today](https://marketoonist.com/product/if-andy-warhol-were-alive-today)
- [plight of the small brand](https://marketoonist.com/product/plight-of-the-small-brand)
- [cuckolding the brand manager](https://marketoonist.com/product/cuckolding-the-brand-manager)
- [a day in the life of a brand manager](https://marketoonist.com/product/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-brand-manager)
- [“embedded” market researchers](https://marketoonist.com/product/embedded-market-researchers)
- [the “product has no clothes” phenomenom](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-product-has-no-clothes-phenomenom)
- [how to decipher the priority line](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-to-decipher-the-priority-line)
- [the marketers superbowl party](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-marketers-superbowl-party)
- [back to the office](https://marketoonist.com/product/back-to-the-office) - I was struck by this observation from Ron Carucci in his HBR article last month on returning to the office: “If the transition to WFH wasn’t challenging enough, the transition back to the office may prove even more difficult.”
- [brand fatigue and brand consistency](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-fatigue-and-brand-consistency)
- [this meeting could have been an email](https://marketoonist.com/product/this-meeting-could-have-been-an-email) - Last week, Facebook released a free beta for a new virtual reality meeting experience called Horizon Workrooms. Using their Oculus Quest 2 VR headsets, Facebook re-imagines the future of meetings where we’ll all show up as cartoon avatars that will mimic our movements and facial expressions.
- [generational marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/generational-marketing-2) - Epoch Strategy Director Alex Murrell wrote a fascinating piece a couple years ago on “The Ageism in Advertising” and the knee-jerk way that marketers obsess over younger generations.
- [customer lifetime value](https://marketoonist.com/product/customer-lifetime-value) - A recent study from the CMO Council and Deloitte found that only 17% of CMOs track Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) well.
- [influencer marketing and authenticity](https://marketoonist.com/product/influencer-marketing-and-authenticity) - I recently heard a marketing executive say at a conference that “to establish trust you have to appear authentic.” I found this turn of phrase interesting, and telling; she didn’t say “be” authentic — she said “appear” authentic.
- [marketing myopia and brand choice](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-myopia-and-brand-choice) - Faris Yakob wrote an interesting piece last year on what motivates consumers to buy, particularly in the few seconds a consumer spends at shelf. He wrote: “In 2005 P&G coined the term “first moment of truth” to describe the importance of packaging in their marketing model.
- [Design Thinking and the Theater of Innovation](https://marketoonist.com/product/design-thinking-and-the-theater-of-innovation) - The design thinking methodology, pioneered and evangelized by fabled design firm IDEO, has spread from products to services to just about anything in business.
- [the NFT bandwagon](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-nft-bandwagon) - A couple months after NFTs caught the public imagination with the $69 million auction of a JPEG, it has been fascinating to see how brands have started to jump on the NFT bandwagon.
- [back to normal](https://marketoonist.com/product/back-to-normal) - Last year, Professor Scott Galloway described COVID-19 as “an accelerant” not a “change agent.” As he later expanded: “The pandemic’s most enduring impact will be as an accelerant. While it will initiate some changes and alter the direction of some trends, the pandemic’s primary effect has been to accelerate dynamics already present in society – from e-commerce to online education to remote healthcare.
- [the next big thing in marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-next-big-thing-in-marketing) - There’s a perennial search for the next big thing in marketing, which can distract us from getting the basics right and making the most of what's already right in front of us.
- [metrics metrics everywhere](https://marketoonist.com/product/metrics-metrics-everywhere) - I’m struck by an observation this week from Alison Hanrahan, Head of Marketing Performance at HSBC: “As marketers we have to be careful not to settle for campaign metrics … we have to push for business outcomes.”
- [the state of digital advertising](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-state-of-digital-advertising) - Last year PwC investigated where the money goes in digital advertising, at the behest of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA). This wasn’t an easy task, as a single programmatic ad placement can involve 20 different players, each taking a cut.
