Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 102
July 27, 2012
The Best And Worst Of London 2012 Olympic Marketing Roundup
NOTE - To see a full visual roundup of the best and worst marketing, visit myLondon 2012 Olympic Marketing - Best & WorstPinterest Board.
As the world turn its attention to the Games in London today, I'll have to indulge my Olympic passion from afar this time around. I've been a lover of the Olympics since I was in college in Atlanta during the games in 1996. They were a big reason I moved to Australia in 1998 and I was in Beijing in 2008 helping manage the Lenovo Voices of the Olympic G...
July 23, 2012
12 Big Trends Transforming The World Of Retail Right Now
Last week I had the chance to deliver a keynote presentation at a merchandising event put on for some of the largest retailers in the US by the trade association Shop.org. I shared some trends built upon consumer behaviour and incorporating some startups that are getting a lot of attention right now. I don't share many of my presentations as they are often custom created specifically for events that I participate in, but this is one of the few that I can open up to a public audience. So below...
July 18, 2012
How Nelson Mandela Used Likeability To Succeed
July 18th isn't really a holiday all over the world, but perhaps it should be. It is the birthday of Nelson Mandela, and our team out of London is supporting an initiative to help this iconic South African leader get the recognition he deserves. So today, you can join people like Desmond Tutu, Eddie Izzard, and Jamie Oliver to make your own pledge for global good in the official pledge book.
Our team is also encouraging poeple worldwide to devote time (specifically 67 minutes in recognition of...
July 17, 2012
Dollar Shave Club Offers The Cure For Overmarketing
My current razor has three blades, but I am sadly certain that at some point pretty soon that will seem laughably low. The razor blade wars have been around for years - but each year the battles continue with new "innovations." The Gillette Fusion Power razor, for example, now features an "onboard microchip" to help "regulate power." It's no wonder razor blades have been the butt of jokes for years now, but the problem generally has been that most guys just don't have a better or easier optio...
July 5, 2012
The Problem With Curiosity
Curiosity isn't just for cats or cartoon monkeys. In fact, it may be one of the most powerful marketing forces that exists in the world today (and one I even wrote a guide for using several years ago). Thanks to a combination of our natural human urges and what constitutes a "breaking story" in today's media environment - curiosity has been taking on a whole new significance lately.
Today, for example, the two LEADING media stories that people can't stop sharing, tweeting and talking about bo...
June 29, 2012
"Somebody I Used To Know" & The Co-Created Future Of Musical Storytelling
The moment in 1981 when MTV officially launched its music channel by airing The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star" was a big moment in the history of music. While it may not have been the first moment when videos were merged with music, it was certainly one of the most powerful. All of a sudden you could not only experience a song and how it made you feel, you could also SEE an interpretation of what the songwriter actually meant.
At first this shift worried many music fans. After all, if...
June 22, 2012
10 Signs You May Have An Unhealthy Relationship With Social Media
There is a reason the word "pervasive" is often used right alongside social media. For many of us, the social channels we use to connect with others for personal or professional reasons are a big part of every day. But how much is too much? How do we know that we might be taking our enthusiasm for social media too far? Here's my slightly exaggerated (but mostly true) list of ten signs that you might just have an unhealthy relationship with social media in your life:
You receive an audible al...
June 17, 2012
How To Save San Francisco With Puppies
In entrepreneurship courses around the world one of the first things that they teach you is to find a problem that your business can solve. We all have problems, so there should be plenty of inspiration. And no doubt, there are many successful businesses that start with this simple question in mind. But how often do they ask if the problems they are solving are big enough?
This weekend I read an article about a fascinating experiment in San Francisco to get panhandlers off the street. The cit...
June 12, 2012
How To Interview Anyone: 5 Lessons From Amazing Interviewers
One of the most popular forms of content creation today is interviews ... but great interviews take a lot more than just coming up with a list of questions. The sad fact is, not everyone who creates interviews to post online is actually good at doing them. So you might wonder, what do the people who ARE really good at it already know?
Over the last month I've done over 30 interviews as part of launching Likeonomics (that's more than one a day). Across that time, I've done everything from answ...
June 5, 2012
The Importance of Being Fearless
Most of us have a love affair with the big idea. We memorialize and romanticize it. We attend workshops or read books to learn how to come up with it. And the celebrate the achievements of anyone who has had one. Yet for all of our focus on this big idea, perhaps there is something even more fundamental that powers real world changing ideas.
The Case Foundation thinks so, and many of their peer foundations do as well. Foundations are one group that don't generally get recognized enough for th...
