Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 89

The Death Of Gender (And What It Means For Marketing)

There are plenty of signs that the way we have typically described gender may be dying before our very eyes.

In Austria last year, the winner of Eurovision’s popular song contest was a 26 year old drag queen with a beard named Conchita Wurst. Earlier this year, Sweden officially became the first country to add a gender neutral pronoun to its official dictionary. At the same time, Facebook expanded their already broad 58 gender options to now allow a custom unlimited field for users to designa...

The 5 Worst Habits Of Selfish Brands

Do you know a selfish brand?

Most of us do. We encounter them constantly – trying to promote their latest and greatest product. Their ads seek to interrupt us and every interaction is clearly only focused on either closing a deal or collecting our information for their database. They think in terms of short term revenue instead of long term value. They look at customers are only a necessity on their way to making a profit. And they make the world a worse place.

The good news is consumers have...

How Amazon Might Accidentally Kill Creativity

I rely on books.

As an author of five books, I believe in the power of them and as a trend curator and University Professor I consume many of them. I buy several new non-fiction books a week and often invest my time and attention in reading them and learning from them.

What I don’t do is read most of them cover to cover.

Yet some of the most lasting ideas that I get from books come from reading them in bursts. I consume books and ideas the same way travelers consume frequent flier miles – as...

How Reverse Retail Is Changing The Way We Buy

About two years ago, there was a single word that could strike fear into the heart of any retail brand executive – “showrooming.” The term popularized the increasingly common shopping behaviour from consumers of going into a physical store to try out and test a product before going online (often to an ecommerce only retailer like Amazon) and completing their purpose.

Was showrooming going to destroy the retail business?

This was one of the main questions speakers tackled at the National Retai...

A Short And Hopeful History Of Social Media

Social media has always been the home of meaningless indignation.

What do you do when you’re angry about something no one else cares about? Share it on social media. So as we started to each find our own voices on a platform that could reach micro-audiences, the easy thing to do was to use it as a place for venting. Flight delays, rude waiters, critiquing the latest episode of our favorite TV show were all common topics.

No one reallycared, but that was ok because hardly anyonewas really payi...

5 Lessons From Shockingly Honest Marketing Campaigns

Robert Townsend is one of the most underappreciated leaders in history.

He is not a household business name like Steve Jobs or Jack Welch. He didn’t lead an organization into making products to change the world. In fact, many of the employees that now work at the company he once led have probably never even heard his name.

Yet he was responsible for one of the boldest and most enduring marketing campaigns and business strategies of the 21st Century. In a world where brands seem to change mark...

Is Your Consumer Experience Is Full Of Jitneys?

Imagine you are on your way to JFK airport inNew Yorkto take a short flight fromNY to Chicago.

Once you make it through security, you walk to the end and encounter a sign inviting you to take something called a “JFK Jitney” to your gate. At the bottom of the escalator, you discover that this “jitney” is actually a shuttle bus designed to take passengers from one terminal to the next.

It is safe to say I travel often enough to describe myself as a professional traveler, so confusing signs like...

Why “Strategic Pillars” Don’t Work For AT&T (Or Your Brand Either)

Last week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, AT&T announced anew partnershipwith Microsoft to produce a suite of mobile Office products and wireless plans geared for small and medium-sized businesses.It is an understandably hot (and profitable) market for any technology services provider – with one recent survey noting that “new technology” was the number one investment priority for small business owners heading into 2015.

So when you have a hot area and a business necessity to offer s...

What Coke Can Teach McDonald’s About Love

I should have loved McDonald’s ambitious Super Bowl ad promoting the idea that customers could pay with “lovin’” instead of cash. Any marketer should. It’s bold, innovative, and takes a stand. McDonald’s believes we should be nicer to each other and have a little more fun. What could be a better brand message than that?

Unfortunately, customers are most definitely NOT lovin’ it … particularly the public humiliation that accompanies “winning” the chance to do a dance or hug a stranger as paymen...

Batkid, Bollywood and the Rise Of Everyday Stardom

On the morning of November 15, 2013, most of San Francisco woke up with no idea that their city was about to be saved by a superhero. The fact that this particular superhero happened to be less than four feet tall and was only five years old were details most of the city would only learn after his heroics would go viral for millions of people to watch unfold online in real time.

Months earlier as a kid being treated for leukemia, Miles Scott told the Bay Area chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundat...