Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 87

Branding Secrets Of Lin Manuel Miranda, Inside The Hyperloop and Google’s Vision For The Future | Non-Obvious Insights #15

This week was filled with big news about big brands. Google revealed its upcoming roadmap of innovation. Fast Company interviewed the creator of the wildly popular musical Hamilton on how he built such a powerful brand so quickly. Slate offered a glimpse into the secret brilliance of Under Armour’s non-lifestyle basketball shoe inspired by Steph Curry. Amazon announced plans to focus on private label brands. And Hyperloop, the world’s most promising public transportation innovation, had a big...

Game of Thrones Fights Piracy, Why Writing Skills Matter, and Lockheed Martin’s School Bus To Mars | Non-Obvious Insights #14

I am sitting in an airport lounge in Zurich and putting the final touches on my selections for the most under appreciated stories of this week navigating through stories about perhaps the greatest underdog sports story in soccer history, YouTube’s ongoing plans to kill the cable television industry and Budweiser’s slightly desperate attempt at relevance byrenaming its beer for the US election season. My five selections this week, however, span from an amazing virtual experience from an unlike...

Why Ugly People Make Less, Emoji Sculptures, CBS Bets On Star Trek, And Jet Blue’s Amazing Mother’s Day Ad | Non-Obvious Insights #13

I have been on the road again this week, first in Miami speaking to a smart group of senior marketers at The Marketing Forum – and then in Atlanta for a private event with the Coca-Cola team behind the pioneering Journey digital magazine. The experience reminds me again how lucky I am to get the chance to network and learn from so many pros … and share those insights with you every week! For this new edition of the week’s underappreciated marketing stories you will read about everything from...

Google’s Stealth Incubator, Buzzfeed’s Secret, Apple’s Woes And The Color Of The Year | Non-Obvious Insights #12

My mind has been on startups and new ideas lately, as I spent most of this past week at Collision in New Orleans learning about what is new and listening to several dozen startup pitches. And so the stories this week are also influenced by this lens as I feature articles about Google’s latest move to encourage side projects, Apple’s predictable fall and a new VR immersive experience of a situation most of us hope to never find ourselves in. All that and a wonderful new book I expected to disl...

Zika Killing Billboards, Facebook’s Tip Jar And HBO’s Ambitious Hologram Strategy | Non-Obvious Insights #11

This past week it was hard to escape the dominating headlines of the US political primary – and the announcement of a coming change to the faces on the $20 dollar bill. Outside the mainstream news, though, were several relatively quiet stories that contained potentially huge implications for marketers and business overall – from a new billboard that might actually save lives to a fascinating evolution in how virtual reality content may be produced. All that and more in this week’s most undera...

Smart Wine, Driverless Race Cars, Rhode Island’s Marketing Flop and the Truth About Blackberry | Non-Obvious Insights #9

Some weeks have more happening than others and this week’s list of the most under appreciated marketing stories was tough to curate. Interesting stories like Samsung’s new patent on “smart contacts” or Medium’s big announcement about the future of publishing narrowly missed the list – while stories like the Internet firestorm over Nest’s choice to decommission Revolv and Nvidia’s driverless race cars had potentially wider ranging implications. As in previous weeks, my goal is only to bring yo...

Microhotels, Holographic Toys & Why CVS Walked Away From $2B Dollars | Non-Obvious Insights #8

The news of this past week was filled with highly anticipated announcements like Oculus Rift finally launching its first consumer VR headsetand the expected fanfare surrounding the release of the new Batman vs. Superman movie. Amidst these big moves, the more interesting stories this week came fromquiet experiments like Google’s attempts at building its own real time news engineand Fisher Price reimaging the future of parenting. Those stories and new research revealing the unexpected secret o...

Non-Obvious Insights #7 | Fake Farms, Virtual Reality Tacos, Rise of Bootcamps and Why Apple Stopped Innovating

Want these insights before anyone else? Join my email list to receive a curated list of top non-obvious stories of the week and usefulinsights like these every Thursday – a full 24 hours before they are published on this blog! Click here to subscribe

Innovation challenges the way things have always been done – and this week there are plenty of stories of how brands are doing exactly that in both good and bad ways. From Apple’s recent underwhelming keynote (and what it means for the consisten...

Non-Obvious Insights #6 | Why Instagram Reinvented Its Newsfeed, Racist Zip Codes and New Release Movies For $50

Want these insights before anyone else? Join my email list to receive a curated list of top non-obvious stories of the week and usefulinsights like these every Thursday – a full 24 hours before they are published on this blog! Click here to subscribe

For the past week, you’ve likely heard all about SXSW but the week’s news held lots more for us than that. This week we caught a sobering glimpse of the down side of virtual reality, an announcement that could reinvent how you see new films and...

Non-Obvious Insights #5 | BMW’s Shape Shifting Car, Disney’s Brilliant $1Billion Idea and the Smartest News App Ever

Want these insights before anyone else? Join my email list to receive a curated list of top non-obvious stories of the week and usefulinsights like these every Thursday – a full 24 hours before they are published on this blog! Click here to subscribe

This week’s issue of Non-Obvious Insights curates some widespread topics – from the rise of retro design to how Disney imagined a future for gaming that involved less storytelling and more open ended game play. The lessons in the stories this we...