Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne
Misalignment at Speed tomfishburne
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
27 April 2026 at 10:14

Misalignment at Speed

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.

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne
Human Made tomfishburne
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
20 April 2026 at 11:30

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

Human Made

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.

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne
Storytelling and AI tomfishburne
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
6 April 2026 at 11:32

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

Storytelling and AI

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.

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne
Human in the Loop tomfishburne
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
30 March 2026 at 11:30

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

Human in the Loop

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.

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne
Brands Chasing Youth tomfishburne
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 n
23 March 2026 at 11:30

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

Brands Chasing Youth

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.

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne
Planning for Uncertainty tomfishburne
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. Uncert
16 March 2026 at 11:30

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

Planning for Uncertainty

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:

managing uncertainty - March 2020

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the new normal - May 2020

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the five stages of missing plan - June 2008

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strategic options in a recession - June 2020

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

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne
AI Org Chart tomfishburne
My AI Mad Libs cartoon last week on urgency without clarity in AI strategy was one of my most licensed cartoons from the last 24 years. It got me thinking of the trickle-down effects of muddled strategy through an organization. Whenever there’s ill-defined strategy at the top, there will be poor alignment all the way down. This is particularly true with something as consequential yet open-to-interpretation as AI. The quickest lever of AI adoption is a mandate just to do more with less.
9 March 2026 at 11:30

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

AI Org Chart

By: tomfishburne

9 March 2026 at 11:30

AI Org Chart cartoon

My AI Mad Libs cartoon last week on urgency without clarity in AI strategy was one of my most licensed cartoons from the last 24 years.

It got me thinking of the trickle-down effects of muddled strategy through an organization.

Whenever there’s ill-defined strategy at the top, there will be poor alignment all the way down. This is particularly true with something as consequential yet open-to-interpretation as AI.

The quickest lever of AI adoption is a mandate just to do more with less.

The recent 40% layoffs by Block (and 20% stock price bump in response) is catnip to companies excited about using AI primarily to justify cost-cutting. This has been criticized as “AI washing.”

But the effects of this type of AI cost-cutting carries a cost, as Kate Niederhoffer, Alexi Robichaux and Jeffrey T. Hancock have been chronicling in a series of HBR articles on the rise of “workslop” driven by unclear AI mandates:

“As companies have tightened budgets, consolidated roles, and asked employees to take on more tasks without formal role redesign, individual contributors and frontline managers are stretched more than ever. This has left employees psychologically depleted and juggling heavier workloads.

“In this context, blanket mandates to use AI—often without the training, agency, or cultural trust to thoughtfully experiment with these powerful new tools—end up encouraging people to use AI performatively. These low-effort, low-value uses demonstrate compliance with directives to experiment, even as they shift the burden of the work onto the receiver. Hence, workslop.”

Ironically some of the most interesting cases of AI adoption may come, not from organizations, but from individuals using AI to amplify side projects.

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

AI Strategy - March 2026

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digital transformation - September 2018

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digital transformation - November 2016

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More with Less - January 2023

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AI Written, AI Read - March 2023

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The post AI Org Chart first appeared on Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne.

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne
AI Strategy tomfishburne
We’re in a strange time of urgency without clarity in AI adoption. The pressure is on to adopt everything everywhere all at once. A case in point is agentic AI. Suddenly the term “agentic” is used indiscriminately in everything from strategy decks to marketing copy. Even simple chatbots are being called agents. The pace seems driven by hype and panic in equal measure. Last week, Cisco reported that 80% of executives now believe their company’s “survival” by 2027 will depend on agentic AI.
2 March 2026 at 12:30

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

AI Strategy

By: tomfishburne

2 March 2026 at 12:30

AI Strategy cartoon

We’re in a strange time of urgency without clarity in AI adoption. The pressure is on to adopt everything everywhere all at once.

A case in point is agentic AI. Suddenly the term “agentic” is used indiscriminately in everything from strategy decks to marketing copy. Even simple chatbots are being called agents. The pace seems driven by hype and panic in equal measure.

Last week, Cisco reported that 80% of executives now believe their company’s “survival” by 2027 will depend on agentic AI.

Also last week, an MIT study chronicled some of the risks of AI agents, summarized by ZD.net as “fast, loose, and out of control”:

“Agentic AI is something of a security nightmare at the moment, a discipline marked by lack of disclosure, lack of transparency, and a striking lack of basic protocols about how agents should operate. The biggest revelation of the report is just how hard it is to identify all the things that could go wrong with agentic AI.”

Google’s DORA research group uses an analogy that I like of AI as an “amplifier”:

“AI doesn’t fix a team; it amplifies what’s already there. Strong teams use AI to become even better and more efficient. Struggling teams will find that AI only highlights and intensifies their existing problems.

“The greatest return comes not from the AI tools themselves, but from a strategic focus on the quality of internal platforms, the clarity of workflows, and the alignment of teams.”

When we feel like we least have time to set a clear strategy is when we most need to make time to set a clear strategy.

