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.

Making a List, Checking it Twice

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Businesses have never had greater and more varied data at their disposal. But the stubborn issue of data silos continues to plague what they can do with it.

AI alone can’t fix this. AI is only as useful as the quality of the data that it has access to. And all the hype and promise of agentic AI will run into this same roadblock.

Gartner predicts that 60% of AI projects will be abandoned through 2026 because they lack “AI-ready data.”

Scott Brinker has long advocated the rise of a “universal data layer” in marketing technology, which is just now starting to become a reality. This shift to a universal data layer was a core theme in his 2025 State of Martech report.

And yet much of the historic challenge of data silos isn’t technological, it’s organizational. It’s rooted in how teams are structured. Part of the solution will remain human and messy.

As Scott put it in the 2025 State of Martech report:

“Moore’s Law gave birth to Martec’s Law, the challenging juxtaposition that while technology changes exponentially, organizations change logarithmically.

“That creaking sound you hear is you and your team being stretched between those two rapidly diverging curves. It’s like a yoga class taught by Genghis Khan.

“We began our last report quoting Ethan Mollick’s estimate that if AI development stopped where it was, we’d still have 5-10 years of work ahead to absorb it into our current organizations and social systems.

“Now, just half a year later, Mollick has revised his position, saying, ‘If Al development stopped today (and no indication that is happening), we have a couple of decades of figuring out how to integrate it into work, education, & life.'”

Keynotes from the road

Last week, I met some of you in Brussels at the Belgium Association of Marketing (BAM). It was such an inspiring event. The room was set up like a boxing ring with the stage in the middle, which was a little unusual, but a lot of fun!

This week, I’m speaking at a virtual All Hands meeting for a FinTech company.

As always, please let me know if you’d like to talk about any events you’re planning (or know of) that you think could be a good fit. For an idea of my approach with events, here are some of my more popular keynote topics.

Cartoon From The Archives

Here’s a related cartoon I drew from 2020. And here’s where you can read and search all 23 years of these cartoons.

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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

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.