Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 77
April 14, 2017
Why We Are So Easily Outraged (And What To Do About It)
The past week has offered plenty of stories that seem designed to invite outrage. From Pepsi’s tone deaf ad to Bill O’Reilly’s mistreatment of women to a passenger forcibly removed from a United flight. The common reaction online to all of these stories is one of shared outrage. It is an emotion we are feeling and expressing more and more online.
The cross section of stories this week will take a deeper look at why much of the outrage we feel may come from a combination of laziness, manipulat...
April 7, 2017
Overrated Millennials And Why Brands Are Embracing Seniors Instead
Senior citizens now officially outnumber the young people in Taiwan, and there is a growing worldwide shift among brands to embrace older consumers instead of largely ignoring them in favor of their younger counterparts. This week’s stories feature brands in traditionally younger targeted industries like athletics and lingerie using older ambassadors. Meanwhile a new startup promises to erase wrinkles and regenerate hair and the new term “Perennials” gains popularity as a way to describe a mo...
March 31, 2017
How To Be A Thought Leader (And Other Stories)
The stories this week are wide ranging – as I share one about an admirable new effort from Grey Advertising to promote diversity and offer more transparency into the diversity of their team supported by a few other programs that will help drive more inclusion in an industry that often lacks it. Other stories include a somewhat creepy new face-tracking projection technology, an app that wants to be your on-demand friend and some insights on what it takes to be a thought leader. Enjoy!
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March 27, 2017
7 Inventions That Will Change The World (Or Fail Spectacularly)
Inventions are fun and world changing … but sometimes they are also dumb and head-scratching. In this week’s email, I’ll share a few of both. You’ll read stories about Intel’s secret plan, the future of aquaculture and perhaps the most gratuitously pointless product ever. Some of these inventions may be ahead of their time and others may never work. Reading about them, though, was highly entertaining for me and (I hope) for you as well.
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March 20, 2017
What The “Robot Renaissance” Really Means …
Nothing says the future quite like robots, and this week there were plenty of interesting stories of how robots are being used in important, curious, quirky and sometimes terrifying ways. From robots replacing advertising agencies to virtual home tours to an edible robot that could soon crawl through your insides, the stories this week touch a range of industries. Enjoy this week’s journey into what I called the “Robot Renaissance” in my 2017 Non-Obvious Trend Report.
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March 9, 2017
6 Powerful Stories Celebrating Women
As I am sure you have noticed, yesterday was International Women’s Day and it was hard to miss all the stories about women’s empowerment and marches and political statements. For me, the most powerful stories (and the ones I selected for this week’s email) had little to do with politics and much more to do with cultural statements and powerful initiatives to change biases. From reimaging a traditional Russian folk song to changing the way Muslim women are portrayed in stock photography … this...
March 3, 2017
Agencies Embrace Trump’s America, Elmer’s Slime Problem & Why Digital IQ Is Falling
For a quick summary, this week’s featured stories include:
20 luxury brands that millennials most want to own Why CEOs are slowly losing confidence in their brand’s Digital IQ NY agencies are gaining more empathy for Middle America What Elmer’s glue can teach you about the ROI of social media How Chinese and American consumers describe a creative product A creative solution to a common problem nonprofits face How Agencies Are Embracing Trump’s America
One of the few undisputed things about...
February 24, 2017
How To Build Trust In An Era Of Desperate Truth Seeking Consumers
It is hard to get away from the feeling that we are being manipulated all the time. This week there were plenty of new stories of divisive characters losing their audience, brands trying new ways to be more truthful, and talk show host John Oliver trying to define reality itself. The theme this week is the idea that increasingly audiences and consumers are desperate to find brands, media and people that offer something that at least seems closer to the truth. See the stories curated in this w...
February 17, 2017
The Future Of Loneliness
The theme for the week is the future of loneliness and the stories focus on everything from how technology is reinventing how we hug to the curious role of social media in creating a new kind of loneliness we feel even when surrounded by people.
Given it was Valentine’s day this week, I felt this would be a fitting topic worth discussing — whether you were lucky enough to have a Valentine this week or not. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this format and theme structure as well!
St...February 9, 2017
LinkedIn Redesign, Whole Food’s Big Idea and Tech That’s Always Listening
As you know, this weekly post is a collection of interesting stories, but today I was inspired to try something different. Rather than sharing individual stories, I’m going to make connections and instead share three themes with multiple stories, along with a collection of links to stories that caught my attention this week. In the spirit of experimentation – please let me know what you think about this new format and whether you prefer it (or not). I look forward to hearing what you think!
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