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

AI Tidal Wave - January 2023

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Buzzword-First Strategy - June 2025

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AI-First - March 2025

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we’re going digital - April 2012

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marketing predictions - January 2019

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The post AI Strategy first appeared on Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne.

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne
The Marketing Plan tomfishburne
A few year ago, Mark Ritson wrote a handy guide to creating a marketing plan and critiqued those who make “PowerPoint decks by the yard.” Mark wrote: “Most marketing plans are PowerPoint presentations. Nothing wrong with that. But they are just too damned long – 50, 100, 200 slides in a plan. This is a shithouse way to present anything. It is symptomatic of global marketing teams with no practical experience of brand planning, who are just building PowerPoint decks by the yard. And it is i
23 February 2026 at 12:30

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

The Marketing Plan

By: tomfishburne

23 February 2026 at 12:30

The Marketing Plan cartoon

A few year ago, Mark Ritson wrote a handy guide to creating a marketing plan and critiqued those who make “PowerPoint decks by the yard.”

Mark wrote:

“Most marketing plans are PowerPoint presentations. Nothing wrong with that. But they are just too damned long – 50, 100, 200 slides in a plan. This is a shithouse way to present anything. It is symptomatic of global marketing teams with no practical experience of brand planning, who are just building PowerPoint decks by the yard. And it is indicative of marketing managers who have not thought long or choicefully enough about their plan.”

Mark instead advised a simple “three-part structure of diagnosis feeding strategy, which drives tactical choices.”

It’s easier than ever to generated PowerPoint decks by the yard. In one of the Super Bowl ads a couple weeks ago, Matthew Broderick used AI to say “finish this slide deck” and it was done.

And yet, work productivity isn’t only a measure of the volume of outputs. And when LLMs are trained on PowerPoint decks “by the yard,” the path of least resistance is just to generate more of the same.

In the HBR, Kate Niederhoffer, Alexi Robichaux and Jeffrey T. Hancock have been cautioning businesses on the negative effects of what they call “workslop”:

“As AI tools have proliferated in workplaces and pressure to use them has mounted, employees have had to contend with the scourge of workslop, or low-effort, AI-generated work that looks plausibly polished, but ends up wasting time and effort as it offloads cognitive work onto the recipient. For the person on the receiving end, it can be a confusing and infuriating experience.”

Ian Whitworth once described AI-generated content as “infinite words nobody wants.”

In making our Marketing Plans or any other type of work presentation, we have to be careful we’re not creating “infinite slides nobody wants.”

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

How to Write a PowerPoint Pitch - September 2017

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PowerPoint-itis - November 2016

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gallery of management consulting - February 2009

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Presenting your Ideas - October 2017

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The post The Marketing Plan first appeared on Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne.

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne
Advertising, Brand Recall, and Celebrities tomfishburne
Super Bowl ads have always juggled story power and star power. But the overall swing toward celebrities has been an ongoing trend. In 2010, just 31% of Super Bowl ads included a famous face. Last year, a whopping 68% of Super Bowl ads featured celebrities and 51% featured multiple celebrities, according to iSpot.tv and EMARKETER. (I haven’t seen the final numbers for 2026, but early teasers looked like another big celebrity year.) With all the positive things that celebrities can bring
9 February 2026 at 12:30

Marketoonist | Tom Fishburne

Advertising, Brand Recall, and Celebrities

By: tomfishburne

9 February 2026 at 12:30

Advertising and Celebrities cartoon

Super Bowl ads have always juggled story power and star power. But the overall swing toward celebrities has been an ongoing trend.

In 2010, just 31% of Super Bowl ads included a famous face. Last year, a whopping 68% of Super Bowl ads featured celebrities and 51% featured multiple celebrities, according to iSpot.tv and EMARKETER.

(I haven’t seen the final numbers for 2026, but early teasers looked like another big celebrity year.)

With all the positive things that celebrities can bring to an ad (attention, humor, trust, status, etc.), the big risk has always been that celebrities overshadow the brand.

In the 80s, Robin Evans first termed this risk as the “vampire effect.”

My old friends at System1 track Super Bowl ads on a number of dimensions, including “Fluency” — the accuracy and speed of brand recognition.

System1 Head of Marketing Jess Messenger summarized their findings on celebrity and brand recall recently:

“In 2025, the average Fluency Rating for Super Bowl ads was a modest 78, meaning, on average, 22% of viewers couldn’t correctly name the brand after watching the ad.

“Of the top 10 Big Game ads for Fluency, three leveraged well-known stars and one featured a group of influencers. Meanwhile, six of the top 10 ads did not use celebrities.”

At an $8 million ad spend for 30 seconds, the stakes of poor brand recall in the Super Bowl are high. But the importance of paying attention to “Fluency” is relevant for marketers at all spend levels.

The celebrity lever is one of the easiest to pull. But too many ads use celebrities shallowly, interchangeably, and as a one-off. And when 68% of Super Bowl ads use celebrities, celebrities alone are not going the move the needle.

As I’ve written before, we can’t break through the clutter by adding to it.

Here are some of my favorite Super Bowl cartoons I’ve drawn over the years: