Tom Fishburne: Brand Camp cartoonist and marketing guy

post 2 post book tour

I'm glad to share that my new book, This One Time, at Brand Camp, is ready at last.

Just in time for the Post2Post Virtual Book Tour, where my book is the featured book this month.  Hosted by Paul Williams (from Idea Sandbox), I'll visit 5 marketing blogs over the next week. Kind of like a real book tour, but I don't have to travel and I won't need a Sharpie.

The tour kicks off with this nice interview with Chris Wilson at The Marketing Fresh Peel.

Thanks to all of the bloggers for reading the advance copies and hosting a stop on the tour.  Here's the full schedule:

Mon, Aug 25th: Marketing Fresh Peel by Chris Wilson
Tue, Aug 26th: Church of the Customer by Jackie Huba & Ben McConnell
Wed, Aug 27th: Brand Autopsy by John Moore
Thu, Aug 28th: Digital Roam blog by Dan Roam
Fri, Aug 29th: Seth's Blog by Seth Godin

If any one else would like to review the book on their blog, just email me and I'll post you a book.

evolution of marketing

This cartoon was inspired by a question from Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell.  Jackie and Ben are interviewing me as part of the Post2Post blogging book tour I'm doing this week.  They asked: " Is branding dead and if so, where do we bury the body?"

I definitely don't think branding is extinct, but I do think it's evolved.  So, I decided to use the evolution metaphor to play with a couple stereotypes in the noble profession of marketing.

Doctors have Hippocrates.  Even lawyers have Atticus Finch.  But, ask most consumers what archetypes they think of for marketers and the snakeoil salesman comes to mind.

I think that's because much of the history of marketing and branding has been about concocting a story consumers wanted to hear, even if the story was a wee bit phony. Charles Revson, founder of Revlon, famously quipped: "In our factories, we make cosmetics. In the store, we sell hope."

Nowadays, consumers are often in the marketer's seat.  Consumers have always been the best source for what your brand means (not what's on a brand architecture tacked up in the office).  But, the power used to be with the marketer to sculpt and shape that message.  The question to ask now is no longer how your consumers play back the message you told them.  It's what message are they spreading to others.

With rise of social media, consumers are quick and empowered to share brands they like.  But, they are also quick and empowered to point out hypocritical stuff they they don't like. (Jackie and Ben wrote about this phenomenon in their book, Citizen Marketers).

I think the key is to tell an authentic brand story (but careful that you don't overdo that like the authenticity hawker in the cartoon).

And then find ways to enable your consumers to advocate on your behalf. 

I love how the gDiapers brand has found a way to recruit consumers to even do in-store demos and go to local events on behalf of the brand.  Now that's powerful.  If you want to know what the gDiapers brand means, just ask these moms.  You can be sure they're not snakeoil salesmen.

If you'd like the full interview, Jackie and Ben are posting it on Tuesday on their Church of the Customer blog.

pavlov's promotions

With the credit crunch brewing, there's a lot of pressure to ramp up your price promotions.  There certainly is a short-term argument (sales are down, consumers are increasingly price-sensitive, and price promotions are a predictable way to drive volume).  But, in the long-run, I think it can start to train your consumers to only buy you on deal (like the Pavlovian response in this cartoon).

It reminds me of my time on Haagen-Dazs.  Years ago, Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's had a good thing going.  They co-existed peacefully (promotion-wise), rarely promoting like the less premium ice cream brands in the category.  They didn't have to.  They were superpremium brands, and people bought them for reasons other than price.

Then, an upstart superpremium brand called Dreamery came along with an aggressive price promotion strategy. It was classic game theory.  Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's ramped up their promotions so they didn't lose volume to the new threat.  Soon, they were promoting like everyone else.  Dreamery eventually went away, but it was too late.  Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's had become Trade Deal Junkies.   They effectively trained their consumers to wait to buy until they were on deal.

This same realization prompted this related cartoon a few years ago.

hot off the press

Hot diggity, it's nearly ready.  I'm launching my new cartoon book in a couple weeks, and just received a few advance copies.  As you can see, my 5 year old was particularly excited by her choice in bedtime reading.

I set aside a signed advance copy to the reader who can write the funniest one-liner ending to this sentence:

"This one time, at Brand Camp, I ... "

Think about a true marketing-related example from your experience in brand team or agency life that shows how bizarre marketing can sometimes be.

Just post your answer as a comment to this blog post by August 20th, and I'll send a signed book to the best response.

I already sent out a few advance copies to some nice bloggers who will be writing about the book as part of the upcoming Post2Post Virtual Book Tour. Here's the full tour schedule.  Email me if you'd like to blog about it too, and I'll post you a copy.

Mon, Aug 25th: Marketing Fresh Peel by Chris Wilson
Tue, Aug 26th: Church of the Customer Blog by Jackie Huba & Ben McConnell
Wed, Aug 27th: Brand Autopsy by John Moore
Thu, Aug 28th: Digital Roam blog by Dan Roam
Fri, Aug 29th: Seth's Blog by Seth Godin

the fishbowl

We all work in a fishbowl.

I was thinking about how my favorite brands are marketed from the inside out.  There's a philosophy at the core that becomes ultimately reflected through everything they do.  These brands view everything as marketing and everyone in the company as working in marketing (even if they work in the mailroom).  When consumers poke and prod, it all hangs together consistently.

If you visit Fruit Towers (the headquarters for innocent), which they invite you to do on every bottle, it feels exactly as you'd expect from them.  And everyone you meet seems like a voice of the brand.

This is different from historic branding and marketing, where a brand persona is concocted for a 30-second spot, often by an ad agency.  Or a brand architecture is written to be shared with other marketers and marketing agencies only.

