Welcome! Thank you for considering Tom as a keynote speaker for your event. We put together this page with the most commonly requested speaking assets you’ll need: headshots, bios, and intro scripts — all in one place.
In the cartoon studio, blank background, on stage, or hand-drawn — please take your pick! Just click on any image to download the high-res version.
Please feel free to copy the short or long version of Tom’s bio (or download a PDF here).
TOM FISHBURNE
Creator of Marketoonist and Author of “Your Ad Ignored Here”
SHORT VERSION
Tom Fishburne, creator of Marketoonist, is a keynote speaker who draws cartoons from deep business experience. He speaks worldwide on the power of humor to help us do our best work. Started more than 20 years ago in the Harvard Business School student newspaper, Marketoonist is now read by half a million weekly readers. A former Chief Marketing Officer, Tom’s cartoon studio has created campaigns for more than 200 businesses, including Google and Adobe.
LONG VERSION
Tom Fishburne, creator of Marketoonist, is a keynote speaker who draws cartoons from deep business experience. He speaks worldwide on the power of humor to help us do our best work — by laughing together at what gets in the way.
Tom’s cartoon, Marketoonist, has lampooned the constantly changing business world for more than 20 years. First published in the Harvard Business School student newspaper and later emailed from a General Mills cubicle, Marketoonist is now read by half a million weekly readers. Tom is a LinkedIn “Top Voice” with more than 400,000 followers.
He draws (literally and figuratively) from more than 20 years in the marketing trenches in the US and Europe. Tom was CMO at HotelTonight, VP at Method, and managed brands for Nestlé and General Mills. He was also a digital marketing pioneer at iXL, now part of Razorfish.
Tom expanded Marketoonist into a creative studio that has developed award-winning campaigns for more than 200 businesses, including Google, DBS Bank, and Adobe.
He is the author of “Your Ad Ignored Here.” He also illustrated 3 bestselling business books with Deloitte: “Provoke,” “Detonate,” and “Work Disrupted.”
His cartoons have been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and the New York Times. They’ve appeared twice on billboard ads in Times Square and once helped win a Guinness World Record.
Tom works from a backyard cartoon studio north of San Francisco with his amazing wife, Tallie, who is always the first to see his sketches.
NOTE: Instead of a bio, here’s a short intro script to introduce Tom to the stage (it’s a little more fun to read out loud):
“Tom Fishburne first started drawing cartoons on the backs of business cases at Harvard Business School.
From his General Mills cubicle, he started emailing a weekly cartoon called Marketoonist that poked fun at his day job.
Somehow he wasn’t fired for that and kept drawing cartoons inspired by senior marketing roles at Nestlé, Method, and HotelTonight.
He eventually expanded Marketoonist into a creative studio to work with companies like Google and Adobe.
Tom’s cartoons have appeared twice on billboard ads in Times Square and once helped win a Guinness World Record.
Twenty years later, Marketoonist is now read by half a million readers a week.
He believes in the power of laughing at ourselves to help us do our best work.
Please give a big, warm welcome to Tom Fishburne, the Marketoonist!”
We now have the ability to deliver more consistent and creative customer experiences than ever before. So why does customer engagement so often fall flat? We’ve all felt the pain of customer engagement that doesn’t work — customer journeys that break, consumer data without insight, attempts at personalization that misfire. A sense of humor can help us probe those pain points and explore how to become better marketers.
Technology changes exponentially; organizations change logarithmically. Most organizations haven’t kept pace with the potential brought by technology. From AI to data to digital transformation, technology initiatives are often adopted shallowly, missing their full potential. If we want to pursue technology transformation, we ultimately have to think about organizational transformation.
The creative process shouldn’t end after the brainstorm, yet ideas often suffer a thousand cuts on the path to launch. In this keynote talk, Tom will unpack the mindset that organizations need to adopt in order to develop remarkable marketing and innovations. He will frame ways to build a culture that champions creativity and overcomes idea killers. No idea is born perfect, and innovation requires the collective creative efforts of everyone in an organization.
Humor is the language of culture change. As former Apple executive Hiroki Asai put it, “Fear kills creativity and humor is our most powerful tool to drive fear out of the system.” Through humor, we are able to talk about topics that are otherwise difficult to talk about. We can better connect with others, whether in external marketing or driving internal culture change. In this keynote talk, Tom uses cartoons and case studies to help us all tap into our innate sense of humor and unlock the power of laughing at ourselves.
