Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 94

4 Lessons From The Year’s Best Marketing Campaign

Every year,Advertising Agemagazine publishes a report that looks at the collective results from nine of the most globally respected industry award shows in the advertising industry—from the Cannes International Festival of Creativity to the Clios. The number-one award recipient this year wasn’t a tear-jerking celebrity sports ad or a preview of a hot new holiday gadget. Instead, the top honor went to Metro Trains from Melbourne Australia—a public utility with a simple public service message a...

Remembering Nelson Mandela

I didn’t expect to be this sad over the death of a man I never met.

A few years ago when I traveled to South Africa, I first realized the awesome power that Mandela held over his country and wrote about it in a post about the challenges of “leaderless revolutions” and why the world needs leaders like Mandela. Since then, his story and work have been a continual source of inspiration for me. Whenever I get that tired interview question of the famous person I’d most like to meet, he’s usually at...

16 Ways To Make Social Media More Effective

If I said I never used anything I learned in algebra class, I’d be lying. In my career as a marketer and communicator, I’ve never had much use for sophisticated math. But I have had plenty of use for the life lesson that algebra offered – of being forced to do something uninteresting simply because someone in authority told me I had to do it. Moderating an event this week in London on corporate social media, it struck me that many organizations have started with this same uninspired approach...

The HSBC Story: How To Squander Great Advertising And Lose A Customer For Life

In case you hadn’t noticed, your bank wants to upsell you more services – and sometimes that’s not a bad thing. Unless your bank happens to be HSBC.

There is a well known model in the financial industry for customer evolution that is based on lifetime customer value. If you deliver a great service and experience for your lower end customers, they come back and work with you once they become more “desirable” and higher paying customers. Almost every financial institution operates with this same...

How To Be Kinder To Retail Workers This Holiday Season

I could tell you that it’s a misconception that marketers spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to sell more stuff to more people every holiday season. Of course, I’d be lying.

Every holiday season, brands scramble to find new ways for people to excitedly part with their money is in full swing – with mall Santas and all. The day before Black Friday, the TV ads for early deals, discount finding websites, and price locator apps are tough to avoid these days. Even for those who don’t make...

10 Social Media Marketing Ideas From Big Brands

There is an under appreciated difference between a story and an idea.

A story is captivating and memorable. It entertains and often stays with you for longer than you thought it would. An idea, in contrast, is a spark. It happens in a moment and then it’s gone. And if you missed it or if you never acted on it … then you lose it.

Recently I’ve been to several storytelling events. One gathered together a dozen innovators to share their stories on human behavior. Another curated every form of stor...

The 300 Year Old Female Entrepreneur Story You’ve Never Heard

“Started by a woman, in a time when women didn’t start companies.”

These are the powerful first words that introduce the story behind a brand you probably forgot you have in your kitchen right now. Kikkoman is the #1 best selling soy sauce brand worldwide, in a category filled with syrupy competitors that can rarely lay claim to any sort of cultural heritage – much less one than is more than 300 years old.

In an effort to tell that story, a year ago Kikkoman commissioned Academy Award™ Nominate...

Smoothies, Whiskey And The Art of Secondary Marketing

Sometimes you can’t fix a bad website.

It probably took me about five years of leading digital campaigns for brands in a variety of industries before I finally accepted that sad fact. The problem is, when you know what to fix it is easy to think that no one will object to you doing it. Unfortunately, fixing a bad website is always more complicated than it seems. Team silos, IT restrictions and added costs are just a few of the reasons website updates can be hard to implement. Yet there is a tr...

Finding The Cure For Social Media Jealousy: How To Limit Your “Green Time”

There is a wonderful feature on the new Amazon Kindle to help keep children from becoming too dormant. The feature, called Kindle FreeTime, lets parents measure and limit “screen time.” Given the amount of time many of us spend on social media, the feature does inspire an interesting thought …

What if someone offered the same thing for social media?

It may not immediately sound that appealing. After all, you might not really want to know how much time you spend on Facebook. But there is an intr...

Rainbow Loom vs. Silly Bandz – Why One Marketing Fad Outlasts Another

The carpet in my living room this weekend was covered with hundreds of tiny rubber bands. The bands are part of an addictive new toy kit called Rainbow Looms that let kids create their own woven bracelets out of these small rubber bands. Invented by a Chinese immigrant dad of two teenage daughters, the product has been on the market for two years but has only recently skyrocketed in popularity. The buzz may have peaked several weeks ago when the New York Times published an article about the s...