Marketoonist

“Brand Storytelling, Showmanship, and Salesmanship” - new cartoon and post https://lnkd.in/gjVZA8DZ 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 David Altschul. Part of what they do is separate what distinguishes a story from mere information. One of the key principles they talk about is “Conflict.” Marketing teams are sometimes shy to consider conflict, but conflict is essential in a story. As they put it: “Conflict is the engine that makes the story go. A story doesn’t start until a conflict begins and doesn’t end until it’s over. Conflict creates an immediate emotional connection that hooks the audience and maintains their interest … The first step in articulating your brand’s story is to get a handle on the conflicts that drive it.” I’ve been thinking about “brand storytelling” in the context of two conversations last month with Orlando Wood at System 1 and Les Binet, who I finally had an opportunity to meet in person. Orlando introduced me to the idea of two distinct types of advertising — “showmanship” and “salesmanship.” Showmanship is more related to longer-term brand-building and salesmanship is more related to shorter-term direct-response. Ultimately brands need both, as Les Binet famously argued with Peter Field in “The Long and the Short of It.” They advocated a 60:40 rule of thumb — with 60% of advertising spend placed in brand-building (the “show”) and 40% in performance marketing (the “sale”). In a recent panel with Orlando at Adam&eveDDB, Les said: “Where I think we get it wrong is when we want to do both jobs at the same time. Brands make that mistake of trying to do the brand stuff at the point of purchase. They’re different jobs.” For related cartoons and all the links in this post, click here: https://lnkd.in/gjVZA8DZ To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter, click here: https://lnkd.in/gyWRQBxu #marketing #cartoon #marketoon

“Idea Killers” - new cartoon and post https://lnkd.in/gkv356FY 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 a world of clutter, the last effect a brand can afford to create is indifference. Many product categories turn into a sea of sameness over time. But it’s hard to out-vanilla vanilla. Guy Kawasaki, chief evangelist of Canva and early Apple exec, once suggested: “Don’t be afraid to polarize people. Most companies want to create the holy grail of products that appeals to every demographic, social-economic background, and geographic location. To attempt to do so guarantees mediocrity. Instead, create great products that make segments of people very happy. And fear not if these products make other segments unhappy. The worst case is to incite no passionate reactions at all, and that happens when companies try to make everyone happy.” I often draw cartoons about the challenges of navigating idea killers because I think that’s where some of the most important work happens. There are many ways to kill or water down ideas and it’s always easier to critique than create. The path of least resistance leads to work that is dull and unremarkable. It takes a lot of effort to run the gauntlet of idea killers to prevent that from happening. For related cartoons and all the links in this post, click here: https://lnkd.in/gkv356FY To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter, click here: https://lnkd.in/gyWRQBxu #marketing #cartoon #marketoon

While cartoonist-in-residence drawing and living with the System1 crew at Cannes Lions, I sat down with Jon Evans on Uncensored CMO to talk about why humor is good for business. I hope you enjoy this conversation — we cover everything from the importance of laughing at ourselves in the workplace to some of the most popular cartoons I’ve ever drawn to the 5-day series I drew for Cannes Lions. https://lnkd.in/gw2eyEFH #marketing #cartoons #marketoons Kerry Collinge Orlando Wood Adam Morgan

“Chief Buzzword Officer” - new cartoon and post https://lnkd.in/gMkxzNEg 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 European cafe tables and hear, not French, but snippets of conversation with language like “brand salience” and “mental availability.” It reminded me how easy it is for marketers to slip into a bubble of talking to ourselves. Johnny Corbett wrote a MarketingWeek column on this topic a couple months ago and relayed a funny story of a marketing pitch to Diageo CEO, Paul Walsh. At the end of the buzzword-heavy presentation, Paul responded: “This is all great. But what has any of it got to do with selling bottles?” I had a similar experience early in my marketing career. As an associate marketing manager for a yogurt brand, I was charged with giving a brand update to one of the yogurt factories in rural Michigan. I stood in front of the staff during a production line shift change and went through our marketing plan. It was soon clear to me that I was speaking a different language. The way we talked about marketing and brands to other marketers at headquarters just didn’t translate as well to the factory. The audience in the room was primarily interested how we were going to ramp up sales to keep more production lines and more shifts running in the factory. My buzzword-heavy brand plans didn’t cut it. It was a good lesson for me to get out of the marketing ivory tower more often and not take ourselves too seriously. And try not to lose sight of the big picture of what we do. For related cartoons and all the links in this post, click here: https://lnkd.in/gMkxzNEg To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter, click here: https://lnkd.in/gyWRQBxu #marketing #cartoon #marketoon

“Dispatch from Cannes Lions ’24” - Day 5 cartoon Here’s the final cartoon installment from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this week. System1 invited me to sketch a daily cartoon based on what I see here. This one is about the transition back to regular work at the end. Even if you haven’t been to this festival, hopefully you can relate to the return experience after any sort of creative retreat. Creativity is ultimately not about the inspiration or ideas — it’s about how you bring them to life. Championing truly creative work usually involves running a gauntlet. It’s very easy to settle for safer versions of creative execution. But too many compromises can water down the result to nothing. One of my earliest cartoons reimagined Isaac Newton under the apple tree and what happens after the apple drops and inspiration strikes. Each frame has chomps taken out of the apple until what is left is applesauce. We all have to fight against Newton’s applesauce. Several of my conversations this week touched on this universal challenge in creative work. I hope you’ve enjoyed this Cannes cartoon series. Thank you again to System1 for hosting me this week. If you’ve liked the series, keep an eye out for a fun Uncensored CMO podcast interview I recorded with Jon Evans Evans on the role that humor plays in a creative culture. #marketing #cartoon #canneslions #marketoon Orlando Wood Kerry

“Dispatch from Cannes Lions ’24” - Day 4 cartoon Here’s the next cartoon installment from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this week. System1 invited me to sketch a daily cartoon this week. This the first year that legendary marketing pundit Mark Ritson came to Cannes. He once famously pilloried Cannes in a Marketing Week column entitled, “My Comprehensive Guide to What Marketers Can Learn This Week At Cannes.” The rest of the column was a blank page. Mark gave a packed house talk that was a wake up call to get out of the marketing echo chamber. He included an anecdote about a pasta brand filling out its packaging with all sorts of brand messaging around purpose and values, when all the customer really wants to know is how long to keep the pasta in boiling water. It was a surreal this week walking the beautiful cobblestone streets and overhearing, not French, but buzzword-heavy marketing conversations about “customer obsession” and “brand essence.” There’s a risk in marketing circles of breathing our own exhaust. I'll share a final cartoon observation on my way out tomorrow. I hope you’ve enjoyed this Cannes series this week. #marketing #cartoon #canneslions #marketoon Jon Evans Orlando Wood Kerry Collinge

“Dispatch from Cannes Lions ’24” - Day 3 cartoon Here’s the next cartoon installment from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this week. Jon Evans and System1 invited me to sketch a daily cartoon this week from the show. There’s a surprisingly dreary basement gallery at the Festival that features all “the work” in the running for an award. It’s funny to see the sheer number of submissions and how tiny everything is on the wall. From a distance, everything starts to look alike. In a way, that kind of mirrors the challenge of marketing communication in general, where it’s so hard to break through the proverbial clutter. Adam Morgan and Jon Evans gave a session on this theme yesterday titled “the Extraordinary Cost of Dull,” which explored the tangible costs when marketing comms blur into a sea of sameness. They talked through some of the root causes of dull work — including the tendency of “averaging”, where communication can start to look alike over time. I've heard this described as "the great samening." I'll keep posting my cartoon observations throughout the week. Hope you enjoy them! #marketing #cartoon #canneslions #marketoon

