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This was an unexpected year for the Super Bowl … one where the game almost rivaled the ads for my interest. As you might expect – I spent the evening thinking not only about who had the cutest or more entertaining ad, but who had the best marketing strategy and perhaps more entertainingly, who had … Read more
Do you know a selfish brand? Most of us do. We encounter them constantly – trying to promote their latest and greatest product. Their ads seek to interrupt us and every interaction is clearly only focused on either closing a deal or collecting our information for their database. They think in terms of short term … Read more
Today is great timing for a Halloween promotion. Everyone is talking about costumes, candies and spooky stuff as they prepare for the rare treat of a Friday evening Halloween. If you happened to visit Oreo on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter today, you would see what seems like another piece of social media brilliance from … Read more
Despite what advertising tells you, supermodels don’t generally eat mile-high bacon burgers. Yet this is exactly the type of fabricated reality we have come to expect from marketing. Often celebrities are hired as spokespeople for products they would clearly never use in real life. Actors in stock photos portray overly airbrushed people faking handshakes while … Read more
It is tempting to search for the next big thing. There were no shortage of journalists sent to SXSW this past weekend for their annual quest to answer exactly that question. And this year many came up empty — or at least indifferent. Some even skipped the event completely. Of course we like to see … Read more
A few days ago, I published the full 96 page report of my 15 marketing trends to watch for 2013 on Slideshare – and published an ebook on Amazon on the trends and how to use them for your business. For the next 48 hours, the ebook will be available for free on Amazon … … Read more
Walking off the ferry into Snug Harbor on Staten Island, there was a big motorcade of cars and police standing there. It was the first and most obvious clue that this first ever Future of StoryTelling Conference might not be the same as any other business conference. As the crowd filed into the auditorium, Al … Read more
Earlier this morning the team at SocialMediaExaminer.com released their annual report on the state of Social Media Marketing. Based on the responses of over 3800 surveyed marketers, the report offers an interesting look at how businesses are using social media to grow and promote their businesses. As with any surveys of this type, you have … Read more
This might surprise you, but Zappos doesn't offer standard overnight shipping. But for years customers of the site have been getting overnight shipping even though they didn't ask for or even pay extra for it. The reasoning is simple, if your customers have lower expectations – it is easy to consistently exceed them. We feel … Read more
I couldn’t help but feel sorry this year for anyone who only watches the Super Bowl ads for entertainment. Perhaps the most defining feature of all the ads this year was how uniformly uncreative and dated they were. Marketers turned to old and obvious gags like girls in bikinis and dogs (lots of dogs) to … 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.
