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The Best Cartoon Going for Marketers
Tom Fishburne, the Marketoonist
Tom Fishburne really needs no introduction. He’s been drawing cartoons that make business people laugh for two decades. His cartoons are shared many times daily over social media networks by marketers, consultants, authors, speakers and business people of all shapes and sizes. They have even made the rounds in Davos. We laugh because of Tom’s keen ability to glean insights from our collective shared experiences and then poke fun at ourselves. In other words, he’s one of us. Just with a wicked sense of humor.
Like many artists, Tom got his start drawing cartoons as a child. His journey from marketer to cartoonist was a gradual, yet logically progressive one. For Tom, cartooning is much like marketing. It’s about knowing your customer, finding the right insight and then communicating that insight in a clear and concise manner. His insights just happen to make us double over in laughter. Tom honed his marketing skills at General Mills and Method before becoming the Marketoonist full time. We talk about what it’s like to draw cartoons for a living and the insights Tom learned from becoming an entrepreneur.
What is the Marketoonist?
It’s been an evolution over time and a little serendipitous. Originally, cartooning was a creative outlet while working in marketing. I saw the same challenges and dilemmas across marketing, a lot of unifying issues, and drawing cartoons gave me a way to talk about them and share my thoughts with others.
Over time, it built on its own, and I eventually added blogging and writing, unpacking the challenges and issues more deeply. I sort of let it flow as a weekly diary.
Ten years ago, I made the jump to do this full-time, working with clients to help them tell business stories using cartoons. So, I shifted from drawing cartoons about marketing to drawing cartoons as marketing.
