Tom Fishburne: Brand Camp cartoonist and marketing guy

camper

My friend Stef sent me a fascinating article called "Growing up Camper".

I've been really interested in the Camper story lately.  Particularly as a brand with a lot of heritage that isn't afraid to continually reinvent itself.  Creative destruction.  I think that many heritage brands wind up getting trapped by their own story.  As if the brand attributes are chiseled in marble.  It creates a suffocating environment of "that's not how we do it, that's against the brand standards."  And, then the brand slowly loses relevance and interest.

The company originated in 1877 in Majorca and the brand officially launched as Camper in 1975.  All the while, it's been managed by one family.  But no ancestor worship or resting on laurels.  They experiment wildly on shoe designs and exploratory retail concepts.  Rather than extend a model that works well in one market, they push the bounds further for each launch, even deviating from their signature brand colors.  They've even tried to push the bounds further from shoes with a hotel concept called Casa Camper, that brings their overall brand philosophy to life in 3-D.  This just might be pushing it too far, but I admire their fearlessness to change.  I also admire that their brand is based on such a deeply rooted philosophy that they are able to extend the values beyond the simple shoe.

focus group divas

Thanks to my friend Clint for sharing the term "focus group diva".  It instantly connected with me, because I've witnessed (and sadly exhibited) this behavior many, many times.  As Clint explained it:

"I earned my 'focus group' diva nickname by having our lunch delivered to the facility from an hour away. The group was in Detroit, and there is a great deli in Ann Arbor that I visit every time I’m in Michigan (it’s called Zingerman’s and the sandwiches rock). The facility offered the menu and I picked it. To the untrained eyes of my co-workers, ordering sandwiches from an hour away seemed kind of silly (they came around on the sandwiches)."

It's funny, the back room of a focus group is really kind of like the marketer's "green room".  Only without smashing the monitor Keith Moon-style.

cartooniversary

It’s my cartooniversary this week. Seven years of cartooning, five years of Brand Camp, three years since I first published my Brand Camp book.  All this week.  I don’t know what it is about late October. Maybe the cold wind just drove me indoors and I needed to find something to do.

I thought it would be fun to take a little cartoon walk down memory lane and post some of my personal favorites.

But first I want to thank my fabulous wife, Tallie, for being my cartoon sounding board, collaborator, editor, coach, reviewer, friend, advisor, accountant, conspirator, ego-stroker, sales rep, muse, and consoler continuously all these years. She makes oh so much happen to allow me to doodle as a hobby. And she’s also quite understanding about the occasional India ink stain around the house.  Sorry about those.

Year 1 (2000 – 2001)

It all started with Prash. Prash was the editor of the Harbus school paper at HBS, and kept begging all of his friends to send in articles. We were sitting next to each other in Burden Auditorium watching a speaker, and I finally relented and drew a cartoon on the only paper I had with me, the back of an HBS case.

A few cartoons later, I poked fun at a few business cases we’d read recently and forgot that each example was from Professor Frances Frei’s class, a renowned coldcaller. When the next class started, my cartoon was on the overhead for all to see. Eyes turned to me, and then there was a big wave of laughter. My euphoria subsided momentarily when Frances used it as an opportunity for me to open the case, but I was hooked on cartooning from then on.

I re-named my cartoon strip Sky Deck, which was what we called the back row in each class room, where all of the goof balls and jokers sat, and you could get away with stuff easier. This is contrasted with the Worm Deck, where you were on full display.

Year 2 (2001 – 2002)

Within weeks of my second year at HBS, September 11th happened and we, like everyone, were in deep shock.  I found a little solace in drawing this cartoon.

 

The “HBS stereotype” always surprised me, because I rarely found the Type A arrogance that’s typically described (I honestly think it’s more of a very vocal minority). Anyway, I thought I’d parody it as I neared graduation.

When visiting Paris at some point that year (boy, do I miss student holiday schedules), my wife and I stumbled across a gallery of Jean-Jacques Sempé, a very poignant French cartoonist who I later learned paints a lot of New Yorker covers. He inspired me to simplify and expand to a larger panel size, which I tried in this graduation cartoon.

I self-published and sold a book of my Sky Deck cartoons, with all proceeds donated to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. This irritated the new editor of the Harbus, who wanted the proceeds to fund the paper, and even pointed me to the small print under the masthead that “all contributions were owned by the paper.” (So, I guess I have seen the HBS stereotype after all.)

Anyway, I posted all two years of Sky Deck cartoons here.  Every year in late Fall, I see a huge spike in web traffic there, as someone apparently forwards the link around to his classmates to blow off exam steam, so I'm glad Sky Deck is still relevant to new students.

Year 3 (2002 – 2003)

After graduation, I still had the cartooning itch but no longer had a student paper. So I shifted my attention to General Mills. I had only worked in startups before, so "the General" was a bit of a culture shock. I found myself scribbling cartoon ideas in the margins of my meeting notes (just as I had in the Sky Deck in school). The name Brand Camp came from American Pie (“this one time, at band camp…”)

I knew that Scott Adams originally started Dilbert by posting cartoons to the side of his cubicle at PacBell, so I decided to follow his lead. Five years ago, I tacked this cartoon up and emailed it to the thirty or so associate marketing managers in my class.  I said to let me know if they wanted me to take them off the list. No one did, but I got a few dozen emails from people I didn’t know asking me to add them.

I started anthropomorphizing products. When you work in consumer products, and are surrounded by packaging, they do start to feel like characters in the room. I find myself using cereal boxes the most.

General Mills is very hierarchical and for a while I feared I would be disciplined for rocking the boat. I came to my desk one day to find my latest cartoon below, with a personal note of support from someone on our leadership team. That made my day.

But still I felt a little worried about reprisal with some cartoons (winding up with a job assignment in Siberia or Fargo or Baco's for irritating the wrong guy). I waited to move from one division to another before sending this one about our division president.

Then I had a meeting with Mark Addicks, the Chief Marketing Officer of the whole company, and rather than chew me out about airing dirty laundry over the last year, he gave me the number of a cartoonist friend of his, T Lewis co-creator of Over the Hedge. T Lewis was incredibly helpful and supportive. I never worried about getting chastised for drawing cartoons again.

Year 4 (2003 – 2004)

Brand Camp evolved into a diary of sorts.  I worked on a product line where Wal-mart was a full 40% of the business, which inspired this one.

And this one came from a particular brutal period with Nielsen.

And, then, of course, there was Low Carb.  I remember a rather entertaining public meeting to debate whether it was a fad or a trend.  The conclusion: a "trad" ("seems like a fad, but surely has the longevity of a trend").

As I former English major, one of the allures of marketing was developing brand positioning. And then I discovered that writing a sentence in a committee is a road to madness.

I moved to San Francisco to be closer to Tallie's family and left General Mills for Dreyer’s (part of Nestle). The office was much smaller, so Brand Camp expanded beyond big company stuff to marketing in general.

Year 5 (2004 – 2005)

I starting getting invited to speak at conferences with my cartoons as props (which I discovered I love doing). In advance of the Stagnito's NPD conference, I surveyed everyone on my cartoon list for the top "fatal flaws" of marketing.  Someone came back with the phrase, “wishing for the volume fairy”. Some of my favorite cartoons have been inspired by emails from you.

With the arrival of our daughter, I branched out briefly with a parenting cartoon called dadapalooza. Out of coincidence, our youngest daughter just followed her big sister’s crib-walking trick last night for the first time.

I also experimented a bit with a San Francisco cartoon called Fogscapes.

Ultimately, though, I decided to focus on Brand Camp.  I like that the content is really niche, and not something that everyone gets.  I've enjoyed getting emails all over the world from people who say they strike a chord with them.

Year 6 (2005 – 2006)

I’ve starting meeting some marketing pundits I respect via my cartoons. Jackie Huba from Church of the Customer asked me to contribute a cartoon for the WOMMA Conference. I later picked this as my inaugural cartoon for Brandweek.

I've also enjoyed focusing more and more on innovation.

When I first came across method, I was inspired by the challenger brand story. Then I realized that founder Eric Ryan was on my cartoon list. So, I sent this cartoon as a way to meet him, parodying the famous Apple 1984 ad. This cartoon eventually led to my job there.

Year 7 (2006 – 2007)

I got lulled into blogging by osmosis.  I started seeing my cartoons pop up on different blogs and decided to start a blog of my own soon after drawing this cartoon. It found its way to a lot of creative blogs, including Dan Germain’s, the creative guy at innocent.

With a blog, it’s been fun to make my cartoons a little more topical and tell the story behind each one. This cartoon in particular got a lot of attention.

So, that's about it for the tour. I never thought I would go to business school to discover a hidden passion for cartooning (good thing I didn't write that in my application anyway), but life is funny that way.  I've now been a Brand Camp cartoonist longer than any one job I've ever had.  Seven years and almost 200 cartoons later, I'm very much enjoying the ride.  I hope you are too.

no shirts for you

Thanks to my friend Clint Perez for sharing  this.  There's a merry prankster group called Improve Everywhere that orchestrates creative stunts, often geared to poke fun at big companies.  This time, they picked on Abercrombie and Fitch, which is obviously known for shirtless men (they even have a shirtless guy as a greeter in their stores).  As part of this stunt, they recruited 111 men of all shapes and sizes to spontaneously take of their shirts at a preselected time and shop shirtless at the Abercrombie and Fitch store on 5th Avenue in New York.

Their pictoral report is definitely worth a look.

You'll see that the local management and security didn't have much of a sense of humor.  Kind of a shame, given all of the shirtless ads everywhere in the store.  Seems kind of hypocritical to the brand values.

This group pulled off similar stunts with Blue Shirts at Best Buy and the Annual No Pants Subway Ride.

innovation manifesto

Hot off the press.  I just received a copy of Doug Hall's innovation manifesto that I mentioned in my cartoon post over the weekend.  Very insightful and incendiary stuff, so I thought I'd share it.  And, there are a handful of nice cartoons in there too.

check point stage gate

I met Doug Hall at an event last month and he skewered the entire Stage Gate process as "the primary cause of the 86% decline in US innovation success rates over the last 20 years."  He called it an out-dated "command and control" process and said that the innovation process needed as much of an overhaul as Japanese manufacturing after WWII.  He called Stage Gate "Corporate Communism" and unveiled a more "entrepreneurial" alternative.

It turned out, Doug was just getting warmed up.  Last week, he emailed me that "the talk in London got me on a roll - so I decided to really take a big shot at Corporate Communism.  Any chance I can motivate you to do a cartoon about how the Central Command oppresses the little guy?"  Doug's writing an article for the American Creativity Association journal called "The Rise of Corporate Communism and the Fall of American Innovation".

So, that's the little story on this cartoon.  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.

not that california

As someone who moved from California to London, I get a little chuckle at this Robert Mondavi campaign that just launched here.  This one says, "No, we don't bring in hippies to serenade our grapes. If we did we'd never be able to get rid of them" and then closes, "from California, but not that California".  There are another two in this vein (group hugging and yoga).

The three biggest California stereotypes I come across the most in the UK are Baywatch, the OC, and the Haight, so I think this does a good job of poking fun at the stereotypes.  I think it's also refreshingly different from some of the Napa Valley marketing, which can take itself a bit too seriously.

Apparently, they're putting about £3 million behind it, with outdoor a big part of the push.

good one

In my post yesterday, I hadn't realized that the the middle bag was produced by a company called goodone (thanks for the eagle eyes, Phil).  Really cool company.  In their words, they:

"create innovative, quality, one-off clothes made from hand-picked recycled fabrics.  Designs are repeated but every item produced is always different from the next as each garment is made from a unique combination of recycled fabrics.  This means that we are effectively mass-producing the one-off."

They encourage you to donate your old fabrics and even taking part in the design process.  A really nice example of making the end product of recycling cool.

bag happy

Soon after I moved to London, a cool organization called We Are What We Do brought the Anya Hindmarch "I'm not a plastic bag" bag to a bunch of Sainsbury stores.  A friend of mine waiting in line for hours to get it before it sold out.  Then, last weekend, I saw the middle bag which made me chuckle (two women were carrying it around the British Museum and said they found it at Spitalfields market in London).  So, hopefully it's good timing for our own launch of a method "plastic bag rehab" tote (designed by our fabulous Sally Clarke and sports a bunch of quirky live greener tips on the back).  We've just launched it in the states so far as a promotion (seems to be going well so far), but I just learned we're getting our hands on a 100 or so to experiment with in the UK.  Any ideas?

the brand's new clothes

Another cartoon on the theme of greenwashing.  I came across this article in Ad Age about companies getting caught by consumers committing "green murder".  It talked about marketers putting out "green briefs" to agencies to find something worth talking about their environmental impacts without actually changing anything. 

In this rush to reposition everyday brands as environmentally-friendly, there seems to be collective amnesia of the inconsistencies in the story.  And by being so vocal (particularly as a johnny-come-lately), these brands are actually quite naked and exposed.  It's only a matter of time before a consumer calls out, "but he has nothing on."

Since there are no perfectly sustainable businesses, we're all a bit naked and exposed on this.  I think the only way is come across with honesty and humility and an open recognition that it's about progress, not perfection.