Toluu : Tom Fishburne

Tom Fishburne

cartoons, marketing, and business lampooning

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 of the Christmas shopping season).

Along with my cartoon, the UK Marketing Society is including an article from Google called "Speeding up in the slowdown". I like that sentiment. It includes a quote that "history tells us that slowdowns are when winners get ahead. The performance gap between the most successful companies and their competitors becomes greater than during a growth period. The winners continue investing in growth and focus on profitable products and customers while carefully managing costs."

Just as I was wondering about examples of companies actually "speeding up in the slowdown," I heard from my friend Sam who launched his new company literally two weeks ago. It's called DealBase.com, and analyzes travel deals, showing consumers how to save money on their travels. If anything, the current

cartooniversary screensaverNovember 29

Another year, another cartooniversary. About a month ago, I realized I'd been drawing Brand Camp for six years. So, I decided to create a screensaver with some of my favorite cartoons since the beginning. And to thank all of you for reading over the years, it's totally free. Consider it as a little recession pick-me-up. Happy festivus.

Just download the Brand Camp screensaver here.

The screensaver cycles through nearly 100 Brand Camp cartoons randomly. It's much more exciting than a bouncing company logo or those creepy "3D pipes". Sadly, it works on PC's only (I couldn't figure out an option for Macs). Also, the file size is kind of big but that's what happens when you cram 100 cartoons into a file.

Of course, if you're looking for the perfect stocking stuffer for the finance director you're trying to bribe to be flexible on your IRR hurdles, you might also like to pick up a Brand Camp book or two.

keep calm and carry onNovember 26

I went to a dinner with the UK Marketing Society last night. They nicely invite me to some of their events as a sort of cartoonist-in-residence (I draw their Christmas cards and send them cartoons in their magazine).

Anyway, the dinner was held in a massive room with more than 1,200 marketers from all types of marketing organizations in the UK. It's kind of a somber time for marketers to get together, but the tone was about finding opportunities in the midst of it all.

The president closed his opening toast by quoting this brilliant WWII-era propaganda poster (all the more fitting since the dinner included a personalized video address from Prince Charles).

I've started to see a resurgence in war propaganda posters like this one. The latest howies catalog features one on its back cover.

point of differenceNovember 23

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.

Any way, we also had time for a nice chat, and talked about how many companies are getting so risk-adverse in the down-turn. Risk-adversion often takes the form of committees weighing in on ideas to sand the edges so that they're "safe".

But, I think that the "safe is risky" motto even applies in a downturn. Actually, I think it especially applies in a downturn. Because the status quo won't cut it when consumers are reframing how they look at the world. Nimble brands will take advantage of this time to find new opportunities.

In the credit crunch marketing conference I mentioned last week, one of the speakers talked of the importance of becoming the "peacock in a crowd of pigeons" (another way of describing the "purple cow"). The easiest way to

credit crunch soap operaNovember 18

I’m just returning from the Marketing magazine credit crunch conference. Thanks for all of your questions (and congratulations to Jeff for winning a Brand Camp book). I’ll post my full takeaways when I’m not feeling quite so knackered from the long day (nothing quite takes it out of you like a day talking through the credit crunch).

The tone was largely optimistic and the focus was on finding opportunities rather than bellyaching. The day spanned quite a wide gambit from how to think about pricing to how to think about adding more value.

I gave a short case study on how method tries to create “value” without discounting. I think method is an interesting case study during a recession because in a way, the whole cleaning category has been in a recession for decades. Everything we’ve ever done has been to create “value” in the middle of commodity soup (and get consumers to love us enough to send us photos like this handwash recycled as a butterfly)

I’m posting my presentation below in case you find it useful. They asked me talk about sustainability and ethic