- [the creative brief gap](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-creative-brief-gap) - In 2015, the ANA surveyed advertisers and agencies to identify problems in the often dysfunctional client/agency relationship. One issue rose to the top — the creative brief.
- [brands on social media](https://marketoonist.com/product/brands-on-social-media) - “Because it’s so new and fresh, brands seemingly have no idea what to look for when it comes to Clubhouse, they just know it’s a significant avenue that they should capitalize on.”
- [advertising without cookies](https://marketoonist.com/product/advertising-without-cookies) - Adland is counting down to the end of third-party cookies by 2022, which has major implications for marketers.
- [customer experience friction](https://marketoonist.com/product/customer-experience-friction) - Market research firm Statista reported that the global shopping cart abandonment rate for online retailers in 2020 was 88%.
- [building resilience](https://marketoonist.com/product/building-resilience) - There has been renewed emphasis on resilience this last year, which PwC defines as “an organization’s capacity to anticipate and react to change, not only to survive, but also to evolve.”
- [sustainability marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/sustainability-marketing) - EcoVeritas CEO David Harding-Brown recently observed: "Sustainability as an umbrella term is becoming meaningless; a series of macro statements that consumers can no longer relate to or engage with."
- [brand safety whack-a-mole](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-safety-whack-a-mole) - Rob Rakowitz, former head of media at Mars, once described brand safety as “a constant game of whack-a-mole.”
- [reinventing the marketing 4Ps](https://marketoonist.com/product/reinventing-the-marketing-4ps) - There’s a constant tendency in the marketing community to throw out long-established marketing concepts in favor of something new.
- [culture of new ideas](https://marketoonist.com/product/culture-of-new-ideas) - I was struck by this recent observation from Timothy Clark in his HBR article on cultivating “Intellectual Bravery”: “Intellectual bravery is a willingness to disagree, dissent, or challenge the status quo in a setting of social risk in which you could be embarrassed, marginalized, or punished in some way. When intellectual bravery disappears, organizations develop patterns of willful blindness. Bureaucracy buries boldness. Efficiency crushes creativity. From there, the status quo calcifies and stagnation sets in."
- [pop-ups and user experience](https://marketoonist.com/product/pop-ups-and-user-experience) - The web has turned into an obstacle course of pop-ups upon pop-ups. No one likes pop-ups and yet there’s plenty of conversion data that designers can point at to justify them.
- [status quo and resistance to change](https://marketoonist.com/product/status-quo-and-resistance-to-change) - If the only constant is change, a close second is the resistance to that change. Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company magazine, once stumbled across an obscure article written by a Product Manager in 1959 entitled “50 Reasons Why We Cannot Change.” The Product Manager, E.F. Borisch, compiled this list while working for the Milwaukee Gear Company, and many of the reasons still resonate as if they were written today:
- [we're going agile](https://marketoonist.com/product/were-going-agile) - Next month marks the 20th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto. Twenty years ago, 17 software engineers went skiing in Utah. After bonding over their shared frustrations on the state of software development, they drafted the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.
- [marketing beyond cookies](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-beyond-cookies) - Marketers are bracing for the “Cookiepocalypse” — when Google Chrome follows up on its promise to cut support for the third-party cookie by 2022.
- [playing it safe](https://marketoonist.com/product/playing-it-safe) - Rob Schwartz, CEO of TBWA\Chiat\Day, recently said: “Every client conversation I’ve had these days is about who is going to be offended by this ad. There’s a lot of discussion about risk mitigation. What that tends to do is that it makes things very bland and not effective.”
- [business as unusual](https://marketoonist.com/product/business-as-unusual) - Last week I got ready to share a weekly cartoon I drew on some marketing topic, and it just didn’t seem to matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. So I took a pause.
