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How Political Advertising Is Killing Marketing (And How To Fight Back)

Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left.                 - David Ogilvy If marketing were a person, political advertising would be its cancer. I work in marketing and have never worked on a political campaign, so despite my choice to live in Washington DC – my perspective is … Read more

The Five Branches Of Government 2.0

Earlier this week I had the privilege of moderating at panel at the Ogilvy offices in Washington DC all about defining and exploring Government 2.0 (watch the livestream archive online). The panelists featured several visionary minds and leading thinkings in the world of Government 2.0, including: - Alex Howard, O’Reilly Media - Gwynne Kostin, U.S. General Services … Read more

How A Portuguese Singer Got 20 Million Views On YouTube

Ana Free is a singer and songwriter from Portugal who started her career with a simple idea. For the past three years she has been recording herself in locations ranging from her bedroom to regional concert stages singing cover versions of popular songs and her own original compositions accompanied by just her guitar and posting … Read more

How Algorithms Could Finally Revolutionize Social Media Marketing

It is nearly the anniversary of the closing of a 3 year quest you may have heard of. The Netflix Prize was a $1m contest launched by the popular video rental service to improve their movie recommendation engine by a specific algorithmic percentage. The challenge was open to any and all mathematics and University teams … Read more

5 Marketing Lessons From Fast Company's Influencer Project

Who is the most influential person online? That is the tantalizing question behind the Influencer Project, a brilliantly conceived marketing campaign from Fast Company magazine dedicated to getting people to engage with the idea of online influence and pass along their participation to their entire social networks. The Influencer Project is a simple site that … Read more

How To Salvage Your Brand On Facebook: Lessons For Nestle

If you haven't seen it by now, the Nestle brand* has run into a bit of a brand crisis on Facebook thanks to a combination of a coordinated attack from Greenpeace and missteps from the brand in communicating with consumers through the social media environment (for a good recap of the situation and analysis, read … Read more

The 12 Types Of "Social Media Experts" – Which One Are You?

There is a fundamental problem among social media experts today. Some people have argued that the problem lies with people who are rushing to call themselves an expert without having the necessary experience. Others create some sort of artificial metric to try and put some parameters around who should be allowed to call themselves an … Read more

Twiangulate Lets You Follow Your Followers' Followers

Let me go on the record to say that if you happen to be a vendor of some type of social networking solution or software that would be useful for an agency like Ogilvy, hands down one of your most effective methods of advertising has to be to target the Ogilvy network on Facebook with … Read more

Can Hulu Crack The Code On Social TV?

Last night Hulu continued their partnership with Facebook to allow people to watch the premiere of highly anticipated Fall TV shows such as Heroes and The Office with their Facebook friends through a "social TV" app. With this latest effort, they are trying to popularize a concept that has been talked about among the techno-elite … Read more

6 Lessons From the Best Marketing Campaign Ever

Last month an unlikely underdog stunned the marketing world at the International Cannes Advertising Festival. At the show, a single marketing campaign took home a Grand Prix award in three categories simultaneously–direct, cyber and PR– something that had never happened before in the 50+ year history of the show. Contrary to what you might expect, … 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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