Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 110
March 1, 2012
How MindValley Is Building the Next TED (Only More Useful)
This morning I watched an amazing TED video of flying robots that can operate autonomously and collaborate with each other at the same time. It is exciting technology ... just the kind of thing you would expect to come out of a TED event. As I write this, the video (and its big finish where the robots play a song together) is rapidly going viral online, and I have to admit I love watching things like this. The only problem is, I'm not sure what I can do with this mind blowing example except...
February 26, 2012
Likeonomics, Linsanity and Why The Oscars Really Matter
Jerry Weintraub, the producer of Ocean's Eleven, has a dirty little secret. When he talks about getting the first of the Ocean's movies made in 1998, he admits it had very little to do with the script and everything to do with the first two people that he convinced to agree to being part of the project ... Director Steven Soderburgh and actor George Clooney. The two of them used their personal relationships to recruit the rest of the dozen actors who would make up the all star cast which...
February 16, 2012
What Paulo Coelho Can Teach You About Storytelling & Writing
Sitting in a hotel room tonight putting the finishing touches on a presentation I am giving today on storytelling, I got an irresistable update to a new blog post over on Tim Ferriss' blog featuring a podcast interview with one of my longtime inspirations as a writer - Paolo Coelho. His book The Alchemist is a life changing experience for anyone I know who has read it (including me). So when Tim published his interview, I immediately listened to the whole thing. I highly recommend it.
In...
February 6, 2012
The Best And Worst Of Super Bowl Marketing Strategy 2012
I couldn't help but feel sorry this year for anyone who only watches the Super Bowl ads for entertainment. Perhaps the most defining feature of all the ads this year was how uniformly uncreative and dated they were. Marketers turned to old and obvious gags like girls in bikinis and dogs (lots of dogs) to try and carry their ads. The result was a very disappointing collection of ads for anyone who loves marketing and the hype of Super Bowl advertising. Still, there is plenty of marketing to...
February 3, 2012
What The Amish Paradox Can Teach You About Marketing
Last year on a trip back to the US from South Africa, I picked up a magazine about a topic I knew very little about. It is of the common tricks I use to learn about different industries outside of the ones I work directly with – and in this case, the magazine I ended up with was called Farmer's Weekly.
The content was as you would expect, advice for farmers on techniques, information about regulations that will affect their industry and ads for tractors and things like that. In the middle...
January 27, 2012
The 4 Principles Of Delusional Economics
When it comes to economic theories, there is plenty of fascination in the business world around how to explain what drives business and purchasing activities. Behavioural economics, the field of economics concerned with examining why people behave the way they do when it comes to their purchasing behaviour, is hot right now. Bestselling books like Freakonomics and Predictably Irrational dig deep into the psyche of people to try and explain seemingly illogical actions.
My own upcoming book...
January 26, 2012
FinnAir, Republic Day & Why Celebration Is The Best Marketing Strategy
A few weeks ago it was my birthday. The day before on a Saturday morning, my two boys came leaping into our room very excited to wake me up. It wasn't so much about my birthday, unfortunately, as it was about getting ready to do their favourite thing on a Saturday morning: going to IHOP for pancakes. And when there is a birthday involved, it is an even bigger deal. Your birthday is a celebration there. They bring over at least 6 of the wait staff to sing their own version of the birthday...
January 23, 2012
Honda Masters The Art of Marketing Timing
Every year at the start of the new year there is something that most of us do without realizing it. It is related to making new year's resolutions, but it is more about sequencing your long term goals into the order in which you want to achieve them. One example might be saying to yourself, "I want to be married and then have a kid before I turn 35." Life is full of these little promises. So full, in fact, that often we make them to ourselves without even thinking. It raises an interesting...
January 20, 2012
How "HateSurfing" Can Help Your Small Business
Most of us have heard the statistic that it is about ten times more likely that someone will post a comment online about a negative experience than a positive one. It is not hard to believe if we just imagine our own experiences. When we are a satisfied customer, usually the easy thing to do is go merrily on our way. If the opposite happens, however, human nature is to seek retribution and the web is the perfect conduit.
Negativity is super easy to post online, and irresistible because...
January 13, 2012
How To Make Your Business Recyclable Instead Of Green
Despite how it might seem, this is not another post about how you can create a more "green" business. Being green is a great business practice, and has the side benefit of helping your small business to make a positive difference in the world. When we think of recycling, it is no surprise that most people would immediately think of collecting newspapers and plastic bottles.
What if instead you considered recyclability as a principle that you could apply to many different aspects of your...