When I worked on Green Giant years ago, I stumbled across a thought piece that someone from Leo Burnett had written back in the 60's on the mythology of the Green Giant.  It was fascinating, with lots of intriguing stuff about how the Green Giant was related to the old pagan gods, etc.

No wonder these ads were so meaningful to consumers in a world of 30 second spots.  And most American consumers over the age of 50 can finish the theme song, "up in the valley of the Green Giant..."

In today's hyper-connected world, consumers choose how they interact with your brand, not the other way around.  And they're more apt to look through or around the brand "persona" to the real deal.  And then share what they find with others in blogs or other social media.  We're all in a fishbowl now, and we're all held up to a different standard.

Which is why it's important to think of everyone in the company as working in marketing.  And to be authentic about it.  How refreshing if a brand architecture were written not just to be shared with other marketers and marketing agencies, but with the whole company.  It would cut out all the incomprehensible lingo and make it easy to understand for everyone.  So that everyone can be a voice of the brand.

Not just the one guy in the equity costume.

stop: the movie

This clever video is really making the rounds right now.  Quite a good parody of the creative process.  Thanks to both Su-May and my friend Ericka for sharing this with me.

silo farming

I've been reading a book on Steve Jobs called "Inside Steve's Brain" by Leander Kahney.  Really interesting distillation of some of the Apple magic. 

I was struck by the product development process, which is cross-functional in the extreme, with designers, engineers, marketers, and programmers all involved early and in a very connected way.

The book contrasted this with a typical step-by-step design process, where products are passed from one team to the next, and there's little back and forth between the departments.

It all got me thinking of the problems caused by rifts between deep functional silos, and prompted this cartoon idea.  I started thinking of the farm analogy after seeing this clever agency video on the source of creative juice.

It's always cracked me up to hear the creative team referred to as "the creatives", as if they're a different species.  In many companies, there's such a lack of understanding of different functional groups that it does feel like different species at times.  Which then makes it oh-too-easy to point the finger at another group when something goes wrong.

At method, we've tried to disband the functional silos by seating everyone at long inter-mixed tables, so you'll sit next to a packaging engineer, a supply chain planner, and a structural designer.  It helps, because you get the good chemistry from interacting all the time, and you often spark more ideas in an impromptu five minute chat than a scheduled cross-functional meeting.  But, it takes work to break the functional silo shackles.

And even more work to go "free range".

little miss corporate

For father's day, my girls gave me a bright yellow t-shirt that says "Mr. Perfect."  I felt pretty darn special.  The next day, I took them to the park and saw a couple guys wearing "Mr. Perfect" t-shirts.  "Wait a minute," I thought defensively, "I thought I was Mr. Perfect."

Suddenly, I started noticing the Mr. Men / Little Miss shirts all over the place, proclaiming all sorts of personality traits: grumpy, happy, naughty, etc. 

It made me think of the corporate world, where there is a whole other set of personality traits.  So, I thought I'd put a few of the worst offenders into a cartoon, in the spirit of the original Roger Hargreaves style.

It makes me want to make up mock t-shirts to wear around the office.

this one time, at Brand Camp

I have some exciting news to report.  I've been burning the midnight oil lately on a new cartoon book called, "This One Time, at Brand Camp".  I wanted to give a sneak peak of the cover and share a few quick details. 

It launches in early September.  This is my first book since I published "Brand Camp" in October 2004, and will include over 100 cartoons from the last four years.  Following the format of this blog, I'm sharing liner notes and background insights on each cartoon.  It will also have a few cartoons that haven't been published before, and I've drawn a flipbook-style animated cartoon in the margins.  Should be fun.

Jackie Huba, co-author of "Creating Customer Evangelists" and "Citizen Marketers" has kindly written the forward.

Paul Williams, blogger extraordinaire from the Idea Sandbox, has offered to host my book on the Post2Post Virtual Book Tour.  This is a cool concept, where I'll make 5 stops in late August to different marketing bloggers to chat about the book.  Still working out the details, but some of my heroes, including Seth Godin, John Moore, Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba, and Dan Roam are confirmed so far.  Woo hoo.

You'll be able to find the book through this site and via Amazon in early September.  I'll keep you posted.

your brand in a recession

 

I've been hearing so much gloom and doom lately about the recession.  And how it spells disaster for marketing in general and premium brands in particular.  Consumers aren't shopping as much, they're only looking for value, blah, blah, blah.

It's obviously true that consumers change behavior during a recession (just look at Wal*Mart's performance versus Target recently).  But, I think there's a big opportunity for brands to adapt to provide a new story.  As Seth Godin describes it:

"Starbucks was the indulgence of a confident person happy to blow $4 on a cup of coffee. Starbucks can become the small indulgence for the person who just traded down to a small rented apartment."

I think the key is to keep your cool, avoid the temptation to drastically cut budgets, and take a fresh look at your brand in the light of the recession.  Rethink the role your brand can plan for your consumers now.

The brand where I work, method, was founded in the dotcom bust, and Inc. recently published an interesting article on companies like method that started in a recession.  It includes this great quote from Eric Ryan, "Starting a business in a recession is like vacationing in the off-season. It's a little less crowded, and everything starts going on sale."

Anyway, all of this reminded me of the classic over-simplified "This is Your Brain on Drugs" public service ad from the 80's (which is embedded in pop culture if you grew up in the US).  But, rather than leave it with the depressing "any questions?" from the original ad, I wanted to flip that convention around with a bit of optimism. 

Because I do think there's room to be optimistic.  Even with bad news on the doorstep.