- [ad fraud](https://marketoonist.com/product/ad-fraud) - marketing, cartoon, marketoon
- [shopping cart abandonment](https://marketoonist.com/product/shopping-cart-abandonment)
- [data-driven decision making](https://marketoonist.com/product/data-driven-decision-making-2) - Computer scientists coined the colorful expression “garbage in, garbage out” in the earliest days of data processing, a term first recorded in an article in 1963 when an AP reporter visited an early computer lab. Nearly 60 years later, we’re still struggling with data credibility.
- [user-generated content creep](https://marketoonist.com/product/user-generated-content-creep) - The power of user-generated content (UGC) in marketing is nothing new, but the lightbulb went on for many brands in 2020 when Nathan Apodaca’s truck broke down on the way to work.
- [loyalty programs and personal data](https://marketoonist.com/product/loyalty-programs-and-personal-data) - “Loyalty programs need to be treated as a trade-off, meaning they need to provide something of value to the customer and in return customers will provide their personal information along with the permission to track their shopping behavior and actions providing that Big Data.” This is a good reminder from Andy Wood, MD at GI Insight. With the death of third-party cookies and the privacy changes of iOS 14, brands are scrambling to find other ways to collect personal data.
- [brand experience and the metaverse](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-experience-and-the-metaverse) - Amid some of the hype surrounding the metaverse, I was struck by a Washington Post profile of Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, creator of Fortnite. The article included this synopsis of Tim’s vision for brands and the metaverse: “The metaverse … would be an expansive, digitized communal space where users can mingle freely with brands and one another in ways that permit self-expression and spark joy…
- [shiny new NFT syndrome](https://marketoonist.com/product/shiny-new-nft-syndrome) - Marketers are perennially excited about the shiny new thing. Few shiny new things have captured the imagination of marketers quite like the NFT bandwagon of the last year.
- [metaverse hype cycle](https://marketoonist.com/product/metaverse-hype-cycle)
- [meeting overload, hybrid work, and asynchronous communication](https://marketoonist.com/product/meeting-overload-hybrid-work-and-asynchronous-communication) - Meetings have always been a favorite punching bag of modern work life. One survey in 2014 found that employees rated meetings as the “number one office productivity killer.”
- [customer experience and shipping delays](https://marketoonist.com/product/customer-experience-and-shipping-delays) - 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%.
- [marketing b.s. detector](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-b-s-detector) - 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.
- [thought leadership](https://marketoonist.com/product/thought-leadership) - The term “thought leadership” was first coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, editor of Strategy+Business, with a narrow focus in mind. He wrote: “Thought Leaders are those people who possess a distinctively original idea, a unique point of view, or an unprecedented insight into their industry.”
- [inflation, shrinkflation, and skimpflation](https://marketoonist.com/product/inflation-shrinkflation-and-skimpflation) - A few weeks ago, NPR’s Planet Money coined a catchy new economics term — skimpflation.
- [decision paralysis](https://marketoonist.com/product/decision-paralysis-2) - 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.
- [supply chain excuses](https://marketoonist.com/product/supply-chain-excuses) - 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.
- [ho, ho, holiday labor shortage](https://marketoonist.com/product/ho-ho-holiday-labor-shortage) - 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 on the sidelines who would be willing to come back to work if the conditions were right.”
- [pain in the supply chain](https://marketoonist.com/product/pain-in-the-supply-chain)
- [we value your privacy](https://marketoonist.com/product/we-value-your-privacy) - “We value your privacy” is one of those meaningless marketing phrases, like “your call is very important to us” or "we're all in this together", where actions speak louder than words.
- [productivity and interruptions](https://marketoonist.com/product/productivity-and-interruptions) - Jeff Maurer, former senior writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, recently made a funny observation on how to deal with unwanted Slack interruptions: “You CAN mute notifications: Just go to ‘settings’ > ‘notifications” > ‘never get promoted’, and turn the slider to ‘on’.”
