Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 100

My trash cans are inside my garage. That’s one of just a few precautions they are telling everyone on the East Coast to take in preparation for Hurricane Sandy making landfall in just a few hours. The storm has dominated TV news reports for the last several days and is already historic in not so good ways. It is also the perfect reminder that most of your pre-scripted marketing you have may backfire when the world shifts around you.

Earlier this year concert promoter Live Nation got into troub...

I was on a short flight from NY back to DC yesterday and opened a copy of the NY Times to find a full page ad with the simple declaration “Marketing is BS.” Beneath that attention-grabbing headline, Adobe called this “Myth #1″ as part of their campaign to speak to marketers and business people about how to measure results more effectively. The ad was targeted to marketers, but it has an unintended side effect … a lot of people agree with the so-called myth.

Despite working in marketing for mor...

What if Usain Bolt charged per hour to watch him race? It’s a ridiculous thought, of course. Yet we all know that the only reason he is able to run 100 meters in less than ten seconds is because of years of preparation. He has spent a lifetime training to be able to do what he is best at faster than anyone else. How many of us are the same way? I spend hours every week just reading about new marketing ideas and campaigns. I study new reports and studies of human behaviour. Why do I do all thi...

Dayton, Ohio is a battleground city in a battleground state, just like my home state of Virginia. I am in Ohio this morning to speak at a business conference, and all around the signs of this electoral battle are front and center here. Billboards promote politicians and key issues. Television ads aim to influence voters on everything from gun rights to tax policy. And everything is presented in partisan terms to make the choices seem as black and white as possible (no pun intended). But it is...

We love legendary goodbyes. Hollywood, in particular, does a great job romanticizing that last moment before anyone walks away from anything. Jack dying in freezing water and saying goodbye to his love in Titanic. Andy playing with his toys one last time before heading off to college in Toy Story 3. Tom Cruise with his mission statement and office meltdown in Jerry Macguire. Yes, there are plenty of legendary goodbyes in Hollywood, and they always involve lots of drama.

For some reason, movies...

When it comes to social media, it is popular to talk about the importance of reputation. The better your reputation, the more likely people are to trust you. The more trust you have, the more easily you can sell anything to anyone. This logic makes sense. In most cases it works. But it has been used so often that it is starting to cause an unexpected side effect. Thanks to the steady drumbeat of discussion around reputation, more and more senior leaders are under the impression that building...

Walking off the ferry into Snug Harbor on Staten Island, there was a big motorcade of cars and police standing there. SIt 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 Gore was among them … just one of the many influential participants at this event put on by media pioneer Charlie Melcher. The earlier clue that every attendee received was an email out...

It is just a few hours after the first US Presidential debate, and the media blitz is on to declare a winner. Most media give Romney the edge, and share the many ways he gained in the polls. On the CNN likeability poll, Romney came out with 46% of voters watching the debates feeling that he had the edge – while 45% felt President Obama was more likeable. But not everyone agrees that we should even care that much about their likeability.

A few days ago The Telegraph published an article titled...

For Nate Dern, the unlikely path to acting micro-stardom would come from a simple three letter catchphrase that most people would barely consider a word. As the artistic director of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York and a sociology PhD student at Columbia University, Nate had spent years auditioning for different roles. In late 2011, he landed a gig acting in a national commercial for AT&T Wireless called “Responsibilities.”

In the ad, a manager-type character dishes out unexpec...

Today LinkedIn announced that they are creating an exclusive list of 150 celebrities and influencers who anyone will have the ability to “follow.” There will be no pesky 140 character limit on what these influencers can post (there’s a new blogging feature too) and the assumption is that they will share mostly business-related thoughts. Some critics see this as yet another attempt to Klout-ify the web with artificial influence rankings, but the real significance of LinkedIn’s announcement may...