Fun & Humor

Take a break for some fun and humor.

  1. Channel: Ecommerce & Digital

The Silo Syndrome

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. […]
3 min read
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  1. Channel: Mass

Brand Planning

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. Department: Food

Sales-Focused Advertising

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. CPG: HBC

Customer Journeys to Nowhere

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. Channel: Ecommerce & Digital

Thinking Outside the Box

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. CPG & FMCG

Playing it Safe is Risky

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. Corporate Strategy

Thought Leadership

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. […]
4 min read
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  1. Channel: Delivery

Corporate Apology

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 […]
3 min read
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Brand Storytelling, Showmanship, and Salesmanship

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. Corporate Strategy

Idea Killers

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 […]
4 min read
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  1. CPG: Adult Beverage

Chief Buzzword Officer

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.” […]
3 min read
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  1. International

Return from Cannes Lions ’24: Creativity

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 […]
2 min read
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  1. Channel: Ecommerce & Digital

Dispatch from Cannes Lions ’24: Marketing Effectiveness

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 […]
2 min read
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  1. Data & Insights

Anecdotes and Data

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. Data & Insights

AI Chatbots and GenAI Hype

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. Department: Nonfood

Guessing the Brief

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.  […]
2 min read
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  1. CPG: Food

Market Share and Competitor Obsession

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. Corporate Strategy

Marketing Math

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 […]
2 min read
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  1. Technology & Innovation

AI Co-Pilots and the Future of Work

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. Corporate Strategy

Marketing Seat at the Table

“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 […]
3 min read
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  1. Technology & Innovation

Market Research

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 […]
2 min read
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  1. Media & Marketing

The Large Print Giveth

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 […]
2 min read
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  1. Technology & Innovation

Potential of AI

“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 […]
2 min read
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  1. CPG: Food

Behind the Focus Group Glass

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. Data & Insights

Writing and SEO Word Soup

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. […]
3 min read
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  1. Department: Nonfood

Marketing Handoff to Sales

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, […]
3 min read
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  1. Department: Food

Future of Search

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. Corporate Strategy

Super Bowl Ad Playbook

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 […]
3 min read
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  1. Department: Nonfood

Staying Focused

“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 […]
3 min read
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Ranked: The Fastest Shrinking Jobs in the U.S. (2023-2033F)

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app. Use This Visualization Ranked: Occupations With the Most Projected Job Cuts This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources. As the economy shifts, the employment landscape changes. […]
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Adobe Predicts 8.4% Growth in Online Holiday Sales, Driven by Discounting

Adobe expects U.S. online sales to hit a record $240.8 billion this holiday shopping season (covering the period from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31), representing 8.4% growth year-over-year. Shopping on mobile devices also is expected to hit a new milestone, growing 12.8% YoY to contribute a record $128.1 billion, which would represent a 53.2% share of online spend this season […]
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  1. Media & Marketing
  2. Retail Ecosystem
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Future of Marketing: Part One

Today, we’re kicking off a special two-part series answering your questions about all things marketing.  Scott puts on his professor hat and answers your questions surrounding common marketing misconceptions, the power of community-driven marketing, and what the future holds for the industry.  Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Buy “The […]
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  1. Shopper & Customer
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Charted: Maxed-Out Credit Cards by Generation

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app. Use This Visualization Credit Card Utilization By Generation This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources. In the first quarter of 2024, the nationwide aggregate credit card […]
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