Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 105

3 Reasons Why Likeability Will Decide The Next US President

It is just a few hours after the first US Presidential debate, and the media blitz is on to declare a winner. Most media give Romney the edge, and share the many ways he gained in the polls. On the CNN likeability poll, Romney came out with 46% of voters watching the debates feeling that he had the edge – while 45% felt President Obama was more likeable. But not everyone agrees that we should even care that much about their likeability.

A few days ago The Telegraph published an article titled...

How Personal Relationships Will Make (Or Break) The Future Of The Arts

For Nate Dern, the unlikely path to acting micro-stardom would come from a simple three letter catchphrase that most people would barely consider a word. As the artistic director of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York and a sociology PhD student at Columbia University, Nate had spent years auditioning for different roles. In late 2011, he landed a gig acting in a national commercial for AT&T Wireless called “Responsibilities.”

In the ad, a manager-type character dishes out unexpec...

LinkedIn Turns To Curation To Solve The Web’s Biggest Problem

Today LinkedIn announced that they are creating an exclusive list of 150 celebrities and influencers who anyone will have the ability to “follow.” There will be no pesky 140 character limit on what these influencers can post (there’s a new blogging feature too) and the assumption is that they will share mostly business-related thoughts. Some critics see this as yet another attempt to Klout-ify the web with artificial influence rankings, but the real significance of LinkedIn’s announcement may...

3 Reasons Most Business Advice Sucks

The day after Bill Clinton delivered his speech at the Democratic National Convention, the reaction from both sides of the political aisle were swift. Amongst the noise of disagreement, President Obama essentially summed up what anyone watching that speech might have thought when he joked that he might make Clinton the “Secretary of Explaining Things.” Actually, we need one of those in the business world.

Too often that skill is critically missing, particulary when it comes to professional adv...

How Social Media Integration Is Moving Beyond Calling “Shotgun”

There is a game my brother and I used to play when we were kids and my guess is that you played it too. It had its own set of rules that we all knew, and they were irrefutable. Get within visible distance of your car, and then the first person among the passengers to call “shotgun” would sit in the front seat. Everyone else would battle to avoid the middle back seat. It’s a silly game, but it also explains how social media evolved in many corporations. The person or team who called “shotgun”...

What Madonna Knows (And NFL Refs Don’t) About Pleasing A Crowd

It was quite a scene last night. On Monday Night Football, on the final play of a game between the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks, a ball was simultaneously caught by two guys. As they struggled for it in the end zone, the Green Bay player appeared to have it – which would have ended the game. But they were playing in Seattle, and to the delight of the more than 50,000 screaming fans – one referee on the field slowly raised his hands to signify it was a touchdown. To anyone watchi...

SBF: What’s Behind Your Curtain?

Several weeks ago I saw a television special about television (no, that wasn’t a typo!). It was one of those programs where they look at old shows and interview the actors about what their lives are like now. When they came to Garry Shandling, the former star of the self-created Larry Sanders Show – this is what he said: “the curtain is a metaphor. On the other side of the curtain is when we are ourselves.” Last night I had the chance to watch an extremely powerful video from comedian Anthony...

The 8 Year Website Redesign

If there is one fact I have seen over and over from just about anyone who runs a website … it is that we all are constantly dreaming about redesigning our sites. Almost from the day we launch, we can’t help thinking about all the things we would like to add to our sites and what we would change if we could start over. For me, that process started more than 8 years ago when I first launched my blog. Back then, I titled it “Influential Interactive Marketing” and thought I would focus on user in...

How To Launch A Successful Product: Lessons From the New Kindle Fire HD

I have been a fan of the Amazon Kindle device for some time now ... and I ordered the new 7 inch Kindle Fire the day it was announced. This weekend I had the chance to try it out, and have been fairly happy. What I didn't expect, though, was to take away quite so many marketing lessons from the announcement and launch of the device itself. In the leadup to the launch as well as after I had the chance to try out the device, there were a few extremely smart marketing choices that stood out to m...

The Surprisingly Simple Secret of Social Advertising

There is a military technique described by the acronym LTD which you should know about. It stands for Laser Targeting Designators and it is basically a laser light source which is used to designate a target. In other words, by "lasing targets" - you put a marker on something so that when you shoot at it, you are more likely to hit it. Marketing people are fond of using military terms like campaigns, targets and hits to describe what we do. For all of our militaristic language, however, most o...