People are always asking me if business and cartoons mix, so I thought I’d delve into it. The answer is, yes - if you mix them carefully.

There’s absolutely no question business cartoons attract attention. One panel cartoons are particularly hard for readers to pass up. Think about it. Imagine yourself skimming through a magazine chock full of ads. After a while they all start to look the same. Then you see a cartoon. What do you do? If you’re like most people, you stop and read it. If it’s funny, you might get curious about the company that used it. So, if your purpose is to grab attention so readers will fix on your message, use a one panel cartoon. They are super effective for -

• Electronic newsletters.
• Print newsletters.
• Online advertising.
• Print ads.
• Wall calendars.
• Web pages, especially landing pages.

Cartoons work well for generating word of mouth buzz, too.

A True Cartoon Story
My client attended an industry-sponsored golf outing this summer. It rained cats and dogs the entire time, so every golfer got soaked. We created a one panel cartoon showing a fictional participant in scuba gear hitting the ball off the tee. We discreetly displayed the client’s name in one corner. Thanks to my superstar illustrator, Mark Hill, we turned the cartoon around in one day. (Timeliness is of the essence for topical humor.)

The client emailed the cartoon to several event participants and sponsors. Before long they were passing along the cartoon to anyone and everyone. Several months later we attended an industry convention. Two sales prospects I bumped into, both key purchasing contacts at Fortune 100 companies, commented on the cartoon when I mentioned the client’s name. The comments were along the lines, “Oh, they’re the folks with the cartoon - right? Very clever! It’s still on my desk.”

Point of the Story
Cartoons build brand awareness. The details of your product benefits and unique service capabilities fade from memory unless they are repeated over and over. But a cartoon instantaneously creates a long lasting impression. If the impression is positive, your audience will be eager to hear your message.

Warning! Cartoons Can be Compelling … or Catastrophic
Humor is serious business if you’re using it for marketing purposes. People are all over the board as to what they regard as funny. A joke that sends one person into hysterics could send another person to Human Resources with an harassment complaint. Sometimes people think a cartoon needn’t be funny to be effective. Wrong! Some of the pitfalls companies run into when they try the DIY approach -

• Jokes with no punchlines.
• Captions/dialog balloons with too many words.
• Offensive material, especially of a sexual or ethnic nature.
• Overly complicated drawing.
• Overly subtle humor.
• Attempt to convey a complex message in the caption/dialog balloon(s).
• Jargon-laden content.

My Cartooning Process
For cartoons to be effective, you need to know your audience, which in most cases is going to be the customer base. My clients almost always have humorous situations in mind which their customers can relate to.

My job is to listen, trim the ideas down to their essentials, and put them in a context people can identify with quickly.

We did the above cartoon for a financial planner who wanted to draw attention to two things - first, that people are confronted by a bewildering array of college fund options, and second, their suspicion that many who sell them are scam artists.

Pruning ideas down into an instant hit, one panel cartoon can take a few seconds or a several days. The time it takes to work out the drawing details with Mark varies as well. The college fund cartoon took some time. For instance, at first we had a fedora on the salesman, which made him look sinister, but we thought it might be a little too critical of the financial planning community, of which my client was a member.

You might be thinking, why not use a stock cartoon? They’re available for free all over the Web. A book I’m reading right now, You, Inc., by Harry Beckwith and Christine Clifford Beckwith, has a good answer. The Beckwiths are no fans of jokes in business. They point out if you tell someone else’s joke in a speech, you’re not saying anything about yourself, other than that you can reuse someone else’s material. They go on to say it’s hopeless to create your own material, because people will compare you to the Seinfelds, the Carlins, etc. I couldn’t agree more! Mark and my material may not be Seinfeld, but it works.

My favorite part of cartooning is the process itself. It’s fun! Clients enjoy the process and their customers enjoy the fruits of our labor.