- [targeted advertising and the end of third-party cookies](https://marketoonist.com/product/targeted-advertising-and-the-end-of-third-party-cookies) - As marketers prepare for the end of third-party cookies, it’s good to remember how inaccurate much of that third-party data is.
- [every brand onion](https://marketoonist.com/product/every-brand-onion) - I find few things as silly in the world of marketing as the classic Brand Onion. The Brand Onion goes by many names — Brand DNA, Brand Architecture, Brand Wheel, Brand Key, etc. — but it’s basically a one-page synopsis of a brand, collectively word-smithed by the marketing team.
- [marketing in the metaverse](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-in-the-metaverse) - Lindsey McInerney at Anheuser-Busch InBev recently gave voice to some of the enthusiasm marketers are feeling for the potential of the metaverse. She said: “It’s a really exciting time to be a marketer in this space. I believe the shift we’re seeing to the metaverse, is going to be one of the largest shifts we’ve seen in a long time … we are where we were in social media 17, 18 years ago."
- [types of creative brief](https://marketoonist.com/product/types-of-creative-brief) - Veteran agency planners Matt Davies and Pieter-Paul von Weiler released a damning study this week on the state of the marketing brief as part of their Better Briefs Project. It was the first global and largest study on the topic.
- [Fear of Recession](https://marketoonist.com/product/fear-of-recession-2) - There’s nothing spookier this Halloween than some of the headlines. Sapio Research recently found that a whopping 95% of global businesses are concerned about a potential recession, with 45% of US businesses “highly concerned.” Fear can drive a knee-jerk response in a recessionary environment to cut, cut, cut — marketing budgets, media spend, hiring, headcount, R&D investment.
- [Evolution of Marketing and 20 Years of Marketoonist](https://marketoonist.com/product/evolution-of-marketing-and-20-years-of-marketoonist)
- [Decisions, Decisions](https://marketoonist.com/product/decisions-decisions)
- [Procurement and Partnership](https://marketoonist.com/product/procurement-and-partnership)
- [Returning to the Office](https://marketoonist.com/product/returning-to-the-office)
- [Hybrid Work](https://marketoonist.com/product/hybrid-work)
- [Brand Naming](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-naming)
- [AI Generated Marketing Content](https://marketoonist.com/product/ai-generated-marketing-content)
- [Lifecycle of Social Media](https://marketoonist.com/product/lifecycle-of-social-media)
- [Competitor Myopia](https://marketoonist.com/product/competitor-myopia)
- [How Same-Day Delivery Works](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-same-day-delivery-works)
- [Data-Driven](https://marketoonist.com/product/data-driven)
- [Generation Alpha](https://marketoonist.com/product/generation-alpha)
- [The Algorithm Giveth and Taketh Away](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-algorithm-giveth-and-taketh-away)
- [The Innovation Funnel](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-innovation-funnel)
- [talk to the QR code](https://marketoonist.com/product/talk-to-the-qr-code)
- [How to Give Creative Feedback](https://marketoonist.com/product/how-to-give-creative-feedback)
- [make the logo bigger](https://marketoonist.com/product/make-the-logo-bigger-2) - I first drew a version of this cartoon almost 10 years ago, and decided to riff on the concept with an updated version. “Make the logo bigger” is still the most common client feedback for creative work, and the quickest way to drive a creative director crazy.
- [chief something officer](https://marketoonist.com/product/chief-something-officer)
- [False Choice Between Brand and Performance](https://marketoonist.com/product/false-choice-between-brand-and-performance) - In a volatile business environment like this, there’s often pressure to shift gears (and budgets) from long-term brand building to short-term performance marketing that drive quick sales.
- [Building a Moat](https://marketoonist.com/product/building-a-moat)
- [the future of the metaverse](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-future-of-the-metaverse) - No one knows exactly what form the internet of the future will take, but the frustrations of the current internet won’t automatically go away with new technology.
- [artificial intelligence](https://marketoonist.com/product/artificial-intelligence-2) - “Children today are not only digital natives, they’re AI natives.” I was struck by this observation by Cynthia Breazeal, MIT professor and founder of RAISE (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education).
