Day: September 27, 2011

Recently I’ve been blogging a lot about custom cartoons. So the question you might be asking yourself right now is where exactly do you use them? A better question, and the one with the shorter answer, would be where aren’t you going to use them? The answer is “nowhere.” There really isn’t any such thing as a newsletter, an email, a blog, a book or a PowerPoint presentation that can’t benefit from the clear, direct message of a custom cartoon.

Custom cartoons are a secret weapon when there’s a point that absolutely must be made. While paragraphs carry their ideas slowly, one word after the other, and only if the recipient is willing and able to understand it, a cartoon shoots right into your audience’s brain like a magic bullet that carries ideas, even if the reader is trying his or her best not to pay you any attention.

For example, at almost every boardroom meeting there’s always someone who is not really there. He’s playing with his cell phone or he’s ordering the pizza and basically ignoring the PowerPoint presentation you spent all weekend on. This guy may very well hold your career in his hands and he can’t even be bothered to pay attention. Well he may be too distracted to read the charts you’re showing him, but I guarantee he’s going to sit up and take notice when the room is laughing along with a well-directed relevant cartoon.

Another one of the most common ways custom cartoons are incorporated into a project is with the classic how-to book format. With cartoons, even the lazy readers who just skim the book can walk away with a full understanding of the subject.

Blog posts are another area where the right cartoon can make a big difference and save a lot of time. How many discussions have you gotten into on your blog with somebody who just won’t see reason? Someone who just can’t understand? Well, with a cartoon that makes your message clear even to the densest readers, there’s no more wasting hundreds of words trying to explain yourself.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. The truth is that a picture speaks more than a thousand words. A picture speaks millions of words, it speaks in numbers, it speaks in logistics, it speaks in facts and figures, and it speaks to the disengaged as well as the not too swift. A custom cartoon speaks to those who can’t, don’t or won’t listen, and it does it beautifully with humor.

I could go ahead and list every possible situation where you might use a custom cartoon, but we’d be here all day, so here’s the short answer: Wherever you absolutely need to make sure that you get your point across, that’s where custom cartoons do the trick.