Marketoonist

"Chasing the Algorithm" - new cartoon and post: The algorithm giveth and the algorithm taketh away. When Facebook first introduced the News Feed in 2006, posts appeared in chronological order. In 2009, they introduced their first algorithm to sort based on popularity. LinkedIn introduced an algorithmic feed in 2012, Twitter in 2014, and Instagram in 2016. All the algorithms continue to change and evolve, impacting what gets seen. This drives incentives to try to crack the code and figure out the "one weird trick" that will drive engagement and make things go viral. A few of these "best practices" are helpful, but many are shallow, some are total superstitions, and most of them put the cart before the horse. And of course, what may have worked yesterday changes tomorrow. It's an algorithmic arms race, between posters trying to game the system and algorithms changing the game altogether. I've been drawing and sharing this cartoon nearly weekly for 23 years now. I've learned that continuity is more valuable than going viral. There's no "one weird trick." And social media metrics are mostly empty calories. But the most important thing I've learned is that trying to create for an algorithm ultimately takes away from creating for actual people. >>>>> To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter (23 years running), click here: https://lnkd.in/gyWRQBxu For related cartoons and all the links in this post, click here: https://lnkd.in/ga7-RpjP #marketing #cartoon #marketoon

“The Future of Advertising” — throwback cartoon I drew in 2017, in the same vein as my latest post on “Smartify Everything”. >>> To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gyDZhaEN If you missed my “Smartify Everything” cartoon: https://lnkd.in/gJUZe9Cj And you can see all of my cartoon from the last 23 years here: https://lnkd.in/e_uu_Yn #marketing #cartoon #marketoon #throwback

"Smartify Everything" - new cartoon and post: One of the most popular cartoons I ever drew was about the Internet of Things, right after Google announced the acquisition of Nest in early 2014. “I think my Nest smoke alarm is going off,” one character tells another. “Google Adwords just pitched me a fire extinguisher and an offer for temporary housing.” iRobot later proved that truth is stranger than fiction when photos taken in homes by a beta version of its Roomba vacuum robot somehow ended up on Facebook in late 2022, including a photo of someone on the toilet. Yet the drumbeat to "Smartify" just about every product by connecting it to the Internet has only accelerated in the AI era. The latest is a "Smart Toilet" with an in-bowl camera from Kohler that analyzes photos and connects findings to a health app. Some of these products have true utility. But the question is whether the advantages outweigh the drawbacks, particularly in privacy, security, and the cost to repair. There are inherent vulnerabilities of having so many products connected to the Internet. A few years ago, a casino business was hacked through an Internet-connected fish tank Smart Thermometer in the hotel lobby. In October, Smart Mattresses from Eight Sleep crashed during the Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage in the middle of the night. Some mattresses got stuck at an extreme incline. Others readjusted the sleeping temperatures to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. CES debuts many of the Smart Products that come to market. An organization called The Repair Association started to give out "Worst in Show" awards for the "The Most Overengineered, Unrepairable, and Unsustainable Tech Disasters at CES." This year's "Who Asked for This?" award was given to Samsung for a Smart Washing Machine that makes phone calls, requiring unnecessary screens and microphones (which can break faster at a higher cost). As they put it, it's an example of "force feeding useless smart features, all just to be able to take a phone call from a washing machine." When so many smart products seem to be jumping the shark, I think there's an opportunity for brands to go the other way. As BBH once put it in a Levi's ad, "zig when others zag." >>>>> To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter (23 years running), click here: https://lnkd.in/gyWRQBxu For related cartoons and all the links in this post, click here: https://lnkd.in/gJUZe9Cj #marketing #cartoon #marketoon

“The Future of E-commerce” — throwback cartoon I drew in 2018, in the same vein as my latest post on “online shopping”. >>> To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter, click here: https://lnkd.in/gyDZhaEN If you missed my “last click attribution” cartoon: https://lnkd.in/gcU_JyCM And you can see all of my cartoon from the last 23 years here: https://lnkd.in/e_uu_Yn #marketing #cartoon #marketoon #throwback

“How To Shop Online” - new cartoon and post: In 2000, there was an influential experiment on the paradox of choice. Columbia and Stanford psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper set up two displays of jam jars at a grocery story. One display featured 24 jam varieties and the other only six. The result, as Barry Schwartz famously chronicled his 2004 book “The Paradox of Choice,” was a revelation. Shoppers were 10 times more likely to buy jam when they were shown just the six varieties, instead of 24. Too many options lead to “overchoice” or “choice overload.” Worse, even when shoppers ultimately bought something, they felt decision fatigue and regret they may have chosen wrong. As Barry put it: “Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.” Twenty-five years later, the idea of facing only 24 varieties seems quaint. Online shopping today is an infinite jam jar display. I was struck by this recent observation from Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK: “One reason I often buy second-hand cars is that the decision is usually easier: do I want this car or not? When configuring a new car, I am sometimes literally and metaphorically blinded by the headlights. Do I want to spend an extra £500 on active-matrix LED technology, or would I prefer the ventilated seats? “You can present consumers with too many acceptable choices, creating paralysis in place of decisiveness.” That presents huge opportunities for curators — brands that aim to simplify the shopping experience. Technology can help. Some retailers like Etsy are starting to use AI specifically designed to present a smaller, better list of search results. eBay helped pioneer visual search where shoppers can upload images to find exact items. But much of the opportunity is simple positioning and a willingness to limit choices and “do one thing well.” >>>>> To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter (23 years running), click here: https://lnkd.in/gyWRQBxu For related cartoons and all the links in this post, click here: https://lnkd.in/gcU_JyCM #marketing #cartoon #marketoon