“Dispatch from Cannes Lions ’24: Marketing Effectiveness” - new cartoon and post https://lnkd.in/gwbqce53 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. Jon Evans invited me to be a Marketoonist-in-Residence for the week, so I’m going to capture some of the themes I notice as I wander the event. This is the first time that humor is a distinct award category for the Cannes Lions, so if feels like a particularly good time to be here, helping poking a little fun at marketing and advertising. One of the fascinating parts of the environment here is the deafening level of marketing to other marketers — and the effort that brands take to get noticed and try to get people to their events. The yacht party and beach party one-upmanship is particularly entertaining to watch. A friend from the Bay Area mentioned to me the irony of traveling all the way to Cannes to try to set up meetings with other people who are also based in the Bay Area. Mark Ritson is giving a session tomorrow on marketing effectiveness titled “Creativity is not Enough.” Thinking about the focus of this talk in the context of so much marketing spend in Cannes was hard to resist parodying in a cartoon. I'll keep posting cartoon observations throughout the week. For related cartoons and all the links in this post, click here: https://lnkd.in/gwbqce53 To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter, click here: https://lnkd.in/gyWRQBxu #marketing #cartoon #canneslions #marketoon

“Anecdotes and Data” - new cartoon and post https://lnkd.in/gmda4UtN 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 plural of anecdote is data.” Both expressions are catchy and both ring true to me for different reasons. Making decisions in business often involves weighing imperfect and sometimes contradictory information. At one of end of the spectrum, we often give too much credit to institutional folklore. These often take the form of anecdotes we tell ourselves to represent our categories, our customer personas, and how people think about our brands. Sometimes we no longer even remember the origin of these anecdotes. These anecdotes can be valuable shorthand, but they can also be limiting, biased, or totally wrong. Anecdotes are sometimes thinly veiled opinions. At the other end of the spectrum, anecdotes can be a form of unstructured data that can lead to interesting insights. All data comes from somewhere after all. The question is whether the anecdotes are representative and whether there is enough of a sample size to know. Ultimately, we need both the qualitative and the quantitative — the unstructured and the structured data — to make sense of the business world. In this era of data-driven and evidence-based decision making, we have more data than we know what to do with. Part of the art and science of working with data is probing the source, questioning the assumptions, and coming at it with humility. Many of the breakthroughs of challenger brands come from toppling category truisms, and inverting how incumbents look at the world. When I was an HBS student, I helped find speakers for their 2001 tech conference called Cyberposium (the name felt a little dated, even then). It was just a year after the March 2000 dot-com collapse and many of the early web entrepreneurs were there. I spent part of a morning with Jim Barksdale, founding CEO of Netscape. He had great stories and business aphorisms. One of Jim Barksdale’s observations I’ve always liked: “If we have data, let's look at data. If all we have are opinions, let's go with mine.” For related cartoons and all the links in this post, click here: https://lnkd.in/gmda4UtN To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter, click here: https://lnkd.in/gyWRQBxu #marketing #cartoon #data #marketoon

“AI Chatbots and GenAI Hype”- new cartoon and post https://lnkd.in/gXaimXnG #marketing #cartoon #marketoon 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 appeared at the top of the search results. Some of the answers were hilarious and strange, like its suggestion to “eat one small rock a day”, or its assertion that “a dog was a fourth-round NHL draft pick and played 63 games for the Calgary Flames,” or its advice that “glue can help cheese stick to pizza.” My favorite recent AI growing pains story comes from the Chevrolet Watsonville car dealership, which introduced an AI chatbot to ask web site visitors, “how can I help you in your vehicle search?” Website visitors soon had the Watsonville Chevrolet chatbot saying all sorts of crazy things, from praising Tesla to writing Python code. Chris Bakke even convinced the chatbot to agree to sell a 2024 Chevy Tahoe for $1 and had the chatbot say “and that’s a legally binding offer - no takesies backsies.” These are all part of the awkward adolescence of AI and digital transformation, which I’m speaking about this week at the Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo in Denver. It’s a particularly fitting event, given Gartner’s famous Hype Cycle for emerging technologies. Last August, Gartner pegged GenAI at the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” in the Hype Cycle. What comes next is the “Trough of Disillusionment,” which many businesses are experiencing as they figure out how exactly to navigate the promise of GenAI. As Rumman Chowdhury at Humane Intelligence said recently: “No one wants to build a product on a model that makes things up.” It will take time and experimentation for brands to figure out how best to leverage AI beyond the hype. For related cartoons and all the links in this post, click here: https://lnkd.in/gXaimXnG To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter, click here: https://lnkd.in/gyWRQBxu #marketing #cartoon #marketoon