Cartoons

Content Strategy and Words for Business on the Web • • Feature Post Sales vs. Marketing

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Cartoons and Word of Mouth Marketing

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Salazar Packaging, a client heavily focused on sustainable packaging, is always looking for ways to get their Earth-friendly message out and stimulate conversation about packaging and the environment. Easier said than done! Although packaging is a mature industry, sustainable packaging is a hot topic generating buzz in a hundred directions on any given day. (more…)

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Cartoon - Hands On Managers

Friday, April 11th, 2008

Which do you prefer? A hands on manager, or a hands off manager?

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Cartoon - Funny or Stupid, You Decide

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

When I first came up with the idea for this cartoon (for a financial Web site), I thought it couldn’t miss. But after Mark drew it up, all I could think is, this doesn’t make sense. How would he get money in the water bed without noticing the water?

Funny? Stupid? Salvageable?

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Cartoon - Foozle and Fribble

Friday, March 21st, 2008

When Joanna Young used “foozle and fribble” in a guest post here, I couldn’t resist creating this cartoon.

Foozle and Fribble will be recurring characters who act out your favorite Words for Nerds. Any suggestions for the next cartoon? For the latest Words for Nerds list, click here.

Are you a word lover? If you want to use this cartoon on your blog, feel free!

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From the “Cartoons that Didn’t Work” File

Friday, January 4th, 2008

Sometimes an idea that looks great in your head doesn’t look so hot on paper. The idea of an alien making a crop circle with his tractor still seems funny to me, but somehow it just doesn’t work as a cartoon.

Crop circles - funny.
Aliens on tractors - funny.

But … maybe the concept is too complicated, or perhaps the alien isn’t exaggerated enough. Oh well. You can’t hit a home run every time you’re up at the plate. Some days you just have to be satisfied with a fielder’s choice and a couple of strike outs.

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Cartoon - Are You Punctual?

Monday, December 31st, 2007

If you have a meeting with a client at 10:00 AM, what do you normally do?

A. Arrive at 10:00 on the dot and take pride in announcing yourself just as the second hand is sweeping past the “12″.

B. Give yourself enough time to provide for any delay, and arrive between 9:15 and 9:45.

C. Breeze in at 10:10 or 10:15 - not a big deal.

How you answer will reveal your attitude about time. I myself am an obsessive “B” person. The mere idea of being late makes me physically ill. Actually being late … well, I can remember those few dismal episodes as far back as the 1980’s.

How I envy the “A”’s and the “C”’s! For business purposes, “A” is the way to go. I’m not so sure about “C” … being chronically late for appointments could be damaging. But for us “B” people, being controlled by the clock is a heavy burden indeed.

Perhaps I should make a New Year’s resolution to be less time-obsessed. Hmm … it’s already 10:31 AM on the 31st … too late!

I know! I’ll make being less time-obsessed my first resolution for 2009 instead!

Happy New Year to Word Sell Readers Everywhere!

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Cartoon - Following Instructions

Friday, December 21st, 2007

Following instructions seems so simple. And yet, time and time again, inhabitants of the business world become frustrated because instructions are not properly carried out. What causes these breakdowns in communication?

Carelessness. Most lapses result from faulty follow through. That’s why it’s extremely important to be ready to take notes at all times.

Fear of asking for clarification. Most of us dislike being regarded as witless, thick headed boobs. Therefore, we avoid asking questions such as “What do you mean?” We must remember that the smartest among us are the ones who ask the most questions.

Inability to communicate clear instructions. Issuing instructions requires just as much skill as following them. Instructions which are vague or illogical invite misinterpretation and all out confusion.

Contradictory marching orders. This occurs frequently in large organizations. Boss “A” says, “Increase inventories!” Boss “B” says, “Decrease inventories!” In such situations, asking for clarification requires not only humility, but medal of honor-level courage.

The “I’m Smarter than You” syndrome. Many of us like to think we’re smarter than the boss. It’s tempting to think, I have a better way to do this. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t, but either way, bucking the system throws a monkey wrench in somebody’s machine.

