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.

My friend Ann Handley once described my cartoons as a type of diary, which rings true to me. Since 2002, I've drawn this cartoon series as a kind of open diary to help make sense of whatever I'm noticing around me.

As we wrap up 2025, here are some of my personal favorite diary moments from this past year.

Not surprisingly, several of these cartoons touch on our evolving understanding of AI. If you'd like to catch up on any others, you can find all 23 years of Marketoonist here.

As always, thank you for reading, sharing your own experiences with me, and saying hello at speaking events on the road.

1. AI Learning Curve

I drew this one in January, eight months before MIT published their widely cited study that found 95% of generative AI pilots are failing to deliver measurable business value. In return, I received a flood of images created by readers of flying cheetahs in jetpacks making fire. That made me really happy.

2. The Creative Review

This is an evergreen challenge I've been parodying since 2002. How we give creative feedback is overlooked and yet vital to creating work that moves the needle.

3. Humanize our Brand

I've always liked the aphorism that “brands want to be human and humans want to be brands.” As AI advances, it will be interesting to see how the trend of "proof of human" unfolds.

4. B2B Marketing and the 95:5 Rule

This one was largely inspired by the excellent work of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, which celebrated their 20 year anniversary this year. They found 95% of buyers are not in the market at any one time (and perhaps won't be for months or years). A few weeks ago, it was a treat to spend time with Jenni Romaniuk from Ehrenberg-Bass in-person in Brussels at the Belgian Association of Marketing.

5. AI Slop Fatigue

Merriam-Webster named "slop" their word of the year for 2025, which feels spot-on.

6. Marketing Attribution

Figuring out how to attribute sales to marketing has been a challenge since Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker famously said in the early 1900s: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” We may have more data now, but there's a bias to short-termism.

7. Decades of Marketing

We are apt to focus more on tactics than strategy. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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.