cover image Your Ad Ignored Here: Cartoons from 15 Years of Marketing, Business, and Doodling in Meetings

Your Ad Ignored Here: Cartoons from 15 Years of Marketing, Business, and Doodling in Meetings

Tom Fishburne. Marketoonist, $19.95 trade paper (214p) ISBN 978-0-9990703-1-4

Fishburne, who first started doodling as a business school student and now runs a cartoon content studio, selects highlights from 15 years of his single-page cartoons, which poke light fun at life in the meeting-happy, jargon-crazed marketing industry. Fishburne’s simple but effective style mimics the daily newspaper strips he idolized in his youth (particularly the Far Side in framing, if not in editorial content). The gags are of-the-moment jabs at online commerce, such as the worker who discovers his house is on fire because Google is pitching him fire extinguisher ads. Though send-ups of surreal buzz phrases such as “brand laddering” (depicted as a climb from snack chips to world peace) and “growth hacking” may elicit a chuckle of recognition from those in the know, the humor only skates over the essential absurdity of marketing and sales, and none of it cuts deep. Fishburne’s collection is ready-made for PowerPoint inserts and may be the year’s best gift for a dad who happens to be a sales director and doesn’t need another tie; beyond that, it is difficult to imagine an audience for this industry-insider batch of Dilbert-lite satire. (BookLife)