I’m not saying we should all walk in lock step. We have to strike a balance between following instructions and using initiative. So the questions is … how do we do that? Something to ponder over the holidays.

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Do Business and Cartoons Mix?

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

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.

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What I Learned from Being a Bad Wrestler

Thursday, December 6th, 2007

Robert Hruzek’s latest group project asks, “what did you learn from the world of sports?”

Organized sports were a big part of my life in high school. I was a pretty good football player and a very good (believe it or not) shot putter. But the sport that taught me the most was the one I liked least - wrestling. I had an excellent reason for disliking the sport - I stunk at it. However, because I was one of the biggest guys in our small high school, I was dragooned into service. Despite my abysmal record, wrestling taught me important life lessons.

Humility
Getting tied up like a pretzel and pinned so hard your shoulders nearly puncture the mat make you realize you have limits.

Resilience
No matter how badly I got beat, I’d have to bounce back and try again a few days later. Somehow I managed to convince myself I could win next time. Having humility doesn’t mean you give up - it means you push yourself harder and concentrate on the effort instead of the results.

Fortitude
Wrestling heavyweight, I’d have to sit across from my opponent eyeball to eyeball while all the lower weight classes wrestled. Usually my opponent outweighed me by 40 or 50 pounds and looked like The Terminator. At first the stress made me want to head for the hills and keep on running. After awhile I developed the ability to disregard the tension, put it out of my mind. That’s a nice thing to be able to do, whether the setting is sports, business, or everyday life.

What a Great Guy My Father Is
OK, I suppose I knew this anyway, but one of my most treasured sports memories came after a particularly nightmarish wrestling match, in which I spent about 90% of the time on my back in front of a huge home town crowd (this was Colorado, where high school wrestling is Big Time). I lost about 15-0, and cost our team the match. I was so upset I hung around the locker room until everybody had left. I was too embarrassed to face people. My dad was waiting for me in the empty parking lot. We were leaving town for a vacation, meeting up with the rest of the family in Breckenridge. My dad had a Porsche 911 at the time, which only he drove. I went to get into the car and he threw me the keys. He said, “You drive.” Now, being a 17 year-old, driving that Porsche pretty much put all thoughts of wrestling out of my mind.

What can I say? When you win, everybody’s your friend. When you lose, you find out who your friends really are.

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Cartoon - Unwinding the Clock of Innovation

Friday, November 30th, 2007

Our poor ghost is a victim of stampeding innovation. Do you remember the days before PowerPoint, when presenters put transparencies under a gizmo with a bulb hot enough to fry an egg?

Other relics from the past …

1. The Telex machine. Used to transmit messages across wires, like a telegraph. We had one in our office. When it kicked in, it made the office sound like the old newspaper rooms you’d see in the movies.

2. Adding machines. When I joined the workforce, they looked like this, not like this. Not much computing power, and come to think of it not much styling, either.

3. The renowned Rolodex. No desktop was complete without one.

4. Phone booths. Now a curiosity, once an indispensable part of doing business. As a salesman, I remember spending hours looking for a phone to call the office for messages. On the south side of Chicago, where I spent much of my time, it wasn’t easy to find a phone booth in a safe spot. In rural areas, gas stations started featuring public phones you could reach from the driver’s seat of your car. I thought it was the most innovative achievement since The Beatles White Album.

5. The IBM Selectric. The granddaddy of electric typewriters. Easy to use and incredibly well engineered, Selectrics can still be found in service today. The chattering Selectric type balls used to provide a pleasant hum in the office which I found preferable to the muzak and white noise that replaced it.

6. Wite-Out. Office work would have come to a standstill without Wite-Out, the magic liquid paper that made typewriter corrections a relative snap. BIC is still trying to keep the venerable brand alive and rolled out new offerings as recently as 2002.

7. Slide rules. Not much hope of keeping slide rules alive. But I remember calling on engineering departments where senior engineers sat at their drafting tables manipulating slide rules like Jimi Hendrix on an electric guitar.

8. Letter boards. Pedestal or wall mounted, letter boards are still around, though not exactly the symbol of innovation. If you’re a salesman and spot one in the lobby, chances are good you’re not calling on Google.

What business relics do you remember?

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