Tom Fishburne
Most marketing teams now have more data, more channels, and more technology than at any previous point. Customer engagement keeps falling flat. The same is true inside organisations: ideas that survive the brainstorm rarely survive the journey to launch. The problem is not investment or capability – it is the cultural conditions that determine whether creative thinking reaches customers at all.
Tom Fishburne – creator of Marketoonist, Harvard Business School alumnus, and former CMO – helps marketing and leadership teams identify the cultural blockers that prevent good ideas from reaching customers, using two decades of business cartooning as the diagnostic tool.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Tom Fishburne
- His Marketoonist series has run weekly since 2002 and reaches 500,000 business readers – giving him a live, continuously updated signal on where marketing and organisational thinking is currently stuck, rather than a fixed body of research.
- His argument is structural, not motivational: that customer engagement fails and innovation stalls for cultural reasons, and that humour is a functional tool for surfacing those reasons – not a tone choice, not entertainment. This gives leadership teams a lever that most change programmes do not include.
- His Marketoonist studio has built campaigns for over 200 organisations including Google, Adobe, DBS Bank, and PwC – meaning every argument he makes on stage is backed by commercial execution, not only observation.
- He provides a shared visual vocabulary that allows cross-functional teams to discuss what is actually blocking performance – poor customer experience, idea killers, AI adoption gaps – without triggering defensiveness.
- As Stanford GSB’s Cartoonist-in-Residence for the course on humour in business, and a regular guest lecturer at Harvard Business School, his framework has academic validation alongside its commercial track record.
Biography highlights
- Founder and CEO of Marketoonist, a cartoon-led content marketing and culture change studio; 200+ campaigns for Google, Adobe, LinkedIn, DBS Bank, PwC, and Unilever
- Creator of the Marketoonist weekly cartoon series, published since 2002; 500,000 weekly readers; featured by the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and The New York Times; weekly contributor to MarketingWeek since 2007
- Harvard Business School alumnus; Cartoonist-in-Residence and Lecturer, Stanford Graduate School of Business course on humour in business; regular guest lecturer at Harvard Business School
- Author of Your Ad Ignored Here; illustrator of three Deloitte business books – Provoke (WSJ Bestseller), Detonate (National Bestseller), and Work Disrupted
- Former Interim CMO at HotelTonight (acquired by Airbnb); Marketing VP at Method Products (European brand launch named Brand Launch of the Year, The Grocer); brand management at Nestlé and General Mills
- Speaker at TED Salon: Unconventional, TED World Theater, New York; 200+ keynotes delivered in more than 30 countries
Biography
Tom Fishburne started drawing cartoons on the backs of Harvard Business School cases in 2000 and has published the Marketoonist series weekly since 2002. That series now reaches 500,000 readers a week and has been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and The New York Times. The reason it travels is not novelty – it is recognition. The cartoons name what people in organisations already know but rarely say aloud.
His argument, developed across a marketing career at Nestlé, General Mills, Method Products, and HotelTonight, is that most marketing underperformance and most innovation failure is cultural in origin. Customer journeys break not because teams lack data, but because organisational dynamics prevent anyone from acting on it. Ideas lose momentum between brainstorm and launch not because of resource constraints, but because of unspoken idea killers that no one has named. Humour, Fishburne argues, is a functional diagnostic tool for exactly these problems – not a way to make difficult conversations comfortable, but a way to make them possible.
In 2010, he expanded Marketoonist into a creative studio. The studio has since built cartoon-led content and culture change campaigns for more than 200 organisations, including Google, Adobe, DBS Bank, and PwC. He is Cartoonist-in-Residence at Stanford GSB for the course on humour in business and returns regularly to guest lecture at Harvard Business School. He illustrated three bestselling Deloitte business books – Provoke, Detonate, and Work Disrupted – and authored Your Ad Ignored Here.
A senior buyer leaving his session does not leave with a framework to file. They leave with a vocabulary for conversations their team has been avoiding – and a demonstrated method for making those conversations productive.
Key speaking topics
- Marketing effectiveness and customer engagement
- Innovation culture and idea management
- Humour as a strategic tool for culture change
- AI adoption and organisational readiness
- Visual communication and storytelling in business
- Challenger brand thinking
- Creative culture and overcoming idea killers
Ideal for
- Chief Marketing Officers and senior marketing leadership teams
- Chief People Officers and culture change leads
- Innovation and digital transformation leads
- Leadership conferences where marketing, creative culture, or organisational change is on the agenda
Audience outcomes
- A clear diagnostic framework for identifying where marketing efforts break down and why
- Practical understanding of the cultural conditions that allow creative ideas to survive from brainstorm to launch
- A shared vocabulary for discussing organisational blockers – customer experience failures, AI adoption gaps, innovation stalls – without defensiveness
- Insight into humour as a repeatable strategic tool for culture change, distinct from motivation or entertainment
- A more honest assessment of whether technology and AI initiatives are failing for technical reasons or organisational ones
Talks
An exploration of why customer engagement often falls flat despite advances in data, technology and personalisation, and how humour can help organisations identify and address the pain points in modern marketing.
Key takeaways:
- Clear insight into why customer journeys break and engagement efforts misfire
- A practical perspective on turning consumer data into meaningful insight
- A fresh lens for improving marketing effectiveness through honest reflection
A candid examination of the gap between exponential technological change and slower organisational adaptation, and why AI and digital transformation require cultural change first.
Key takeaways:
- Why technology initiatives consistently underdeliver on their stated potential
- The specific organisational barriers – not technical ones – that limit AI adoption
- A framework for aligning technology ambition with the pace of organisational change
An investigation into how ideas lose momentum between brainstorm and launch, and the mindset and cultural conditions organisations need to close that gap.
Key takeaways:
- The common, nameable idea killers that undermine innovation before it reaches customers
- The mindset required to protect creative thinking beyond the brainstorm
- Practical approaches to building a culture that champions collective innovation
A keynote on humour as a functional tool for culture change – not entertainment – using cartoons and case studies to demonstrate how laughing at what gets in the way helps organisations do their best work.
Key takeaways:
- Why humour reduces the fear that suppresses creative risk-taking
- How to use humour to address sensitive organisational topics without avoidance
- Practical application of humour in internal communication and external marketing
Videos
Testimonials
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Asia Pacific | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Europe | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Middle East & Africa | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| South America | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| United Kingdom | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US East Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US West Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Virtual | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |