Tom Fishburne: Brand Camp cartoonist and marketing guy

(out of) control freak

It's been a while since I poked fun at senior management.  I heard someone described as a "control freak" recently, and it struck me that there was actually another type, the "out-of-control-freak".  A senior manager who assumes total control of a project or area, but actually doesn't have the time or interest to really understand it. 

It made me think of this funny dynamic that happens when a project becomes either a raging success or a dismal failure.   People seem to climb out of the woodwork to claim partial credit for a successful project.  Yet a failed project is often pinned to a few scapegoats.

When I was at General Mills, it seemed like everyone I talked to had played a hand in the launch of Go-Gurt (which was the posterchild of successful innovation).  But, I never found anyone who worked on Wahoos (which cratered soon after launch).  It's human nature of course.  It just cracks me up how some senior managers can be removed enough to escape retribution from the failures yet still take personal credit for the successes.  When, of course, you can learn from both (often you learn more from the failures than the successes).

poser marketing

I've been enjoying Seth Godin's latest book, Meatball Sundae.  He writes about the rush of companies jumping on the "new marketing" bandwagon.  Some companies are leaping into myspace, youtube, blogging, etc. in exactly the same self-serving way they approach TV advertising -- by trying to "interupt" consumers from what they were doing.  This obviously misses the point.  Consumers are gravitating to "new marketing" channels exactly because they are in control, not the brands.  And certain brands are mismatched completely with new marketing ... just like, say, meatballs and sundaes.

I've been amazed recently how often I hear of brands adding a myspace program like it's just another FSI.

Anyway, it got me thinking of current teenagers and how resistant they are to old-school brands and ways of marketing.  I think they can see right through attempts of stodgy brands to "get hip" and set up a myspace profile or something.  Which led to this cartoon.

the process pendulum

I once worked in an Internet startup that grew from 25 employees to 2,500 in 3 years.  Much of that was through acquisition -- basically 30 startups rolled up into one.  The resulting patchwork company then went public (and filed for Chapter 11 about a year after that).  Kind of a crazy rollercoaster.

Anyway, the midst of it all, I first started thinking about "the process pendulum".  Our process swung erratically from non-existant to command-and-control.  We were scrappy and entrepreneurial in year one, and then we added layer after layer of bureaucracy to restrain the chaos of so much growth. 

We wanted to upgrade our project management, so we hired this guy to run our project management group who had only project-managed large-scale, 5-year construction projects for the military.  It was such a bad cultural fit, it was kind of funny.  We literally had to print off emails we wanted to send him, walk them to his desk, and stamp them with a timestamp he kept there before he would read them.  At an internet company no less.  I swear I'm not making this up.

Since then, every company I've been involved in has been somewhere on this swinging pendulum.   It's really tricky, because in the search for the right balance of process that's not too restrictive, I've found that the pendulum invariably swings too far, and then has to be brought back.

I've always liked that Steve Jobs' quote, "it's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy".  But what do you do when the pirate ship grows to the size and complexity of a navy ship?  How do you keep small even as you grow big?

criticism sandwich

I always struggle with giving creative feedback.  I can only imagine what's it's like to be a creative director and have your work (which is inherently personal) continually critiqued in front of you.  I guess you learn to grow really thick skin (or plug your ears discretely).

This last week, I gave a cartoon talk to 200 people at Unilever, and it was surreal to flip through my cartoons on a jumbo screen waiting for the audience to get the joke and start laughing.  Usually, I send out my cartoons alone and I'm not there when people get them.  So, it was a little nerve-wracking to be on a stage hoping (and praying) that people would start laughing (anyone, anyone, Bueller, Bueller).  A bit like that old dream of showing up to school without your clothes.  Anyway, that's what I imagine it's like to be a creative director in a client meeting.

So, I always try to dose my creative feedback to others with plenty of ego stroking.  An early manager of mine described it as a "criticism sandwich", which led to this cartoon.