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Amazon, Spotify, Netflix, Uber … all dominant players in their industry. What if the secret to their success is just that they were all willing to lose money for longer than any of their competitors? An article I read this week suggested that perhaps the ten year journeys of both Netflix and Hulu to now … Read more
About ten years ago, no one would have said the city of Detroit would be sitting at the perfect crossroads of multiple urban trends. Around then, the city was in the midst of declaring bankruptcy. That moment created a new sense of urgency among those wealthy enough to do something about the future of the … Read more
Yes, this headline and the article it references are a conclusion that only a marketer could make. But it does have a point about how people react to beautiful branding in the health and wellness space. Mari Acupuncture Clinic engaged an agency to reimagine all their branding the result is absolutely stunning. It is easy to imagine a … Read more
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.
In a world where we spend a lot of time worry about disruptions that we can’t see coming, this whole week should be a reminder that there are some disruptions we clearly know are coming. So when they do happen, being unprepared is no one’s fault but your own.
I really wish I was in the room when they presented the insight behind this campaign to Hasbro. It’s bold, clever and deep in a way you don’t expect marketing to be.
“Futurists labor over questions about the nature of Android consciousness and empathy. Afrofuturists ask how race might be wired into Android consciousness and whether the android world might be as divided as ours is.” I admit, before reading this article on Afrofuturism from WIRED, I hadn’t considered some of these questions related to the future — … Read more
For the past ten years I’ve been a collector of innovative ideas. When I write about them and interview the people behind them, I know they are far ahead of their industry. Over the past month as our entire culture has been upended by the arrival of the COVID-19 virus, one of positive side effects … Read more
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
This past weekend the Sunday Review from the New York Times declared the past ten years as the “Decade of Mistrust” and suggested that “Americans learned that they shouldn’t believe anyone or anything.” This rise in mistrust seems connected to the rise of bullshit too – and so it felt like a fitting theme for my first … Read more
Non-Obvious Thinking is my latest book about the 4 secrets of becoming a non-obvious thinker - released 10/01/2024.
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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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.