- [walled gardens](https://marketoonist.com/product/walled-gardens) - “The number of walled gardens is growing and we can only expect their walls to get higher,” Quantcast VP Mark White observed recently.
- [product/market fit](https://marketoonist.com/product/product-market-fit) - A CB Insights study found that 35% of startups failed because they launched a product with no market need. It’s one of the main reasons cited why startups fail.
- [Do Something](https://marketoonist.com/product/do-something)
- [<strong>AI Written, AI Read</strong>](https://marketoonist.com/product/ai-written-ai-read)
- [Podcasts for Everyone](https://marketoonist.com/product/podcasts-for-everyone)
- [The AI Pivot](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-ai-pivot)
- [Marketing Planning](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-planning)
- [Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs](https://marketoonist.com/product/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-2)
- [More with Less](https://marketoonist.com/product/more-with-less-2)
- [Marketing to the CFO](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-to-the-cfo)
- [AI-Generated Sameness](https://marketoonist.com/product/ai-generated-sameness)
- [Reinventing Marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/reinventing-marketing)
- [AI Tidal Wave](https://marketoonist.com/product/ai-tidal-wave)
- [Definition of Marketing Insanity](https://marketoonist.com/product/definition-of-marketing-insanity)
- [Evolution of Smart Products](https://marketoonist.com/product/evolution-of-smart-products)
- [Marketing Babble](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-babble)
- [<strong>Tip Creep, Tip-flation, and Tip Fatigue</strong>](https://marketoonist.com/product/tip-creep-tip-flation-and-tip-fatigue)
- [First-Party Data is Coming to Town](https://marketoonist.com/product/first-party-data-is-coming-to-town)
- [Safe is Risky](https://marketoonist.com/product/safe-is-risky-2)
- [By Bots, For Bots](https://marketoonist.com/product/by-bots-for-bots)
- [It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like AI-Generated Content](https://marketoonist.com/product/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-ai-generated-content)
- [Spray-and-Pray Marketing and Sales](https://marketoonist.com/product/spray-and-pray-marketing-and-sales)
- [Fear of AI](https://marketoonist.com/product/fear-of-ai)
- [Intent Signals](https://marketoonist.com/product/intent-signals)
- [Many Hats of the CMO](https://marketoonist.com/product/many-hats-of-the-cmo)
- [Moments of Truth](https://marketoonist.com/product/moments-of-truth)
- [AI and the Future of Work](https://marketoonist.com/product/ai-and-the-future-of-work)
- [Share of Wallet and Funflation](https://marketoonist.com/product/share-of-wallet-and-funflation)
- [Break through the Clutter](https://marketoonist.com/product/break-through-the-clutter)
- [Ratings Fatigue](https://marketoonist.com/product/ratings-fatigue)
- [What’s the Marketing ROI?](https://marketoonist.com/product/whats-the-marketing-roi)
- [Change for the Sake of Change](https://marketoonist.com/product/change-for-the-sake-of-change)
- [Third-Party Cookiepocalypse](https://marketoonist.com/product/third-party-cookiepocalypse)
- [Generative AI Adoption](https://marketoonist.com/product/generative-ai-adoption)
- [Personalization Gone Wrong](https://marketoonist.com/product/personalization-gone-wrong)
- [Productively Unproductive](https://marketoonist.com/product/productively-unproductive)
- [Crossing the Chasm](https://marketoonist.com/product/crossing-the-chasm)
- [The CMO Role](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-cmo-role)
- [Beyond Gen Z](https://marketoonist.com/product/beyond-gen-z)
- [Impact of ChatGPT](https://marketoonist.com/product/impact-of-chatgpt)
- [Innovation and TikTok](https://marketoonist.com/product/innovation-and-tiktok)
