Just Circling Back

11 May 2026 at 11:30

Just Circling Back Marketoonist cartoon

Former ad copywriter and Gaping Void cartoonist Hugh MacLeod once wrote, “If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they’d punch you in the face.”

It’s not just advertising that can be off-putting. The way businesses talk in lead generation is generally worse, partly because there’s the illusion of personalization.

AI and personalization tech have made it easy for just about anyone to mention a prospect’s local coffee shop, reference a detail scraped from their website, or kinda sorta get an aspect of someone’s business model. (I receive a ton of outreach calling me “Mark” because of “Marketoonist.”)

But it’s often pretty shallow and generic, and still packed with the cliché phrases that have plagued cold outreach since the dawn of marketing time. AI-generated lead generation after all is trained on all the lead generation that came before it.

Paradoxically the tech for personalization has made a lot of personalized outreach feel pretty robotic. The tools designed to sound human can signal the opposite.

In 1970, a Japanese roboticist introduced the concept of the “uncanny valley.” In designing robots to be more human-like, he observed that people respond positively only up to a point.

Then there’s an “uncanny valley” where the “almost-human” design seems creepy and people experience “revulsion.”

We’re in an age of the “uncanny valley” in personalization.

Marketers have always chased the holy grail of delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. But much of today’s personalization falls flat. Bad personalization can be worse than no personalization.

It will take more than technology to bridge the uncanny valley of personalization. Applying the newest tools with an outdated mindset won’t give people what they want. At worst, marketers will just be able to annoy people more efficiently.

Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:

Personalization Gone Wrong - September 2023

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the personalization privacy paradox - July 2021

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personalization - November 2014

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marketing with personal data - May 2014

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The post Just Circling Back first appeared on Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne.

Content about Content about Content

Marketoonist - Tom Fishburne

By: tomfishburne

4 May 2026 at 11:30

Content about Content about Content Marketoonist cartoon

I drew this week’s cartoon inspired by today’s content overload and the circular creator economy.

When I left college in the 90s, I moved to Prague and found a job at Velvet, an English-language magazine for the booming but close-knit expat scene.

At that strange time when Eastern Europe opened up, there were more than 20 different English-language newspapers and magazines in Prague catering to the same small audience.

We used to joke that someday there would be a different English-language magazine for every English speaking expat. Ironically the final issue of Velvet before it folded was a guide to all the English media in Prague.

That was my first experience with content overload.

Mark Schaefer originated the concept of “Content Shock,” which he described as “the emerging marketing epoch when exponentially increasing volumes of content intersect our limited human capacity to consume it.”

Today everyone can be a creator. And the creator tools are all pushing all forms of multimedia all at once. The platform algorithms reward constant posting and repackaging content across channels. AI tools make it possible for digital avatars to pick up the slack even further.

And yet, I like the caution of how P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard once described the situation of trying to keep up with exponentially increasing volumes of content. He said, “we fell into the content crap trap.”

Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:

content marketing overload - March 2017

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AI Generated Marketing Content - August 2022

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Content, Content, Content - August 2025

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The post Content about Content about Content first appeared on Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne.

Misalignment at Speed

Marketoonist - Tom Fishburne

By: tomfishburne

27 April 2026 at 10:14

Misalignment at Speed Marketoonist cartoon

A friend sent me a William Blair research report this week that characterized enterprise AI adoption as “a mile wide and an inch deep.”

Just about every organization has started to use AI tools in some fashion. But there’s little orchestration of how those tools are actually used. And very little alignment across the enterprise.

A 2025 MIT report suggested that 95% of enterprise Generative AI pilots failed to deliver significant ROI or move beyond experimentation. The report flags not the quality of the tools, but to strategic misalignment as the primary driver.

Of course, strategic misalignment is an age-old challenge for organizations. AI acceleration just further exposes the rift.

Hugh Derrick at eatbigfish recently pointed to Harvard Business Review research that strategic alignment is up to 3X lower than leaders think. As he put it:

“So when you layer AI-driven speed on top, you don’t magically become more effective. You run the risk of getting faster at being inconsistent (and yes, you’ll create a lot more ‘stuff’ along the way)…

“And it matters most in big, complex organizations where silos already slow everything down. When 30% of senior leaders point to silos as a root cause of productivity stagnation, and two‑thirds say their organizations are overly complex, adding more speed to a fragmented system doesn’t fix the system. It just creates more noise.”

Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:

we’re all aligned - December 2017

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Herding Cats and Strategic Alignment - October 2024

Herding Cats and Strategic Alignment cartoon

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The Silo Syndrome - October 2024

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The post Misalignment at Speed first appeared on Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne.

Human Made

Marketoonist - Tom Fishburne

By: tomfishburne

20 April 2026 at 11:30

Human Made Marketoonist cartoon

This week’s cartoon goes out to my friend Ann Handley, who has been putting up a valiant defense for the em dash (—).

