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Super Bowl Marketing Recap: The Best, Worst and Almost Ok Ads From The Big Game

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This year’s Super Bowl Ads cost $7 million – and most are being rated today based on their entertainment value. Not exactly the metric I would pick. Instead, I always look at the year’s ads based on the marketing strategy and whether the creative the team used actually delivered on what they might have hoped … Read more

What Three Beers Can Teach You About Reinventing Your Marketing

What Three Beers Can Teach You About Reinventing Your Marketing

Beer is a category that has long been defined by the tastes great less filling debate. As a result, it’s easy to think that disruption would be nearly impossible to achieve through product alone. In the last several weeks, I’ve discovered several new product examples that the opposite is true. I’m a beer drinker. I’m … Read more

How “Blamevertising” Explains The Modern American Healthcare Crisis

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The industry trade group that represents the Pharma industry (PhRMA) is running a series of attack ads on “middlemen” – blaming Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) for high drug prices, suggesting they are making record profits by pocketing the discounts they are supposed to negotiate on behalf of patients. In response, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association … Read more

Can Shaming Agencies Create a Talent Rebellion Against “Unworthy” Brands?

A environmental activist group that calls themselves Clean Creatives is “once again calling out ad agencies that have contracts with fossil fuel companies in a series of billboards across New York.” The strategy behind this makes sense: shame creative professionals to pressure them into not taking work with certain companies and create a talent drain. … Read more

When Influencer Marketing Goes Predictably Wrong

When a fast fashion retailer often criticized for negative environmental and labor track record wants to recast its brand image, it is not a good strategy to rely on the vapid commentary of social media influencers enjoying an all-expenses paid junket to your headquarters China. This week, retail giant Shein created their own predictable self-imposed controversy when … Read more

Why Barbie Isn’t the Biggest Movie Marketing Story This Week

This week every marketing publication is talking about the movie marketing for Barbie, celebrating their “dizzying array of partnerships” and all the memes, parodies and brand collabs. Many of them mention, but minimize, the importance of two significant facts: Of course, there are many ways to squander a huge marketing budget, but given the built-in advantages … Read more

The Most Popular Non-Obvious Stories of 2022 (Based On Reader Feedback)

Based on this combination of quantitative and qualitative data, here is a partial list of some of the most popular stories of the year, based on what my readers shared.

The Best & Worst Of 2020 Super Bowl Marketing Strategy

Can a Super Bowl ad that costs nearly $6 million be worth it? That’s a question worth debating if you’re in marketing, so let’s take a look at some of the Super Bowl marketing strategies behind the ads from this year’s big game and see which ones were the biggest winners and losers. For longtime … Read more

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In addition to Non-Obvious Thinking, Rohit is the author of 10 books on trends, the future of business, building a more human brand with storytelling and how to create a more diverse and inclusive world.

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