About BOB MANKOFF
Humor Editor • Cartoonist • President, CArtoonCollections.com
For over 40 years, Bob Mankoff has been the driving force of comedy and satire at some of the most honored publications in America, including The New Yorker and Esquire. He has devoted his life to discovering just what makes us laugh and seeks every outlet to do so, from developing The New Yorker’s web presence to integrating it with algorithms and A.I. Mankoff is currently the cartoon editor at the weekly online newsletter Air Mail.
A student of humor and creativity, Mankoff’s presentations largely focus on the creative process, from writing a successful New Yorker cartoon to inspiring creativity in others and enhancing ideas with A.I and big data. With his storied career of editing literally thousands of cartoons, Mankoff brings a hugely entertaining night of laughs, tips to bring humor to the workplace, and the option of participating in a cartoon caption contest.
In 2018, Mankoff launched Cartoon Collections, parent company to CartoonStock.com, a new spin on the Cartoon Bank, the world’s most successful cartoon licensing platform that he founded in 1992. At CartoonStock.com, Bob has brought together cartoons from the New Yorker and previously unavailable cartoons from National Lampoon, Esquire, Playboy, and Barron’s to create the largest cartoon licensing source on the planet.
With comedy writer and developer Jamie Brew, Mankoff runs Botnik Studios, a network of writers, artists, and programmers who create software that augments human creativity with big data analytics.
During his recent stint at Esquire, Mankoff revived the magazine’s legacy of satire and humor, editing humor pieces, providing story ideas, and drafting his own cartoons.
For twenty years as Cartoon Editor for The New Yorker, Mankoff pored over thousands of submissions each week, analyzing, critiquing, and selecting each cartoon. He mentored cartoonists, new and old, toward the laughs readers expect. In 2005, he helped start the “New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest.” With 5,000 reader submissions a week and millions of entries to date, Mankoff partnered with Microsoft and Google Deep Mind to develop algorithms to help cull the funniest captions.
Bob is the author of numerous books, including his New York Times bestselling memoir, How About Never – Is Never Good For You?: My Life In Cartoons, of which the Washington Post wrote, “Mankoff's deep understanding of humor, both its power and its practice, is the live wire that crackles through his book.” His latest book, Have I Got a Cartoon for You!: The Moment Magazine Book of Jewish Cartoons, was released in October, 2019.
Mankoff’s career started, unexpectedly, by quitting a Ph.D program in experimental psychology at the City University of New York in 1974. Shortly after, he began submitting cartoons to the New Yorker. Three years and over 2,000 cartoons later, he finally made the magazine and has since published over 950 cartoons. His story and day-to-day at the magazine were the focus of the 2015 HBO documentary Very Semi-Serious.
Mankoff has taught classes at Swarthmore, Fordham, and led workshops on the creative process.
SPEAKING TOPICS
I ONLY READ IT FOR THE CARTOONS: AN INSIDER’S CARTOON HISTORY OF THE NEW YORKER
Bob Mankoff is the ultimate New Yorker cartoon insider. He’s been a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker for thirty-five years and its Cartoon Editor since 1997. He sees over a thousand cartoons a week in order to help select the fifteen or so that go into the magazine, which over its long and storied history has published over 80,000 of them.
In this fast-paced and funny multimedia presentation featuring cartoons and videos, Bob ushers you into the hallowed halls of The New Yorker (Shhh! You’ll upset the fact-checkers) to show you the soup-to-nuts process of cartoon creation, giving you not only a detailed look at his own work but that of artists who keep you laughing every week, except, of course, when they don’t, puzzling you with a cartoon that you “don’t get”. What’s up with that anyway? In this presentation, all will be explained including how to increase your odds of winning the famous New Yorker Caption contest.
THE NAKED CARTOONIST: EXPOSING YOUR IDEAS, IMAGINATION & WIT TO ENHANCE YOUR CREATIVITY
As cartoon editor of The New Yorker, and one of its most gifted contributors, Bob Mankoff spends his life pursuing that elusive thing called creativity and inspiring it in others. If you’ve ever wondered where great ideas come from, or yearned to channel your creative energies, or just wanted some pointers on how to get those artistic juices flowing — this talk (and his book The Naked Cartoonist) is for you. Along with some help from his well-known cartoonist friends, Bob takes you on an entertaining words-and-pictures journey through the art, craft, and zen of cartooning, along the way providing lots of personal anecdotes about his development as an artist and about life at the world’s most urbane magazine. But you don’t have to be an aspiring cartoonist to appreciate The Naked Cartoonist. Bob’s wisdom, and his practical yet whimsical approach to the creative process, are designed to benefit anyone who has ever stared at a blank piece of paper or canvas and dreamed of transforming it into something truly original (and maybe even commercial). What’s so funny? Bob Mankoff knows best. He also knows how you can find your own personal voice and message, how you can learn from the masters of the past, how you can transform a current event into a comic tour-de-force…even how you can incorporate telling lies and taking naps into your daily routine — and justify it.
YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR — DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT (GENERAL AUDIENCES)
As young kids, most of us were taught that humor is silly and a waste of time. And so, while five-year-olds laugh hundreds of times a day, adults are down to about fifteen. We’ll see how wrong this prejudice is and how humor and other forms of play can enhance our professional effectiveness.
Humor has three main benefits. First, it’s physically and psychologically healthy, especially in the way it blocks stress. Secondly, humor makes us mentally flexible — able to manage change, take risks, and think creatively. And thirdly, humor serves as a social lubricant, making us more effective in dealing with colleagues and clients. We’ll experience all of these using pictures, cartoons, stories, and exercises.
LAUGHTER AND THE PROFESSIONS
Humor and Law
Humor and Healthcare
Humor and Education
Humor and Business Executives
Humor and Mental Health
A PASSION FOR PERSEVERANCE: IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED, TRY 2,000 TIMES
It’s not easy to get your cartoon published in the New Yorker. Just ask their Cartoon Editor, Bob Mankoff. Since 1977, his name has been synonymous with the New Yorker, but he didn’t get there over night—it was actually closer to 1,000 nights. It took three years and 2,000 submissions to see his name in the corner of one of his cartoons. More than talent, getting published took perseverance.
In “A Passion for Perseverance,” Bob Mankoff will show audiences how to stop worrying and love the process of creating. To achieve your goals, you need to be ready for the long haul, but as Bob will explain, the long haul doesn’t have to be a real slog. This fun and interactive program will leave you ready to get to work with a smile on your face.
ON THE MONEY: HUMOR IN SALES, MARKETING, AND CUSTOMER SERVICE
Did you ever wonder why so many Superbowl commercials use humor? (At the Cannes Film Festival, 95% of the winners in the Advertising category are funny.) Have you noticed how even traditionally staid businesses like banking and insurance are now putting humor into their advertising? We’ll explore six ways humor works with customers. We’ll see how it creates rapport and overcomes sales resistance, opening customers’ minds to new perspectives. And because humor gets customers involved in processing the message, they remember that message better. In customer service, humor provides a moment of unexpected delight. Sometimes this is a bonus — icing on the cake — and sometimes it saves the relationship when things are not going well. We’ll also explore crucial differences between men’s humor and women’s humor and their implications for business. All these topics are explored using pictures, videos, cartoons, stories, and exercises.
THE CARTOON CAPTION CHALLENGE: CROWDSOURCING LESSONS IN HUMOR FROM THE NEW YORKER CARTOON CAPTION CONTESTS (WHERE YOUR AUDIENCE ALSO GETS TO PICK THE PUNCH LINES).
Humor is traditionally at the hand of its author, but what happens when the audience picks the punch line? Each week, on the last page of the magazine, The New Yorker provides a cartoon in need of a caption. Readers submit captions, the magazine chooses three finalists, readers vote for their favorites. It’s humor — crowdsourced — and with more than 2 million submissions provided by 500,000 participants, it provides tremendous insight as to what makes us laugh. In this talk, Bob analyzes the lessons we learn from crowdsourced humor. And then it’s your turn. The sponsor is provided with captionless cartoons for a campus/company wide caption challenge. Mankoff selects the finalists who then compete on stage in a live Cartoon Caption Challenge. It’s winner take some because all contestants get original signed cartoons by Mankoff.
*A shorter audience participation version can be added to any of Bob’s talks.
FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK: HOW & WHY JEWS BECAME “THE PEOPLE OF THE JOKE.”
From growing up Jewish in Queens, NY, to going to the Borscht Belt as a kid where he saw performances by Jerry Lewis, Buddy Hackett, and Rodney Dangerfield, among others, Bob shows how his Jewish heritage helped him to become a successful cartoonist and presents a personal and historical cartoon illustrated history of Jewish humor.