As Ann put it recently:

“People are patrolling the streets, rounding up em dashes like it’s CSI: Grammar Unit.

“Use one in a paragraph? That means you’re secretly AI! You’re generating your LinkedIn posts with a boiling cauldron of vibes and predictive text! You’re a fake! A phony! Cue the pitchforks! Light the torches! The mob is lurching toward you!

“Meanwhile, the rest of us are just out here trying to write like actual humans—messy, rhythmic, gloriously imperfect.

“I just used an em dash in that last sentence, see? Like humans do.”

The Em Dash is just the tip of the spear for AI detection vigilanteism. In just the last few weeks, Hachette pulled a novel and The Atlantic called out a NYT column for tripping AI detection sensors.

The AI slop floodgates are wide open and the AI backlash is simultaneously underway. And as AI tools are more widely used, we’re in a murky period as a culture of figuring out where to draw the line and what to disclose.

The BBC recently counted 8 different initiatives to come up with an “AI-free,” modeled on the “Fair Trade” endorsement used for products. Claims like “Proudly Human”, “Human-made”, ‘”No A.I” and “AI-free” are popping up everywhere from films to books to marketing.

And yet, there’s no full agreement on how even to define “human made.”

As AI Research Scientist Sasha Luccioni put it:

“AI is now so ubiquitous and so integrated into different platforms and services, that it’s truly complicated to establish what ‘AI free’ means. From a technical perspective, it’s hard to implement. I think that AI is a spectrum, and we need more comprehensive certification systems, rather than a binary with AI/AI-free approach.”

In the meantime, it will likely be a bumpy ride.

Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:

AI Slop Fatigue and Analog Intelligence - September 2025

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AI Written, AI Read - March 2023

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Content, Content, Content - August 2025

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optimizing content - March 2017

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The post Human Made first appeared on Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne.

Storytelling and AI

Marketoonist - Tom Fishburne

By: tomfishburne

6 April 2026 at 11:32

Storytelling and AI Marketoonist cartoon

LinkedIn reported that the percentage of US job postings that include the term “storyteller” doubled last year from the year before.

Katie Deighton recently wrote about this in the WSJ:

“Marketing and technology companies have often repurposed grandiose descriptions from other arenas to lend corporate office roles additional sparkle. While the heyday of technology gurus, developer ninjas, SEO rockstars and at least one digital prophet have long since passed, calling salaried communications professionals “storytellers” and the practice of storytelling appears to only have picked up in popularity.”

Of course this isn’t totally new. Storytelling in business practice goes through periods of being in vogue.

In 2014, Austrian designer Stefan Sagmeister famously pilloried the whole idea of creatives calling themselves storytellers, showing up to a conference on storytelling to tell everyone they weren’t really storytellers.

“People who actually tell stories, meaning people who write novels and make feature films don’t see themselves as storytellers. It’s all the people who are not storytellers, who kind of for strange reasons because it’s in the air suddenly now want to be storytellers.”

I find it funny that Stefan Sagmeister’s own wikipedia entry now describes him as a “graphic designer, storyteller, and typographer.”

AI is impacting storytelling in interesting ways. In some ways, AI is democratizing storytelling. It’s helping amplify and extend stories that might not otherwise get told. Yet, the path of least resistance is to use these tools to generate more of the same.

Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:

marketing storytelling - July 2016

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branded content - September 2013

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AI Slop Fatigue and Analog Intelligence - September 2025

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The post Storytelling and AI first appeared on Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne.

Human in the Loop

Marketoonist - Tom Fishburne

By: tomfishburne

30 March 2026 at 11:30

Human in the Loop cartoon

I drew this week’s cartoon inspired by some of the latest growing pains of human-AI collaboration.

As AI gets more autonomous, the traditional “human in the loop” oversight model is showing strain. With pressure to “10X productivity” with fleets of AI agents, how best to keep up with the avalanche and complexity of approvals?

The “human in the loop” risks becoming a tick box exercise, rather than genuine oversight.

Julia Zarb, founder of Blue x Blue, recently illustrated the problem in high stakes healthcare:

“Consider the busy clinician, nurse or manager asked to make a call quickly with partial context … under pressure, review can become a screen-level action rather than an informed decision.”

That AI approval bottleneck is surfacing challenge in every domain, including customer experience.

Connext released a Global AI Oversight Survey last month that found only 17% of workers believe AI is reliable without human oversight, 64% expect the need for human review to increase, and 20% said AI made customer situations worse.

The Financial Times profiled Amazon’s growing pains a few weeks ago with major website service outages caused by AI-generated code. Amazon now plans for additional human oversight.

The “human in the loop” model is hard-pressed to keep up with modern AI systems at the current speed, scale, and complexity. Organizations are experimenting with a shift from “human in the loop” to “human on the loop” (more hands-off) but it will be a bumpy ride.

And when AI makes mistakes, customers tend to blame the company, not the algorithm.

Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:

AI Co-Pilots and the Future of Work - April 2024

AI Co-Pilots and the Future of Work cartoon

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Generative AI Adoption - August 2023

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AI Written, AI Read - March 2023

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AI Tidal Wave - January 2023

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The post Human in the Loop first appeared on Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne.

Brands Chasing Youth

Marketoonist - Tom Fishburne

By: tomfishburne

23 March 2026 at 11:30

Gen Alpha cartoon

The marketing industry’s obsession with youth is nothing new. Thinking about what makes the next generation of consumers tick is a perennial activity.

Generic one-size-fits-all advice on how to crack the code on Gen Z (age 16-29) and Gen Alpha (age 0-16) circulates constantly. Sometimes these generations are awkwardly bundled together as “Gen Zalpha.” Much of it trades in lazy stereotypes. And it’s all pretty easy to spot.

SKIM, an insights agency, released a global study that found the number one reason younger consumers reject brands is for “trying too hard.”

I like this timeless advice from Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman:

“There’s as much variation within generations as there is between generations.”

When talking about the impact of different generations, it’s easy to default to sweeping generalizations. But generations are not monoliths. And chasing the tropes of a new generation can be a distraction.

Bob Hoffman continues:

“Researchers, media, and marketing experts have been selling us the exact same generational twaddle for over fifty years now…

“It’s astrology. How can you possibly take an enormous component of the population—tens of millions of people—and say they all have this or that characteristic?”

Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:

targeting generation z - June 2017

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Lifecycle of Social Media - September 2022

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social media stars - December 2014

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marketing to generation Z - March 2015

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marketing to younger generations - August 2015

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The post Brands Chasing Youth first appeared on Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne.

Planning for Uncertainty

Marketoonist - Tom Fishburne

By: tomfishburne

16 March 2026 at 11:30

Planning for Uncertainty cartoon

Almost exactly 6 years ago, as things started to shut down for Covid, I drew a cartoon about the challenges of planning in a time of uncertainty.

An executive holds up a coin and says, “We need to update our forecast. Heads, this will blow over soon. Tails, it’s the end of the world.”

At the time I shared a quote I’d heard that I found helpful: “The worst thing to do in a time of chaos is add to it.”

That of course hasn’t been the only moment of uncertainty in the last six years. Uncertainty makes it particularly hard to think about long-range planning.

Jim Hardison, co-founder of Character, shared some insights this week about brands in a time of uncertainty:

“For marketers, this volatility creates a specific problem: uncertainty undermines control. And control has always been central to how brands tell their stories.

“Traditional marketing assumes a relatively stable environment. Teams develop strategies months in advance, campaigns unfold in carefully sequenced phases, and brands guide audiences toward a narrative they have deliberately constructed. But when conditions change faster than plans can adapt, that narrative control begins to collapse. Strategies can be abandoned midstream. Messaging becomes reactive. Teams hesitate, waiting for clarity that never quite arrives.

“The result is often paralysis, or worse, generic behavior.”

Jim advises that brands take a cue from improvisational theater and learn to practice what he calls “disciplined adaptability.”

As he put it:

“Success depends less on executing a perfect plan and more on responding in character to changing circumstances.”

I like that framing. When things are uncertain is when we most need to “respond” instead of “react.”

Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:

The post Planning for Uncertainty first appeared on Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne.

Reading view

Just Circling Back

Personalization Gone Wrong - September 2023

the personalization privacy paradox - July 2021

personalization - November 2014

marketing with personal data - May 2014

Content about Content about Content

content marketing overload - March 2017

AI Generated Marketing Content - August 2022

Content, Content, Content - August 2025

Misalignment at Speed

we’re all aligned - December 2017

Herding Cats and Strategic Alignment - October 2024

The Silo Syndrome - October 2024

Human Made

AI Slop Fatigue and Analog Intelligence - September 2025

AI Written, AI Read - March 2023

Content, Content, Content - August 2025

optimizing content - March 2017

Storytelling and AI

marketing storytelling - July 2016

branded content - September 2013

AI Slop Fatigue and Analog Intelligence - September 2025

Human in the Loop

AI Co-Pilots and the Future of Work - April 2024

Generative AI Adoption - August 2023

AI Written, AI Read - March 2023

AI Tidal Wave - January 2023

Brands Chasing Youth

targeting generation z - June 2017

Lifecycle of Social Media - September 2022

social media stars - December 2014

marketing to generation Z - March 2015

marketing to younger generations - August 2015

Planning for Uncertainty

managing uncertainty - March 2020

the new normal - May 2020

the five stages of missing plan - June 2008

strategic options in a recession - June 2020