Marketoonist: "The Growth Fairy" cartoon

Weekly hand-drawn business cartoon from Marketoonist Tom Fishburne

Author

Tom Fishburne
October 21, 2024

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.

The Growth Fairy

I was struck by an observation from J. Walker Smith, Chief Knowledge Officer at Kantar:

“The foundational prerequisite of growth is the courage to grow. Impediments to growth sit within a company itself. Growth is rarely hostage to the marketplace.”

I like the idea that a brand is not “hostage to the marketplace” — that marketers can take agency for brand results separate from what’s happening in the outside world.

There has always been myth-making and wish-casting in what it actually takes for a brand to grow. Thanks to the work of Kantar and others, we have more data-driven resources to help guide our approach.

A few months ago, Kantar released the results of a giant research study into what they believe drives brand growth — an analysis of 6.5 billion global attitudinal and shopper data points from the last 10 years.

Kantar’s big takeaway is that “brands that are ‘meaningfully different’ to ‘more people’ command 5X penetration today and real advantage in penetration growth over the next two years.”

They expand this into three simple rules for growth: 1) predispose more people, 2) be more present, and 3) find new space.

It’s been 14 years since Byron Sharp of Ehrenberg-Bass wrote “How Brands Grow” and famously challenged the idea of “meaningful differentiation”:

“Rather than striving for meaningful, perceived differentiation, marketers should seek meaningless distinctiveness. Branding lasts, differentiation doesn’t.”

I find it interesting that Kantar reaches a different conclusion than Ehrenberg-Bass on the importance of differentiation. In marketing, like other areas of business, reasonable people can disagree. It’s a reminder that ultimately there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for growth.

But it’s all better than placing our hopes on the Growth Fairy.

Speaking in Europe

I’m posting this from London, right after speaking at two incredible events last week — Het Leukste Event over Marketing Psychologie in Utrecht and Anticon in London. I really enjoyed meeting so many of you there. Here are a few quick photos.

Here’s where I’m headed next:

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 related one from 2017.

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

-Tom

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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.