Marketing and Branding and Sales, Oh My!

Hi, I’m Kendra. I’m your editor today.

I’m also a multi-hyphenate entrepreneur: a cartoonist-teacher-newsletter editor-fashion guru who focuses on making white hot jokes for the everyday person, with an eye for accessibility and cash cash cash.  

I specialize in making the mundane, universal and the universal, celestial and the celestial, meaningless.

A client (read: cartoonist friend) once called me a “sunny intellectual” and compared me to a prairie field full of wheat. 

A very high-level client (read: my dad) once said “I love you, Kendra. Maybe you should be a singer-songwriter. Also, can you empty the dishwasher?”

For more information, check out my TikTok videos of me drinking homemade sangria and wearing tee shirts I cut up when I was in middle school in the 90’s. Like, share, subscribe, and then start sending a monthly reoccurring payment to my bank account. You won’t regret it.

-Kendra

Julia Suits

I drew this after reading Laurence Bergreen’s "Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe," and after freeing some greens from an 18” eyepatch-like twist tie. 

No question that eyepatches rock (Yul Brynner, John Wayne, Samuel Jackson, et al) but this guy raises the (salad) bar. 

Sofia Warren

This being the golden age of targeted marketing, can someone explain to me why my targeted ads are for ourtime.com, the dating website for the AARP set? It makes no sense, because I am so clearly a youth, and deeply entrenched in youth culture. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my evening routine: a handful of prunes, a single After Eight mint, and a few dozen pages of this seven part series on World War I.

Ellis Rosen

Marketing is everything. For instance, when you meet me, you'll just think,”there's a regular guy.” But when I introduce myself, I say “Hi, I’m Ellis, the man that saved your child’s life.” That’s when you go, “oh wow, I love this guy” and then “Wait a second, I don't have a child,” but by then I will already have taken off with your wallet. That’s the power of marketing, baby! Whoo!

Drew Dernavich

That feeling when you get home and realize that you got suckered into buying something that really doesn’t make any sense? It happens with a lot of things, but for me it has happened mostly with cars and mattresses. It is a pretty well-made sunroof, though.

Kendra Allenby

Stay in your lane, be good at your lane, be good at branding your lane, and probably branding the 3 adjacent lanes, because your lane probably won’t be making any money in 5 years so you might as well pivot to something you’re mediocre at, but where you’ve already built a brand. 

Navied Mahdavian

I can already hear the advertisements. Baaa baaa baaaaaaa – dun dun! Dun da dun da dun da. Coming soon, the Duolith.

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ToonStack NewsStack

• Drew has collaborative letterpress prints for sale!

• Hilary’s guided journal, What Did I Do Today? , just came out!

• Amy Kurzweil teaches cartoon classes on Patreon! Sign up now to get the recording of every past class!

• Check out Jason Katzenstein’s NEW PATREON!

• Also check out Jason Chatfield’s Substack

• Sofia Warren’s Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator is out and available to order here. (And it was just named one of the best graphic novels of 2022 by Forbes!)

• Pre-order Ellis Rosen’s new book, Dink!: Pickleball Facts, Fictions, and Cartoons

• Be sure to check out Shelby Lorman’s newsletter, Please Clap!

• The same goes for Sofia Warren’s advice newsletter, You’re Doing Great!

• See more cartoons from Ellis Rosen’s weekly Junk Drawer!