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Here’s a question. If you are a marketer trying to reach consumers, would you rather hit 500,000 people in one site, or use 1,000 different sites (with a readership of 500 unique people each) to reach the same number of individuals? Making the broad assumption that a higher majority of readers of smaller publications are … Read more
Along with the new year comes the new year’s resolution, and marketers tired annual attempts to make their own products and services a part of that resolution. But the best resolutions are the easiest to keep, and what could be easier than the universal piece of dieting advice almost every "guru" offers … drink more … Read more
As part of the merger between US Airways and America West airlines announced in November last year (2005), they had an intriguing new decision to make about the beverage brands that they served on their flights. America West had Pepsi and Budweiser, US Airways had Coke and Miller. Over the past decade, both brands in … Read more
For a woman, the perfect handbag is an illusion worth chasing. Handbags are not functionality, they are an expression of style and personality. As a result, they are almost sacred. From my numerous voluntary (and involuntary) discussions on the subject with many women, I have uncovered that there are five brands of handbags that are … Read more
The unending focus on converting "browsers to buyers" has become a mantra for retail ecommerce sites driving an increasingly formulaic approach to interface design. Select a type of product, filter by brand, price, or size, select the one you think you want, and add it to your cart. Unfortunately, this negates the more frequent task … Read more
I tried out Grokker today, the latest release from Yahoo! offering a "visual search" tool that groups search results contextually into circular clusters. Despite a somewhat clunky visual interface with some strange mouseover behaviours, it definitely has promise for giving users a more intuitive way to use online search more powerfully to hone in on … Read more
Orbitz.com is down – an extremely rare event for large ecommerce sites these days. I’m sure there will be articles in the coming days about the real cost of this outage for Orbitz. And at this point it’s still down with only their admission that "We are aware of the problem and are working to … Read more
I got my second great direct mail piece today from Quark selling the features of their latest release, QuarkXPress 6.5. They are a series of postcards, and each highlights a different feature of the software and explains it through targeted copy and testimonials aimed at print graphic designers with language like "No doubt about it. … Read more
MarketingSherpa released a case study today about how Gymboree revised their website to better meet the needs of busy moms shopping for children’s clothing online. Some interesting lessons in here for any campaign targeting moms, including: Moms are multi-tasking at certain times of the day – "moms are so busy that they’re hopping online as … Read more
Non-Obvious Thinking is my upcoming book about the 4 secrets of becoming a non-obvious thinker - coming 09/24!
Rohit Bhargava is a trend curator, founder of the Non-Obvious Company and the 3-time Wall Street Journal bestselling author of ten books.
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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.
