Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 86

Why Brands Should Stop Idolizing Oreo’s Social Media Strategy

Today is great timing for a Halloween promotion.

Everyone is talking about costumes, candies and spooky stuff as they prepare for the rare treat of a Friday evening Halloween. If you happened to visit Oreo on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter today, you would see what seems like another piece of social media brilliance from the brand: #OreoLab. After all, who wouldn’t want to see America’s favourite cookie transformed into a “nomster” through a cute stop motion Instagram video?

It is quirky and...

How To Be More Influential

A leader is someone you can follow without feeling like a follower.

There was a time when I spent almost every part of my day studying leadership. Before I found my passion in marketing, I used to explore what it took to be a great leader by constantly reading expected and unexpected sources on the subject. Along the path to getting a Masters degree in English more than a decade ago, I wrote a paper about the evolution of leadership in Shakespeare’s Henry V. Later, I compared lessons from the...

The One Thing Every Brand Needs To Build Trust

Despite what advertising tells you, supermodels don’t generally eat mile-high bacon burgers.

Yet this is exactly the type of fabricated reality we have come to expect from marketing. Often celebrities are hired as spokespeople for products they would clearly never use in real life. Actors in stock photos portray overly airbrushed people faking handshakes while billboards proclaim out of touch messages like “Hotness comes in all shapes and sizes” … as long as that size happens to be less than a...

5 Unexpected Storytelling Lessons From Beth Comstock

I heard the same story three times in a row yesterday, and it was illuminating.

Every year outside the well scripted confines of Manhattan an epic event called The Future of Storytelling brings together designers, technologists, builders and brand marketers to ask the most fundamental question facing any creator: how do you tell a story that people will care about? This year’s event gathered spoken word poets, a master perfumer, a world renowned magician and many other unexpected characters to...

How I Spent Over $30,000 To Relaunch My Brand

I have spent far too much of my life thinking about marketing.

It’s not a part of my brain that I can switch off. I see marketing choices in every interaction I have as a customer. I see brands in how people introduce themselves. I even see the branding in airport signs for the baggage claim.

I am clearly a guy that believes in the importance and power of building a great brand.

Or I thought I did … until I launched my own business.

How I Rediscovered The Value Of Branding …

When I finally became...

5 Signs Apple’s Era Of Dominance Is Over

Blindness is a predictable side effect of being a fan boy.

For years Apple has relied and benefited from this sort of blindness to propel drone like fan boys toward obsession at every new product Apple launched. The theatrical nature of the announcements delivered by Steve Jobs would drive fan boys into a frenzy that could only be satisfied by waiting overnight in line outside an Apple store to be one of the first consumers to hold the new i-something device.

Media were no less giddy when it ca...

How To Create Brand Love – Q&A Session

Not everyone will ask the question they are really thinking.

That’s one of the sad facts that you realize when you speak on stage at enough events. No matter how many invitations you issue, or how approachable you try to be, there are always going to be people who leave your session with a burning question in their mind and no answer for it.

The one wonderful impact of Twitter for events is that I now have the chance to answer more of those questions because people may not want to ask in person...

Tuesday Talks: How To Create Brand Love – Q&A Session

Not everyone will ask the question they are really thinking.

That’s one of the sad facts that you realize when you speak on stage at enough events. No matter how many invitations you issue, or how approachable you try to be, there are always going to be people who leave your session with a burning question in their mind and no answer for it.

The one wonderful impact of Twitter for events is that I now have the chance to answer more of those questions because people may not want to ask in person...

5 Epic Marketing Lessons From The Best Small Ad Agencies In The World

If there’s an argument against using a small advertising agency, I’ve probably used it.

After 15 years leading work for dozens of clients at two of the biggest ad agencies in the world, and participating in close to 100 pitches—I know how to argue against a smaller competitor. Yet for more than a year now, I have become that smaller competitor. I run my own consulting group, and I work with those large agencies as a partnernow.

So when the annual list ofSmall Agency Awards are announced byAdAge...

The Past Present And Future Of Health Care | A Marketing Keynote Presentation

When you speak at enough events, you get used to having a certain amount of control on stage. Then there are those times when you get the control taken away from you.

This week’s featured talk is one of those times, and the first in my life that I tried a very different style of presenting that put me on stage for exactly seven minutes – and not one second longer. The style is known as “PechaKucha” and popular for its scripted format of 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, and auto advancing that...