- [5 Stages of Price Promotions](https://marketoonist.com/product/5-stages-of-price-promotions)
- [Brands on Threads](https://marketoonist.com/product/brands-on-threads)
- [Push Notification Fatigue](https://marketoonist.com/product/push-notification-fatigue)
- [AI and Productivity](https://marketoonist.com/product/ai-and-productivity)
- [Virtual Reality](https://marketoonist.com/product/virtual-reality)
- [Focus Groups and the Oracles of Eden Prairie](https://marketoonist.com/product/focus-groups-and-the-oracles-of-eden-prairie)
- [Digital Upskilling](https://marketoonist.com/product/digital-upskilling)
- [Media Context and Brand Suitability](https://marketoonist.com/product/media-context-and-brand-suitability)
- [Social Listening and Consumer Insights](https://marketoonist.com/product/social-listening-and-consumer-insights)
- [Happy (Product) Returns](https://marketoonist.com/product/happy-product-returns)
- [Gen Z is not a Monolith](https://marketoonist.com/product/gen-z-is-not-a-monolith)
- [Staying Focused](https://marketoonist.com/product/staying-focused)
- [Super Bowl Ad Playbook](https://marketoonist.com/product/super-bowl-ad-playbook)
- [Future of Search](https://marketoonist.com/product/future-of-search)
- [Marketing Handoff to Sales](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-handoff-to-sales)
- [Writing and SEO Word Soup](https://marketoonist.com/product/writing-and-seo-word-soup)
- [Behind the Focus Group Glass](https://marketoonist.com/product/behind-the-focus-group-glass)
- [Potential of AI](https://marketoonist.com/product/potential-of-ai)
- [The Large Print Giveth](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-large-print-giveth-2)
- [Market Research](https://marketoonist.com/product/market-research-2)
- [AI Washing](https://marketoonist.com/product/ai-washing)
- [Navigating AI Hype](https://marketoonist.com/product/navigating-ai-hype)
- [we're so eco-friendly](https://marketoonist.com/product/were-so-eco-fri)
- [the last mile](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-last-mile-2)
- [cyber monday](https://marketoonist.com/product/cyber-monday)
- [e-commerce profiling](https://marketoonist.com/product/e-commerce-profiling)
- [marketing clutter](https://marketoonist.com/product/marketing-clutter-2)
- [brand guidelines](https://marketoonist.com/product/brand-guidelines)
- [maslow's hierarchy of needs](https://marketoonist.com/product/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs)
- [the future of advertising](https://marketoonist.com/product/the-future-of-advertising)
- [Permission Marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/permission-marketing)
- [mobile marketing](https://marketoonist.com/product/mobile-marketing)
- [what goes on behind the focus group glass](https://marketoonist.com/product/what-goes-on-behind-the-focus-group-glass-2)
- [brands on TikTok](https://marketoonist.com/product/brands-on-tiktok)

## Blocked IP

- [37.139.53.18](https://marketoonist.com/ip/37-139-53-18)
- [37.46.122.91](https://marketoonist.com/ip/37-46-122-91)
- [149.34.244.233](https://marketoonist.com/ip/149-34-244-233)
- [37.46.122.102](https://marketoonist.com/ip/37-46-122-102)
- [37.46.122.88](https://marketoonist.com/ip/37-46-122-88)

## Categories

- [Uncategorized](https://marketoonist.com/category/uncategorized)
- [advertising](https://marketoonist.com/category/advertising)
- [advocacy](https://marketoonist.com/category/advocacy)
- [agencies](https://marketoonist.com/category/agencies)
- [brand management](https://marketoonist.com/category/brand-management)
- [brand positioning](https://marketoonist.com/category/brand-positioning)
- [cause marketing](https://marketoonist.com/category/cause-marketing)
- [challenger brands](https://marketoonist.com/category/challenger-brands)
- [consumer target](https://marketoonist.com/category/consumer-target)
- [design](https://marketoonist.com/category/design)
- [ideations](https://marketoonist.com/category/ideations)
