What do a fried-chicken shoe, a rotting burger, and a gothic dance have in common? They all broke the "rules of marketing" and won big.In this episode of The Marketing Guy, I introduce you to three real stories that prove how weirdness, imperfection, and even a little absurdity can outperform strategy.The three stories are:🐔 Crocs × KFC: The chicken-scented shoe that sold out in minutes🍔 Burger King: The moldy Whopper that made people trust fast food again🩰 Netflix’s Wednesday: The dance that wasn’t planned, and became a billion-view trendThis is The New Rules of Weird Marketing, where imperfection becomes influence, and weirdness becomes the real mantra for connecting.

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#MarketingStrategy #BrandStrategy #MarketingPodcast #TheMarketingGuy #RachitKapoor #WeirdMarketing

Some marketing experiments end after a campaign.This one has been running for more than a century, and it is still teaching us everything about meaning, memory, and emotion.It began in a small pharmacy in 1886. A medicinal mix became a symbol. Along the way, it stopped just selling a product and won people's hearts.In this episode of The Marketing Guy, I share how a 139-year-old brand mastered reinvention, from designing a bottle everyone could recognize in the dark to redefining the image of Santa Claus and turning advertising into music and art.This brand is a blueprint for resilience, showing how brands outlive eras by staying emotionally constant and strategically restless.🎧 Watch until the end to see what every modern marketer, founder, and storyteller can learn from it....#TheMarketingGuy #MarketingStrategy #BrandResilience #Storytelling #AdvertisingHistory #EmotionalBranding #Coke #CocaCola #Koke #KocaNola #TheCocaColaCompany #BrandBuilding

There was a time when marketing didn't run after clicks and performance. It truly created wonder.

In this week's episode, When Marketing Had Magic, I talk about what made Walt Disney, the Disney we know, and additionally bring to you a few great brands of all time. What we can learn from them, and why "AI is Folly!"

Maybe now is the best day to feel something real again.

#TheMarketingGuy #MarketingStrategy #BrandStorytelling #EmotionsInMarketing #Leadership #MarketingPsychology

AI isn't just changing creative tools, but it is also changing the way we use data in marketing.

Most of us are familiar with anonymised data, but a new frontier is emerging, and that is synthetic data powered by AI.

In this episode of The Marketing Guy, I break down:

(a) What is synthetic data, actually, and what does it mean for marketing

(b) How it compares to anonymised data

(c) And why it can become the backbone of targeted, simpler, and privacy-friendly campaigns

👉 This podcast is available in both video and audio formats. If you'd like to watch while you listen, then tune to Spotify and YouTube. @TheMarketingGuyRachit

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Notes from the podcast

(1) MostlyAI (www . mostly . ai) specialises in synthetic data. Their platform helps brands create these realistic data sets, mirroring your real data, that you can play around with. All that data is safe to use and can unlock insights without exposing the real customer data you have.

(2) Podcast on cookies

Look for "Goodbye Cookies, Marketing's Biggest Shift Explained" from my channel.

(3) What models does synthetic data use?

(i) GAE stands for Generative Adversarial Network, and it is not something that LLMs use. There are essentially two neural networks in it. (a) Generator. This makes fake data. And (b) Discriminator. This checks if the data is real or fake. With enough training, the generator creates data that is almost indistinguishable from your real data. It's used heavily in deep fakes.

(ii) VAE stands for Variational Autoencoder, and it has two parts as well. (a) Encoder. This essentially compresses the data you feed. (b) Decoder. This then rebuilds that compressed data into something new, slightly different outputs.

Cookies (not the ones you eat) once powered a $600 billion ad industry, fuelling retargeting, endless tracking, and personalisation at scale.But Safari and Firefox already block them. And by 2025, Google Chrome (with 60% to 65% of global browser share) will phase them out completely.So what happens when the cookie deprecates?In this episode of the Sun Root Podcast, I look at the biggest shift in marketing in the last two decades and how AI is stepping in to fill this gap.This podcast comes with real-world examples from:🍪 Mondelez: using contextual AI to beat cookie-based ads👖 Mavi Jeans: uplifting their online sales through personalisation🛒 FairPrice Group: cutting CPA and CPM quite drastically with The Trade Desk’s UID 2.0Watch till the end to understand what this shift means for your business, your ads, and your customers.

Podcast Host: Rachit Kapoor

📩 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachitkapoor

Follow: Sun Root DigitalPoints from this podcast(a) Cookies: These are small bits of data that websites leave in your browser. This is to remember what kind of content you have been viewing online, so that advertisers can look at those cookies as you scroll around the internet. It is this reason why the shoes you searched for on Sunday suddenly follow you all week across Facebook, LinkedIn, new websites, and Instagram.It feels like you phone is listening when you mention something to a friend, but in reality, it's usually cookies and tracking algorithms connecting signals from your browsing and predicting interests with this magical accuracy.(b) GumGum Advertising: https://gumgum.com/(c) Perzonalization: https://www.perzonalization.comIf you would like to learn more, then there is a whole case study about Mavi Jeans: /mavi-case-study/

#Marketing #AI #Cookies #DigitalAds #MarketingPodcast #RachitKapoor #SunRootDigital #MarketingGuy

Every time we see the word FREE, something unusual happens! 🫨 It’s not like “70% off” or “Buy one, Get one.” Zero or 0 has a magic of its own. So much so, that we stand in "queues" waiting for a free cup of coffee or for that free tote 🛍️ bag! (I'm equally or more guilty of it 😬 )In this new short episode of Sun Root Digital, I bring this strange psychology of zero forward, and how the brands we adore use it, and why free might actually be the most expensive word in marketing! Yes!!(a) Why “zero” changes how our brains work: Dan Ariely’s famous experiment(b) How Amazon Prime uses it to hook us(c) Why “free” is never really free, for customers or brandsWould love to know what the last free thing you got?! Share it in the comments. Podcast Host: Rachit Kapoor#MarketingPsychology #BehavioralMarketing #SunRootDigital #RachitKapoor

🛒 Why do we buy more than we plan in stores?In this short episode, I break down the psychology behind retail shopping, from store layouts and shelf placement to subtle design tricks that guide what we pick up.

Whether it’s the smell of fresh bread at the entrance or the placement of essentials at the back, every detail is designed to influence your buying decisions.Host: Rachit Kapoor#RetailPsychology #ConsumerBehavior #MarketingStrategy #SunRootDigital #RachitKapoor #MarketingPodcast

Netflix used to be $7.99, now it's $24.99. But you are still paying for it!

Why?Because psychology takes over logical thinking.(1) Tiny price hikes do not scare you. (2) Cancelling feels painful.(3) You don't want to miss the next Squid Games episode.(4) $7.99 per month feels cheap until you bundle it together per year.So, Netflix is not just a streaming business; it is much more than that.In this video, I break down why Netflix keeps raising prices and why we continue to say yes. A great masterclass when you are planning your subscription product or your next pricing strategy.

#Netflix #MarketingPsychology #RachitKapoor