Welcome back to Marketoonist, the cartoon I’ve been hand-drawing to poke fun at marketing and business nearly every week since 2002. Was this email forwarded to you? Please subscribe here.

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The expression “Garbage In, Garbage Out” emerged in the earliest days of computer science.

A 1957 article on US army mathematicians working with old-school IBM mainframes used the phrase “Garbage In, Garbage Out” to describe how poor quality data inputs lead to poor quality outputs.

The adage has only grown more relevant in our increasingly data-driven world. Our decisions based on data are only as good as the reliability of that data.

Salesforce released a report last month on a conundrum on the state of data-driven decision making — data trust is falling even as data reliance is growing.

While 76% of business leaders say the rise of AI increases their need to be data-driven, only 36% say they are confident in the accuracy of their company’s data. And that data confidence level has plummeted 27% from 2023.

With ever more powerful AI tools, including AI Agents that act autonomously, the quality of the underlying data matters more than ever.

I like how Greg Kihlstrom phrased the challenge:

“If your marketing data is fragmented, outdated or riddled with inconsistencies, AI won’t fix the problem; it will just be a faster way to generate confident nonsense.”

Speaking in Belgium

I just confirmed I’m speaking at the BAM Marketing Congress in Brussels on December 4/5.

This will be my first trip back to Belgium in six years and I hope to see some of you there. Brussels is considered the capital of comic strips (Tintin, Astérix, etc.) and even boasts a Comic Strip Trail, so it will be a particularly fun place to talk about The Funny Side of Marketing.

I’d also love to hear if any of you are planning or know of any other conferences or events in Europe in late November/early December.

Cartoon From The Archives

Here’s a related cartoon I drew on marketing technology in 2018:

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Thank you for all of your support (and cartoon material)!

-Tom

P.S. If you like these marketoons, here are a few ways to help:

1. Bring me into your company to speak

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4. Buy my latest book

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6. Just hit reply and say hello

About Marketoonist

Marketoonist is the thought bubble of me, Tom Fishburne. I first started drawing cartoons as a student in the Harvard Business School newspaper (not quite as well-known for humor as the Lampoon) and later started this newsletter from a General Mills cubicle in 2002. The cartoons have followed my career ever since. I poke fun at the ever-changing world of marketing and business because I believe that laughing at ourselves can help us do our best work.