- [international](https://marketoonist.com/category/international)
- [management](https://marketoonist.com/category/management)
- [consumer insights](https://marketoonist.com/category/consumer-insights)
- [marketing clutter](https://marketoonist.com/category/marketing-clutter)
- [marketing silo](https://marketoonist.com/category/marketing-silo)
- [recession](https://marketoonist.com/category/recession)
- [retail](https://marketoonist.com/category/retail)
- [social media](https://marketoonist.com/category/social-media)
- [sustainability](https://marketoonist.com/category/sustainability)
- [transparency](https://marketoonist.com/category/transparency)
- [entrepreneurialism](https://marketoonist.com/category/entrepreneurialism)
- [public relations](https://marketoonist.com/category/public-relations)
- [content marketing](https://marketoonist.com/category/content-marketing)
- [service](https://marketoonist.com/category/service)
- [direct marketing](https://marketoonist.com/category/direct-marketing)
- [design + creativity](https://marketoonist.com/category/creativity)
- [e-commerce](https://marketoonist.com/category/e-commerce)
- [loyalty](https://marketoonist.com/category/loyalty)
- [data-driven](https://marketoonist.com/category/data-driven)
- [analytics](https://marketoonist.com/category/analytics)
- [ad tech](https://marketoonist.com/category/ad-tech)
- [Big Data](https://marketoonist.com/category/big-data)
- [digital transformation](https://marketoonist.com/category/digital)
- [Brand Purpose](https://marketoonist.com/category/brand-purpose)
- [technology](https://marketoonist.com/category/technology)
- [Millennials](https://marketoonist.com/category/millennials)
- [innovation](https://marketoonist.com/category/innovation)
- [mobile](https://marketoonist.com/category/mobile)
- [omnichannel](https://marketoonist.com/category/omnichannel)
- [Generation Z](https://marketoonist.com/category/generation-z)
- [artificial intelligence](https://marketoonist.com/category/artificial-intelligence)
- [customer experience](https://marketoonist.com/category/customer-experience)
- [marketing roi](https://marketoonist.com/category/marketing-roi)
- [influencer marketing](https://marketoonist.com/category/influencer-marketing)
- [cost-cutting](https://marketoonist.com/category/cost-cutting)
- [email marketing](https://marketoonist.com/category/email-marketing)
- [personal branding](https://marketoonist.com/category/personal-branding)
- [covid](https://marketoonist.com/category/covid)
- [most popular](https://marketoonist.com/category/most-popular)
- [marketing](https://marketoonist.com/category/marketing)
- [meetings](https://marketoonist.com/category/meetings)
- [product](https://marketoonist.com/category/product)
- [customer-centric](https://marketoonist.com/category/customer-centric)
- [marketing technology](https://marketoonist.com/category/marketing-technology)
- [agile](https://marketoonist.com/category/agile)
- [metaverse](https://marketoonist.com/category/metaverse)
- [supply chain](https://marketoonist.com/category/supply-chain)
- [creative](https://marketoonist.com/category/creative)
- [work](https://marketoonist.com/category/work)
- [market research](https://marketoonist.com/category/market-research)
- [Generation Alpha](https://marketoonist.com/category/generation-alpha)
- [B2B Marketing](https://marketoonist.com/category/b2b-marketing)
- [risk aversion](https://marketoonist.com/category/risk-aversion)
- [promotions](https://marketoonist.com/category/promotions)
- [personalization](https://marketoonist.com/category/personalization)
- [change](https://marketoonist.com/category/change)
- [tariffs](https://marketoonist.com/category/tariffs)

## Tags

- [content marketing](https://marketoonist.com/tag/content-marketing)

## Testimonial Group

- [speaking](https://marketoonist.com/testimonials_group/speaking)

## Product categories

- [Uncategorized](https://marketoonist.com/product-category/uncategorized)