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Amy Winehouse And How Dead Artists Might Come Back On Tour As Holograms

This week the father of Amy Winehouse announced a world tour in 2019 featuring a “hologram” of his daughter on stage. A digital avatar of Winehouse, who died in 2011 from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, will “perform” some of her most popular songs in a concert accompanied by a live band, real backup … Read more

Black Mirror Predicting Reality, Coke Uses Blockchain And Spotify Tries To Be The Netflix Of Music

If you are a fan of the Netflix sci-fi series Black Mirror, this was a surreal week. Walmart patented autonomous robot bees (which get hacked to kill people in one episode) and China introduced a social rating system that gives citizens scores based on “good behaviors” (a plot line that leads to chaos in another episode). … Read more

Fender Uses eLearning To Help Guitarists Not Give Up So Easily

For anyone who has ever aspired to play the guitar, taken a few lessons and then given up … Fender has a new solution to try and keep your passion for the guitar alive. In a perfectly strategic new move, the brand is launching an eLearning platform with videos to help people more easily learn … Read more

15 Non-Obvious Business Trends Shaping 2017 (Retail, Consumer, Tech, Marketing, and Media)

Are you a member of the media? Visit our media kit to download a trend summary and more information about requesting an interview with Rohit >> This week I launched the seventh edition of my annual trend report featuring all of my research from throughout the year on trends. Many of you have already picked … Read more

B2B Screenwriters, Instagram Travel Guides And The Most Annoying Sound You Can Never Unhear

Content featured big this week as new initiatives from GoPro and IBM both received a lot of coverage and discussion. Brands moving into content is nothing new, but the depth and importance of these forays into content are clearly getting bigger and bolder. In other news, the “Millennial Whoop” was sadly unavoidable as a consequence … Read more

Grammys Get GoPros, Amazon In Retail And Diet Coke’s Bold Experiment

This was a big week in marketing, as the Super Bowl shined a spotlight on the best and worst of advertising (read my recap here) and there were big announcements on everything from Diet Coke’s bold reimagining of bottle design, to Amazon’s retail ambitions that are shaking up an entire industry. In this weeks issue … Read more

David Hasselhoff, Pinterest and the Upside of One Hit Wonders

Marian Gold probably never met David Hasselhoff. Back in the 1980s, Gold was the lead singer for a band called Alphaville that produced one of the best known songs of the era. The single “Big in Japan” was a chart topping hit, and has been featured in many films and compiliation CDs since it’s first … Read more

How To Miss A Huge Social Media Opportunity

As a creative marketing guy, I love a good idea. In fact, I’ve spent many hours sitting in conference rooms brainstorming with teammates to come up with them. So when I first saw Verizon Wireless’ big new campaign called Share America – I was instantly engaged. It is a great concept involving an up and … Read more

The Lost Choir on Thanksgiving

It is Thanksgiving day and you’re probably thinking about food. Or spending time with family. But one thing you won’t be able to avoid is hearing about all the great retail deals. Thanks to early store openings and a relentless marketing machine promoting all the deals – there is a growing backlash against the commercialization … Read more

What Madonna Knows (And NFL Refs Don’t) About Pleasing A Crowd

It was quite a scene last night. On Monday Night Football, on the final play of a game between the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks, a ball was simultaneously caught by two guys. As they struggled for it in the end zone, the Green Bay player appeared to have it – which would … Read more

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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.

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