Marketing teams don’t suffer from a lack of data. They suffer from a lack of honesty. That’s why I argue for humor—specifically, cartoons—as a core tool for better decisions. Tom Fishburne, the mind behind Marketoon Studios, has spent years poking at the odd habits of our trade. His work shows how a single drawing can say what a 40-page deck won’t.
The Case for Honest Humor
Cartoons cut through posturing and reveal what teams already know but won’t say out loud. When a cartoon nails the awkward truth—like chasing every trend or pretending a weak insight is a strategy—people drop their guard. They laugh first. Then they talk.
That is the power at play in Fishburne’s body of work. It’s not snark for snark’s sake. It’s a mirror. A good marketing cartoon turns familiar pain points into shared language. Once a team names the problem, it can solve it.
What Humor Makes Possible
Too many marketing meetings reward performance over candor. People speak in buzzwords. Risks get buried in polite phrasing. Cartoons are an antidote. They invite critique without putting anyone on blast.
- Speed: One frame beats a dozen slides when time is tight.
- Clarity: A simple visual shrinks complex problems to human scale.
- Safety: Laughter lowers the stakes, so blunt truths can surface.
- Memory: Teams remember a cartoon long after they forget a metric.
These aren’t soft benefits. They change behavior. A team that can laugh at its own bad habits is a team that can drop them.
The View From Fishburne’s Work
Tom Fishburne’s cartoons keep circling the same stubborn issues: chasing shiny objects, confusing activity with impact, falling in love with our own slogans. It’s a gallery of marketing reflexes that waste time and budgets.
His work argues, without preaching, that real strategy starts with humility. The message is consistent: stop worshiping tactics, start solving problems customers actually have. When a cartoon shows a team launching a rebrand to fix a product flaw, the joke lands because we’ve seen it. Some of us have done it.
“Humor is truth with a wink.”
I see that theme over and over in how these cartoons work inside companies. The wink invites people in. The truth keeps them there.
But Isn’t Humor a Risk?
Some leaders worry that humor trivializes serious issues. They fear it will distract from the task at hand or come off as cynical. I don’t buy it, with one caveat. Humor must punch up at bad habits, not down at customers or frontline teams.
Used well, humor doesn’t weaken rigor—it unlocks it. It breaks the ice so the hard talk can happen. It shows where the logic is shaky. It makes room for clarity.
How Teams Can Use This on Monday
Want less spin and more signal? Put humor to work in small, practical ways.
- Start meetings with a relevant cartoon that names the elephant in the room.
- Collect recurring “we always do this” patterns and turn them into a visual wall of habits to break.
- Invite the team to caption a scene that reflects a current project risk.
- Pair each laugh with one action: what will we change this week?
- Protect the tone—no mocking customers, no cheap shots at individuals.
These steps turn humor from entertainment into a tool. The laugh is the door. The action is the point.
What Matters Most
I don’t think marketing needs more dashboards. It needs more candor. Tom Fishburne’s work shows that humor can carry hard truths across crowded rooms and tight calendars. If a picture can say what no one will, use the picture.
The call to action is simple. Stop hiding behind jargon. Bring a cartoon to your next review. Ask the team what in that frame feels uncomfortably familiar. Then fix that one thing. Repeat.
Real progress starts when the room can laugh at itself—and then do something about it.
