***UPDATE: My favorite Senior Vice President of Marketing, Shelley Erwin — at McKain Performance Group, of course — just reminded me that many of our readers are on corporate servers blocked from accessing YouTube. Therefore, I’m adding a quick summary of what the video is all about…
Since the early 1940′s, the folks behind the Oscars at the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have named five nominees for the category of Best Picture.
(By the way, for some really interesting reading — if you are into movies — check out this list of nominees and winners for every Best Picture race since the Oscars were created. There are some really interesting choices — like 1968, when “In The Heat Of The Night” won the Oscar over now-more respected movies like “Bonnie and Clyde,” and “The Graduate.”)
However, this year there are TEN nominees for Best Picture. As this video mentions, if you are a fan of films and had seen three of the five nominees, you would often make a concerted effort to catch the remaining two. Now, however, if you have seen three of the TEN nominees, the effort to cram seven more films in your viewing schedule seems overwhelming. Therefore, most of us just give up.
Originally the brain trust behind the Oscars thought that adding an additional five nominees would mean more business for more films. Instead, I believe we will find a track record will be exactly the opposite. It will mean less business for all films — it completely removes the “bounce” that nominees were accustomed to receiving.
What does this mean for your business? It means we all need to take a look and see if we are offering our customers and prospects such a plethora of choices that it seems overwhelming. Could we be, in fact, losing business by attempting to provide an overwhelming number of options?
It just so happens I was browsing through my bookmarks in the eBook edition of “Inside Steve’s Brain,” a book about Steve Jobs and this is something I highlighted:
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One engineer I interviewed who worked at Apple in the mid-1990s remembers seeing a poster-cum-flow-chart pinned to a wall at Apple’s HQ. The poster was titled HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR MAC and was supposed to guide customers through the thicket of choices. But it merely illustrated how confused Apple’s product strategy was. “You know something is wrong when you need a poster to choose your Mac,” the engineer said.
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Remember when Jobs returned to Apple? The first thing he did was slash and simplify product lines.
http://scottmckain.com Scott McKain
Mike – brilliant insight and terrific observation…”slash and simplify” should be a mantra for all professionals!
Brad Plumb
Years ago I sold mens suits. When it came time to accessorize the sale, the retailer (a prominent national chain) would only allow us to present a white shirt to go with the suit and 3 ties, no more no less. It was only after a decision was made on the first tie(s) that were we allowed to go with a colored shirt and 3 ties to go with each. Their studies showed that limiting the options increased the overall sale.
http://pediatricinc.wordpress.com/ Brandon
Scott,
I agree with the notion that sometimes too many options often overwhelm people, but I don’t think it applies with the Oscars’. Here’s why.
Nowadays, we have many more ways to consume media. And in our new “on demand” media consuming world, consumers don’t necessarily have to see all the movies before the Oscars take place because they are available to us in many more ways. We may not get a chance to see them all in the theater, but that doesn’t mean we won’t buy/rent them at all.
http://sarahjoyalbrecht.com Sarah Joy Albrecht
Scott,
Love this post.
This can be applied to so many areas of life. The overload of options is overwhelming and can kill productivity, end product, sales… and even the way we play and eat.
Ever been to a restaurant with 10 pages of menu options? It takes forever to order because you get stuck in the details, fretting over whether you should have the marinara or the bolognese sauce. Often, you have to ask the waitstaff for assistance to help you make a decision over the nuances of the menu. It wastes their time and yours.
Tullys, my favorite chain coffee shop in my middle-of-nowhere Japanese town, has a monthly specialty drink. In March, it Mocha Orangere. By rotating their products and limiting choices, they can create hype and anticipation of their next special, showcase their creativity, and keep orders simple. The decorations in the shop change based on the Month’s special. Right now, there are posters of the drink, and orange and brown decorations around the shop to create a subliminal message (The drink’s pretty good, too…)
One of the ways I apply this idea to playtime is that I have storage bins of collections of toys (play food/restaurant, cars + car mats, barbies, dinosaurs… you get the idea) and rotate them each month. I have found that my children as able to focus on the toys in front of them, and actually delight in them and have more imaginative play. Certainly, if they want a box of toys that is not available, it can always be obtained upon request.
In contrast, when my children are in a room with many toy options, everything gets dumped, and they flit aimlessly from one thing to the next and quickly get “bored”.
If a company has many options available, simplifying the decision making process can be a good way to still offer the same number of options, but only show the customer what is pertinent and interesting to their needs. This can be done with packaging solutions based on the type of business (solution for food industry, solution for salons, solution for publishers, etc.), or offering module based solutions with questions that help the customer narrow down choices. Each answer would eliminate a set of products. (An example of this can be seen during shopping online… Amazon —> books –> children’s books –> picture books ) Customers never have to see Harry Potter when they’re looking for Where the Wild Things Are .
The adagium “Keep it Simple, Stupid” still applies in 2010
What this year’s Oscar race can teach us about business…
February 28, 2010 · 5 comments
***UPDATE: My favorite Senior Vice President of Marketing, Shelley Erwin — at McKain Performance Group, of course — just reminded me that many of our readers are on corporate servers blocked from accessing YouTube. Therefore, I’m adding a quick summary of what the video is all about…
Since the early 1940′s, the folks behind the Oscars at the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have named five nominees for the category of Best Picture.
(By the way, for some really interesting reading — if you are into movies — check out this list of nominees and winners for every Best Picture race since the Oscars were created. There are some really interesting choices — like 1968, when “In The Heat Of The Night” won the Oscar over now-more respected movies like “Bonnie and Clyde,” and “The Graduate.”)
However, this year there are TEN nominees for Best Picture. As this video mentions, if you are a fan of films and had seen three of the five nominees, you would often make a concerted effort to catch the remaining two. Now, however, if you have seen three of the TEN nominees, the effort to cram seven more films in your viewing schedule seems overwhelming. Therefore, most of us just give up.
Originally the brain trust behind the Oscars thought that adding an additional five nominees would mean more business for more films. Instead, I believe we will find a track record will be exactly the opposite. It will mean less business for all films — it completely removes the “bounce” that nominees were accustomed to receiving.