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.

Always Be Upskilling

Share on LinkedIn | Facebook

“Upskilling” as a business term was coined in the late 70s. But the pressure to “upskill” has never seemed more acute.

Andrew Geoghegan, CMO of William Grant & Sons, described the challenge of upskilling for marketers a few months ago:

“There used to be significant investment in-house in upskilling teams and building on those core skills and competencies.

“Now, though, teams are being put under pressure to deliver in volatile and uncertain times with no promise of that burden being eased. Even if there is a skills gap it doesn’t change the fact that someone has to do the work.

“Doing ‘more with less’ was normally about marketing investment, but now it’s as much about people resource and doing the same amount of work with fewer people on the team.”

Earlier this year, Marketing Week revealed “data and analytics” to be the biggest skills gap in marketing teams. In a survey of over 3,000 brand-side marketers, 37% pointed at a lack of “data and analytics” skills as the most urgent. But that’s just one skills gap of many.

Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar described the current pressure to learn AI:

“I bet for many marketers even one year back, AI was relatively irrelevant, but today if you don’t get up the curve and learn to start deploying AI intelligently, you can become obsolete.”

Raja tries to set an example to his marketing team by personally spending “five to six hours” every weekend on his own upskilling.

Upskilling is easier said than done.

In the same Marketing Week survey, 48% of marketers said they have not been offered upskilling opportunities in the last 12 months.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) recently reported that 56% of marketers are worried about burnout in their current role.

Latest with keynote speaking

I’m excited to speak at MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston this Wednesday, November 13. I’m a big fan of Ann Handley at MarketingProfs (and she even kindly wrote the foreword for my book) so I’m particularly excited to be a part of this event. I hope to see some of you there!

I wrapped up a 5-week speaking tour in Europe a few days ago with Brand Week Istanbul. This was my fourth trip to Istanbul and I got to do a small group visual storytelling workshop in addition to my keynote. I loved getting to meet so many of you. Thank you to Doğan Terzi and all of the organizers for putting on such an inspiring event.

Please let me know if you’d ever like to talk about bringing levity to any events you’re planning. And please recommend me to friends or colleagues.

Cartoon from the archives

Here’s a cartoon from 2015 in the same vein of this week’s cartoon.

Share on LinkedIn | Facebook

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

2. License cartoons for presentations or more (if a picture tells a thousand words, a marketoon tells a thousand boring PowerPoint slides)

3. Forward this newsletter to a friend with an invitation to subscribe: marketoonist.com/newsletter.

4. Buy my latest book

5. Collaborate with me on cartoons for marketing, culture change, or thought leadership

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.