“Designing by Committee” — throwback cartoon I drew in 2017. I’ve drawn a lot of Halloween themed cartoons over the years, but this is my favorite. >>> To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter, click here: https://lnkd.in/gyDZhaEN You can see all of my cartoon from the last 23 years here: https://lnkd.in/e_uu_Yn #marketing #cartoon #marketoon #throwback

“AI Productivity and Workslop” - new cartoon and post: GenAI prompts are getting pushier. From productivity apps to search to social media, users have to navigate a constant array of pop-ups, tooltips, and moving icons pushing GenAI features for just about every task. And yet the result is not automatically better output or higher productivity. BetterUp Labs and Stanford Social Media Lab recently published research in the Harvard Business Review on what they call “The Workslop Tax.” “We define workslop as AI generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task. “As AI tools become more accessible, workers are increasingly able to quickly produce polished output: well-formatted slides, long, structured reports, seemingly articulate summaries of academic papers by non-experts, and usable code. “But while some employees are using this ability to polish good work, others use it to create content that is actually unhelpful, incomplete, or missing crucial context about the project at hand. The insidious effect of workslop is that it shifts the burden of the work downstream, requiring the receiver to interpret, correct, or redo the work. In other words, it transfers the effort from creator to receiver.” They found that 40% of US employees have received workslop in the last month. And that 15% of the content these employees receive qualifies as workslop. One of their conclusions: “Indiscriminate imperatives yield indiscriminate usage. When organizational leaders advocate for AI everywhere all the time, they model a lack of discernment in how to apply the technology.” I love how designer Frank Chimero suggests we think of AI less as a tool and more as an instrument: “Thinking of AI as an instrument recenters the focus on practice. Instruments require a performance that relies on technique—the horn makes the sound, but how and what you blow into it matters; the drum machine keeps time and plays the samples, but what you sample and how you swing on top of it becomes your signature. “In other words, instruments can surprise you with what they offer, but they are not automatic. In the end, they require a touch. You use a tool, but you play an instrument. It’s a more expansive way of doing, and the doing of it all is important, because that’s where you develop the instincts for excellence. “There is no purpose to better machines if they do not also produce better humans.” >>>>> To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter (23 years running), click here: https://lnkd.in/gyWRQBxu For related cartoons and all the links in this post, click here: https://lnkd.in/gRPB7nAP #marketing #cartoon #marketoon

“B2C, B2B, and Business-to-Human” - new cartoon and post: There has long been a chasm between B2C and B2B marketing. At an event recently, I was asked about humor in marketing, and whether it was more appropriate for B2C than B2B. Part of my answer was that humor could be even more effective in B2B marketing because the bar is so low. B2B marketing is often mocked as Boring-to-Boring. Partly because of the longer buying process with more stakeholders, B2B marketing traditionally gets mired in features and benefits, missing the actual people involved in the buying process. I like how Bruno Bertini, CMO at 8x8, put this disconnect recently: “The CIO scrolling LinkedIn at lunch is the same person scrolling Instagram at night. If they expect connection, creativity and authenticity as consumers, why would they settle for less at work?” Along these lines, more marketers have started to play with a Business-to-Human framing. I was struck by this perspective from Rich Atkinson-Toal, VP of Brand at American Express Global Business Travel: “You have to consider them as people, because [it’s people who] buy things. But if you go straight to the human element and you don’t think about the core of what they do as a job, then you’ll miss the mark and how they actually make decisions… “It has to be about stopping people in their tracks, making them smile, making them laugh. Just because you’re selling a B2B service doesn’t mean it has to be boring.” >>>>> To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter (23 years running), click here: https://lnkd.in/gyWRQBxu For related cartoons and all the links in this post, click here: https://lnkd.in/gRPB7nAP #marketing #cartoon #marketoon

“Bot or Not” - new cartoon and post: Recently I was nearly defeated by a restaurant mobile website. I somehow managed to fail a THIRD visual CAPTCHA puzzle asking me to identify something in a blurry image grid before I could order a burrito. The next day, I chuckled at a news story describing a ChatGPT Agent that casually and successfully passed CAPTCHA as it narrated: “Now I’ll click the ‘verify you are human’ checkbox to complete the verification on Cloudflare. This step is necessary to prove I’m not a bot and proceed with the action.” I had a harder time proving that I was a human than the ChatGPT Agent did. The CAPTCHA arms race has been accelerating for years. First invented in 1997, CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” At this point, AI is far better than humans at these tests. Josh Dzieza once noted in The Verge: “The problem with many of these tests isn’t necessarily that bots are too clever — it’s that humans suck at them. And it’s not that humans are dumb; it’s that humans are wildly diverse in language, culture, and experience.” Security hurdles are inconvenient but necessary. Cybersecurity company Imperva reported that 51% of all 2024’s internet activity was bot-based. And yet any friction in customer experience carries a cost. Statista reported the 2024 global online shopping cart abandonment rate at 70%, with “complex checkout” cited as a major factor. Agentic AI promises to bypass some of this friction, but it will be interesting to see how customer experience evolves. And it’s more than a little ironic that the future may require bots to help navigate running a gauntlet designed to prove that we’re not bots. >>>>> To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter (23 years running), click here: https://lnkd.in/gyWRQBxu For related cartoons and all the links in this post, click here: https://lnkd.in/gsh_T8rx #marketing #cartoon #marketoon

“Marketing Attribution” — throwback cartoon I drew in 2017, in the same vein as my latest post on “last click attribution”. >>> To sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter, click here: https://lnkd.in/gyDZhaEN If you missed my “last click attribution” cartoon: https://lnkd.in/g59MKPmp And you can see all of my cartoon from the last 23 years here: https://lnkd.in/e_uu_Yn #marketing #cartoon #marketoon #throwback