Tom Fishburne Sketches Out A Place For Cartoons In Content Marketing

“Cartoons simplify complex ideas and come across in a very palatable way that people are receptive to,” said Marketoonist Tom Fishburne. Case in point: a recent campaign he created for LinkedIn, which performed at three times the engagement rate of other forms of visual media.

For this week’s episode of “Marketing Today,” I spoke with Tom Fishburne, founder of Marketoonist, a content marketing agency that employs cartoons to make its point. (You’ll find a few examples at the end of this article.) He is also author of “Your Ad Ignored Here.” Known by Seth Godin as the “David Ogilvy of cartooning,” Fishburne’s work reaches several hundred thousand marketers every week.

“It’s fun for me, as someone who comes from both marketing and cartooning, to think about how cartoons can help solve marketing challenges,” Fishburne said. “Cartoons can ultimately bring empathy to a topic that can otherwise be very technical. Use humor as a bit of a Trojan horse—you get people laughing at certain behaviors or pain points—and it opens up a window to then deliver a deeper message.”

Highlights from this week’s “Marketing Today” podcast include:

• How Fishburne’s decision to move to Prague on a whim cured his aversion to risk—and changed his life. (1:36)
• Fishburne describes his creative process. (3:31)
• Fishburne reveals the impetus behind his new book. (6:42)
• The Jolly Green Giant and the disappearance of the captive audience. (8:27)
• The Shiny New Thing Syndrome — a.k.a. The Squirrel Phenomenon. (11:45)
• Fishburne finds humor in the friction of adapting. (19:22)
• The cartoon approach to content marketing. (23:34)
• Executive hoodies, anyone? Fishburne discusses his admiration for Betabrand clothing. (31:54)
• The future of marketing. (34:48)

https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/6025905/height/90/theme/custom/autoplay/no/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/preload/no/no_addthis/no/direction/backward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/7f3889/

Listen in iTunes or Google Play.