Susan Bratton: This is Susan Bratton, and I am here at South By Southwest doing the Community Powered podcast series, and I’m with Rohit Bhargava. Rohit is the senior vice president of strategy and marketing at Ogilvy 360. He’s also the author of Personality Not Included. By no means does that mean that Rohit does not have a personality; he has more than enough for both of us. And we’re talking about community and brand and the intersection of those two things here at South By Southwest. Welcome Rohit.

Podcast Here and Transcipt Below.

Susan Bratton & Rohit Bhargava

Rohit Bhargava: Thank you. It’s nice to talk to you again. We’ve done another interview before, so…

Susan Bratton: We did. We did Dishy Mix together. You were excellent on that.

Rohit Bhargava, Author of “Personality Not Included” and 360 Degree Digital Influencer at Ogilvy PR

Rohit Bhargava: Thank you. You were excellent as well.

Susan Bratton: I had a really good time…

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah. It’s a very popular show, I know.

Susan Bratton: Thank you. Well it’s because I have great guests like you.

Rohit Bhargava: Alright, lets stop complimenting one another.

Susan Bratton: Oh, lets keep doing it. It feels so good. I love you so much right now. So one of the things that I wanted to do, you’ve done a lot of thinking about brands and how they present in the social media space. And I’d like to get one pearl of wisdom from the experience that you’ve had working with so many brands about someone who wants to get started in social media, but doesn’t know quite what to do, what advice would you give them?

Rohit Bhargava: Well I think the first thing that I’d like to say is, and I hope that people do think this, is that a lot of my experience hasn’t just been about talking, sort of theory based advice, but has been more actually doing things…

Susan Bratton: Hands-on man.

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah, hands-on totally. So…

Susan Bratton: You’re working with a lot of brands.

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah, I mean, you know, I’ve got a book and I’d consider myself in the same category as a lot of social media types, and I think we all know who those people are. But I have a day job. And I work for an agency and we work with lots of different brands, and so that really keeps me grounded because I deal with real people who aren’t on Twitter 24 hours a day and who are barely on Face Book sometimes, or who are just starting to learn some of the potential of this stuff. So I think the one biggest pearl of wisdom I’d offer is a lot of times I see companies look at social media and try and decide where it fits within their company first and then assign it to someone, and that’s the way they get started with it. So they say, “Okay, social media should be a PR thing, so lets get our PR person to work on it”, and the situation that that causes a lot of times is that you end up putting the person in charge of it who may not necessarily be the person who’s passionate about it or who cares or who’s most intuitively able to do it. And so the biggest piece of advice I’d give is see if there’s somebody’s who’s actually already passionate about it. See if there’s an employee within your company who is already blogging or who is already on Twitter, because what you find there might actually surprise you, and I think that a lot of times that would give any company, big or small, I mean that’s not just for huge enterprises, this is for any small business, might give you a place to start. And the other thing that you might find is that a lot of times it’s quite surprising because it’s not, it’s not the youngest person on your team, it’s not the college student that just graduated as you might think. A lot of times it’s just somebody who’s really passionate about something.

Susan Bratton: That makes a lot of sense. I think, someone earlier said that it’s a, it’s not a, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. And it takes a lot, whether you’re blogging or podcasting or participating in Face Book, you know, there’s so much work that comes with it, the interaction of being out in that world, that, it’s social. And if you don’t have a natural affinity toward wanting to connect with people, and you don’t have an opinion about things that you trust, then it can be quite onerous to assign it to someone who isn’t comfortable with it. I think that’s a brilliant piece of advice and actually not one that I’d heard before and very practical. So thank you. Any other things come to mind about that?

Rohit Bhargava: Well, I’m trying to hit for stuff that other people haven’t come out, ‘cause I know you’ve been doing this for a, some time now, so…

Susan Bratton: You’re doing a good job.

Rohit Bhargava: I think the other thing is that one of the big fear factors I think that goes into a lot of social media is people worry about what if somebody says something negative, right?

Susan Bratton: Right.

Rohit Bhargava: That’s one of the big barriers that people have.

Susan Bratton: From a corporate perspective I’m sure you see that all the time…

Rohit Bhargava: All the time, yeah…

Susan Bratton: You see a lot of panic rippling through organizations. You’re probably calming a lot of people, aren’t you?

Rohit Bhargava: Well I think the, in real life, I mean I think a lot of times our perceptions are from real life, so perception is negativity. Real life is indifference. Most of the time what happens is you’ll launch something and nobody will visit it because you haven’t promoted it and nobody will comment because nobody’s there. And so the bigger challenge is how do you create something that people actually go to, and how do you create something that actually has some eyeballs and has some audience and has people who are checking it out because usually what’ll happen is people just won’t care enough to even comment. And so that’s the biggest surprise that a lot of companies have that get into this. They could say they set up their whole system to manage risk of a negative comment and then nothing happens. Nobody comments, nobody goes there, and they realize that the bigger challenge is to create something that people actually want to go to.

Susan Bratton: Well isn’t that the whole premise of your book Personality Not Included…

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah, it’s…

Susan Bratton: that you have to take the risks to actually have, like get a personality as a brand and…

Rohit Bhargava: Well I think…

Susan Bratton: own that in the market, good and bad, not everyone’s going to love you?

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah, I think that the biggest thing is, I mean, it’s really about humanity, right? And if you think about humanity in our, our own humanity, like we all have humanity, we just forget it or we hide it or we keep it away because we don’t think that that’s part of our job or we don’t think that’s part of what we should be doing, especially at work. And so, really the premise of the book is that how do you rediscover that as a company? And if you are able to rediscover it, really the premise is not you should start a blog, because sometimes a blog is the wrong thing to do and not very many blog experts, and I might put myself in that category, would tell you that. And so, my first thing is well do you need a blog? Should you even start one? And if you should then maybe it’s the way of demonstrating that humanity, but maybe there’s other ways, there’s real life ways. I mean, go to an event, meet your customers. These are not social media ideas. These are just real life ideas to demonstrate that you’re actually out there and that people who work for your brand care and they are part of the community.

Susan Bratton: What do you see the companies that you can sell for, ‘cause you’re really applied across a lot of the Ogilvy companies, right? I mean, you don’t have just a specific account list. You are kind of Rohit does everybody, right?

Rohit Bhargava: Well, I don’t know if I’d go with that in my tag…

Susan Bratton: As many as you can. Oh, come on. Aaron’s Twittering that right now, isn’t he?

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah, I know.

Susan Bratton: He’s Twittering it right now; “Rohit, overheard Rohit does everybody.”

Rohit Bhargava: I’m going to get a tee shirt with that tagline on there. Well I think the first thing I’d like to say is it’s not a one man show. I mean we really do have an awesome team

Susan Bratton: Right, you have a group, you’re a team, 360…

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah, we have an awesome team…

Susan Bratton: is a group, yup.

Rohit Bhargava: And the thing that I think differentiates our team quite a lot is that we don’t just have one or two super stars who are out at conferences talking and who are, who have well read blogs. I mean we have a pretty deep team. Everybody from the more experienced people to the lesser experienced people, we pretty much all have our own blogs. We have, what I would argue is probably the most often updated large agency team blog. Because a lot of, I mean every one of our competitors has a team blog, but if their last post is from four weeks ago, you know, how current is that. And, you know, I haven’t even looked at our blog in a couple days, but I guarantee you the last post is from, you know, at least a day or two old and that’s it.

Susan Bratton: What’s the blog URL, so we can go look at it?

Rohit Bhargava: It is blog.ogilvypr.com.

Susan Bratton: Got it.

Rohit Bhargava: So, and it’s from the digital influence team. I’m a contributor. There’s probably ten or fifteen other contributors. And it really has started a landslide within our group of using blogs to communicate our point of view. And so we have a blog about, you know, our health practice, we have one that focus, we have the Ogilvy branded entertainment guys who are doing a blog now, we have our government political affairs guys and the lobbying things that go on out of DC, they have a blog. So there’s a lot of niche blogs as well, but the main team blog is the blog at Ogilvy, and we pull in headlines from that our homepage of Ogilvy PR.

Susan Bratton: Oh, that’s good.

Rohit Bhargava: So, it’s really front and center…

Susan Bratton: Beautiful RSS.

Rohit Bhargava: We love RSS.

Susan Bratton: Yeah man.

Rohit Bhargava: And the idea is that we’re really kind of trying to demonstrate that we’re thinking about the issues facing our clients, not just from a here’s what one project should do or another one, but from a larger how do you actually use these tools and how do you be effective with them. So part of it’s that. The other part is that we have real stories to point to, so we have real case studies. So if you go on that website, you’ll see that there are actually a lot of examples of real brands that we’ve done work for. We did a great campaign with Lenova around the Olympics where we got a hundred Olympic athletes to all blog and share their experience…

Susan Bratton: You went to Beijing, didn’t you?

Rohit Bhargava: I did.

Susan  Bratton: I was tracking you there.

Rohit Bhargava: It was very, very cool, and it was an interesting…

Susan Bratton: Love Beijing.

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah, I love Beijing, too.

Susan Bratton: You got to take your kids there.

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah, I will, when they get a little older.

Susan Bratton: You didn’t take them this time, right? They’re still too little, yeah.

Rohit Bhargava: No, they’re a little young. Yeah, they’re a little young, but, but I love, I love Beijing as well, and especially the Olympics. I mean, I’m a big Olympics junkie. I lived in Atlanta, I lived in Sydney, so Beijing was my third, so… I’m a huge fan of the Olympics. I’m already planning my London trip, so…

Susan Bratton: Nice. Yeah, you got to get that going. You got to save up your money.

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah, I know.

Susan Bratton: So, let me ask you something. I want you to, well you are such a, if I had a big corporation I would want you to work for me because you are so professional, so intelligent, so well spoken, so handsome, you know. You’re just like the guy that should represent you.

Rohit Bhargava: I have a face for radio.

Susan Bratton: No, actually you have a face, Aaron’s taken some pictures,  he’s going to Twit pick you, I know he is.

Rohit Bhargava: Aaron’s often told me I’m a handsome guy, so I’m getting a little worried.

Susan Bratton: There, he does. He’s flirty. He’s a flirty little guy. He’s flirty little guy. So take that hat off, just the Rohit that is the dude that loves tech stuff and social media. I’m giving you a day where you have no kids, no wife, no anything, an extra free day to just play with something that you’re interested in, and if I could clear your slate and sit you down in front of your computer and you would go play with or experiment or check out a new technology or do something online that didn’t have to matter, what would you like to play with?

Rohit Bhargava: You know, this is why I like doing interviews with you, ‘cause you have great questions like this.

Susan Bratton: More flattery.

Rohit Bhargava: It’s interesting that you said in front of a computer because as you were leading up to that question, my first thoughts were just about having a…

Susan Bratton: Matai on a beach.

Rohit Bhargava: Well no, it was actually, honestly, I was actually thinking about having a really great soccer game at a field that I used to play on in Australia that was literally by the ocean…

Susan Bratton: Oh, that’s nice.

Rohit Bhargava: And it was just an amazingly beautiful field…

Susan Bratton: Didn’t you to school in Sydney?

Rohit Bhargava: No, I lived there for five years after college

Susan Bratton: You lived there though, I knew you did, yeah. After college you lived there, yeah.

Rohit Bhargava: So my first thought was well what would I do if I didn’t have any of that stuff to worry about, I’d just play soccer all day…

Susan Bratton: Soccer by…

Rohit Bhargava: if I had the stamina.

Susan Bratton: Right, yeah that’s the problem, is it? Computer…

Rohit Bhargava: But going online, computer, well I think one thing I would do is people often ask me, because I do a lot of content creation, I spend a lot of my time online and I have a family with little kids, and they say, “How do you find time for it all and how do you fit things in?”, and I say, “Well, something always gets left behind”, and for me what gets left behind sometimes is reading and actually learning. And I don’t consider, I mean seeing what sites are out there and being knowledgeable about what’s happening today I think is a little bit different from what I would consider learning, as in like truly internalizing like a new life lesson or something that kind of makes you a better person. So I do a lot of learning when it comes to like, oh, that’s a new site that launched and that’s a beta thing and that’s a new trend, and I mean, I do a lot of that. But when it comes to like really learning a new lesson for like living my life better, being a better father or being better at my job, like, that’s what I would spend the time to do because I don’t feel like I have or take enough time to do that.

Susan Bratton: Got it. That’s neat. Well I have a good podcast recommendation for you.

Rohit Bhargava: Oh, okay.

Susan Bratton: There’s a podcast called The New Man by Tripp Linear, and it’s all about the men’s movement and being more fully into your, who you are as a human being and the masculine man that you are, you know. It’s not all about rrrr, it’s not six pack abs, it’s not that.

Rohit Bhargava: You know, the interesting thing is I’m about to be in the market for listening to a lot more podcasts because I’m work…

Susan Bratton: Oh really, you got some travel?

Rohit Bhargava: Well no, I’m looking for, ‘cause I work on, I take the train right now to work, and so the train time, my commute time is blogging time.

Susan Bratton: You’re in DC. Mm hmm.

Rohit Bhargava: I’m on the computer and I’m blogging. But I’m looking for a new place where I’ll probably have to drive, and so I’ll have audio time, and I’ve never had that before.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Rohit Bhargava: And when I have audio time, that’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to be listening to podcasts, so I welcome anyone to send me any recommendations, ‘cause I’m working on my slate of podcasts. Obviously yours will be on there…

Susan Bratton: Thank you.

Rohit Bhargava: But, you know, any other ones, I’ll be, I’ll be looking for them.

Susan Bratton: Excellent. Well maybe we’ll get some good blog posts for you, when Aaron posts this to the Powered blog, maybe we’ll get some good recommendations for you.

Rohit Bhargava: That’d be great.

Susan Bratton: Rohit, it’s been great as always to talk to you. Thank you so much for being on Community Powered Podcast today.

Rohit Bhargava: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Susan Bratton: Alright. This is your host, Susan Bratton. Thank you so much for listening in today. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.