Baynote, a provider of personalized customer experience solutions for multichannel retailers, has commissioned Tom Fishburne, a noted cartoonist, to create a series of marketoons called “Misadventures in Merchandising.” The new campaign parodies the ongoing challenges marketers face regarding customer engagement, whether it’s harnessing big data or determining the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

A new installment in the five-part series will be featured on Baynote’s site every two weeks through early October.

The first two comic strips are already up on the site, and the company is soliciting ideas for future marketoons.

Misadventures in Merchandising

The first Marketoon titled, “The Devil Wears Data,” looks at the need for big data in today’s retailing environment to fully manage and optimize products. In this cartoon, actual shopper data is compared to the merchandiser’s predictive capabilities in a retail company, and the main character learns that, “Data is the new black!”

Misadventures in Merchandising

The second Marketoon titled, “What Moved the Sales Needle,” looks at the difficulty merchandisers face when tracking the impact of their efforts.  In this cartoon, a marketer is trying to determine which tactics led the sales needle to move. In the end, it’s revealed that the main character has been too worried about specific tactics when the real take away is that she is losing money!

Fishburne’s cartoons reach 100,000 business readers each week and have been featured by The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes, and The New York Times. He is the founder and CEO of Marketoon Studios, a content marketing studio that helps businesses such as Unilever, O2, Kronos, Rocketfuel, and The Wall Street Journal reach their audiences with cartoons. He draws from 16 years in the marketing and innovation trenches, having served as a vice president at Method Products. He has led brands at Nestle and General Mills, developed Web sites for interactive agency iXL, and helped launch the first English-language magazine in Prague.