Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 27

New Options May Bring a Small Business Advertising Revolution

Over the past several weeks, travel and media brands with access to plentiful user data are finally following the path of social media platforms to create new ways to monetize it. United Airlines announced “the airline industry’s first media network” and just this week the Paramount Plus streaming network opened up their self-service Ads Manager to allow businesses of any size to advertise against programming on the platform.

Obviously, the creative challenge of how to make a good 15 ...

The Assassination Attempt and Why the “Obvious” Conclusions Are Usually Wrong

The biggest news story of the past week was certainly the assassination attempt on former President Trump’s life and almost immediately in the aftermath of the shooting there were plenty of theories about what had happened and who was behind it. The media dutifully reported on all of it, from conspiracy theories to early guesses about motives and intentions. The best thing I read this week, though, was an article from writer Dan Gardner retelling the story about the assassination of Senator Huey...

Are Colleges and Universities Failing Liberal-Leaning Students by Not Challenging Their Perspectives?

In a forthcoming book by Princeton Political Science Professor Lauren A. Wright, the author writes about her research process that involved interviews with self-described liberal and conservative students about the variety of topics and perspectives they are learning. She found a disproportionate number of conservative-leaning students are exposed to new perspectives or ideas that they don’t necessarily agree with. They are frequently forced to question their beliefs and understand both sides of...

After 40 Glorious Years of Simplicity Notepad Gets “Improved” By Adding Autocorrect and Spellcheck

I admit I’m a Notepad junkie. I use it nearly every day to capture ideas for stories, writing to use elsewhere and just general notetaking. It’s probably one of my favorite programs on my computer. It’s also dead simple. Or it was, until the latest update announced this week which notes the app is “finally” getting autocorrect and spellcheck. I’m not sure how other Notepaders feel about this, but I definitely wasn’t waiting or hoping for it. Perhaps I spent way too many years working at a PR fir...

The Awoken & The Sleepless

The Non-Obvious Book(s) of the Week

It’s the summer and when it comes to reading, for many people that means reading fiction … so this week I’m shifting my book recommendations to a different genre. My two picks this week came out within a month of each other back in 2022 and may seem similar based on their titles but are actually quite different but equally compelling imaginings of a dystopian future. In The Awoken, author Katelyn Monroe Howes transports the reader to a potential future wher...

Porto and the Importance of City Branding

As I write this, I’m just off the stage here in Portugal at one of the largest business conferences of the year in Europe at the QSP Summit in the city of Porto. Aside from its picturesque location on the Northern coast, the country’s second largest city also enjoys a reputation as an award-winning destination due to a combination of its experiences, food and branding.
Longtime readers may not be surprised to hear that it’s the last element that I find the most intriguing. Many destinations compe...

How Global Sports Are Showcasing a Surprising Upside of Immigration

This summer is a back-to-back sports frenzy in my household. It started with the T20 Cricket World Cup, followed closely by two major soccer tournaments: the UEFA European Championship and Copa America, which will both conclude this coming weekend. Then later this month, the Paris 2024 Olympics will start (which we will be attending in person). One unexpected story that has continually taken center stage in these competitions is the role of immigration in the shape of many of the teams and the a...

A First Look at America’s Smartest Highway

Driverless vehicles are obviously going to be part of humanity’s future, but they aren’t experiencing a great PR moment right now. Every day it seems there is another story about an incident involving a driverless vehicle hitting someone, mistaking something on the road or generally malfunctioning. Not to mention the justifiable fears of hacking that will be more top of mind when (not if) a higher profile example of this actually happens.One rapidly emerging solution to at least some of these pr...

Too Little Government

Is there such a thing as too little government? This feels like a loaded political question in a time when trust in government is historically low. Government and business are usually positioned as enemies-
The current fear is that more government regulation will stifle business, while too little regulation incentivizes the greediest companies and criminals to take advantage of a world with no oversight. Most citizens in any nation would agree that striking the right balance is essential.
What mak...

A Man of the World: My Life at National Geographic by Gilbert M. Grosvenor

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

The birthday of a nation is a perfect moment to celebrate heroes and the American hero I pick to honor on this 4th of July is Gilbert Grosvenor.
While his name might be unfamiliar, the brand his family has managed for more than a century has left a large, yellow-bordered mark on the world. The National Geographic Society and their iconic magazine have illuminated every corner of the world for decades. In this “swashbuckling memoir … filled with pirates, royalty...