From what I can tell, the holiday music played in stores falls into two categories: classic versions of the songs, and modern re-interpretations of them. In an effort to be more hip and trendy, some stores pummel shoppers with R&B and hip-hop versions of the holiday hits, which strikes me as a huge mistake.

Let’s say there are two types of shoppers: those who prefer the classic songs, and those who prefer the modernized ones. If you play only classic versions, chances are the first group will be happy, and the second group indifferent. But if you go with the overly stylized new versions, I bet the first group will be genuinely annoyed, while the second group will be only slightly happier. What’s the difference? Well, playing the hip-hop version of Silent Night may actually cause people to shop elsewhere, while sticking to the original will rarely drive any group of shoppers away.

The lesson here is simple. When given the opportunity to swap out something that works for everyone with something that will really piss off a significant number of shoppers, don’t do it. In the case of holiday music, I would bet the classics still work the best. Sure, you can mix in some instrumentals or remakes that are true to the original. But try to think twice before you pipe in radically different versions of the songs, since bad music will reduce the amount of time that people spend in your store, and probably shrink their spending as well.

My wife told me about a podcast where they were interviewing the author of a new book. During the interview, the host asked the author for the website where people could find more info about the book. The author thought about it, and admitted that she couldn’t remember the address. That’s just stunningly bad.

No matter what business or occupation you’re in, there are a few key pieces of information that you should be able to recite on a moment’s notice. For example:

– What’s your website?
– How much does your product cost?
– Why should someone buy your product (or subscribe to your blog, or whatever you want them to do)?
– What attracted you to that business or occupation?
– What are you working on now, or what’s your next project?

Putting it another way, these questions are like a pop quiz about you. The answers should be short and sweet, conveying the core information while encouraging people to learn more. As you go about your travels — where it’s a one-on-one phone conversation with a customer or an interview on national TV — you should be able to recite the answers without hesitation. After all, if your life and work aren’t important enough to make you commit the salient details to memory, why should anyone else bother paying attention to what you have to say?

Ever get stuck in an elevator where a bunch of passengers are going up one floor or down two floors? It’s not hard to see how this puts an extra strain on the elevator system, which is arguably optimized to ferry people all the way from the lobby to their desired floor, and back again. Are the one floor passengers just lazy, or is something else to blame?

I ran into a situation this week that may provide an answer. You see, I needed to go down one floor from where I started. I looked at the floor map, located the stairs, and stopped before even turning the door handle to the stairwell. It turns out that the stairwell only allowed re-entry in the lobby, and all the other floors were locked. Maybe there’s some security reason for this, but whatever the rationale, it made the elevator a necessity.

I wish the buildings who lock their stairways would reconsider. Leave every floor you can reach in the elevator open, and just lock the ones that are keycard-protected from the elevator. Then, put up some signage by the elevators to encourage people to use the stairs. For instance, you might say “Only going up or down a few floors? Try the stairs instead” — and put a little map next to the sign. If some of those one floor riders switched to using the stairs, they’d save time for themselves — and cut down on crowding and long waits for those who truly need to ride the elevator a longer distance.

As a rule, if the vast majority of your customers need to accomplish a certain task with your product, they shouldn’t have to use anything labeled as an “advanced” feature when doing so. In other words, popular tasks should be streamlined and easy to complete, reserving the “advanced” or custom features for customers who have more specific and unusual requirements. This seems like an obvious approach, but you’d be surprised at how often a software vendor expects you to jump through insane hoops to enable “advanced” features and customizations, just to get the darn thing working in the most basic capacity. Needless to say, this makes things a lot harder on customers. And it certainly can’t be good for the vendor’s margins. After all, if your implementation procedures are overly complex, you’ll be spending a lot more on tech support starting at the moment a customer signs up.

In downtown Chicago, buildings spend some serious money on holiday decorations. My apartment building has a big Christmas tree in the lobby, but it’s nothing compared to what I’ve seen in the office buildings nearby. Those places put up trees that must be 15 or 20 feet high, along with wreaths the size of a small car. It’s like an arms race for holiday cheer.

With this in mind, it’s interesting to see the buildings that take a slightly different approach. I still remember the display that one oddball building used last year. Along with the usual tree, they installed a diorama featuring a life-sized polar bear and some sort of leopard or bobcat. It was funny, whimsical, and more than a little bit bizarre. And despite all the giant trees I saw elsewhere, the diorama building was the most memorable.

What’s the takeaway here? If everyone else is competing to be the biggest, loudest, or brightest, you can win mindshare by being different. Sure, you’ll still need to do something exceptional to achieve a lasting benefit. But competing on a unique dimension or attribute may be a lot cheaper and more effective than an arms race with the other guys. Meanwhile, back in the world of office Christmas trees, I’m quite curious what the polar bear diorama folks will cook up this year.

While dining out last weekend, I noticed something that I’ve probably seen dozens of times before, but never really thought about. Namely, some restaurants purposely design their menus to stand up on the table, rather than laying them flat. In my case, this treatment was reserved for the dessert menu. The server brought it out with an easel, and left it facing us on the table.

I wonder how much math is behind this approach. Do stand-up menus only work for certain types of food and drink? Are they more effective for desserts versus appetizers and beverages? I have no idea. But even after recognizing that the dessert menu easel was probably a clever marketing trick — that I was getting the silent equivalent of a hard sell — I ordered a dessert anyway.

If I had to guess, the stand-up menu outperforms its regular counterpart — but only when used in moderation. Overdo it, and it loses its novelty and the ability to focus the customer on what you’re offering. If my theory is correct, then putting every menu on an easel or other standing display is no better than just laying them on the table the usual way. But pick one course to display in stand-up form and keep the other menus the same, and sales of the easel-bound items should increase considerably.

When a box weighs a lot, it typically comes with some type of text or graphic to warn you about its weight. For instance, the side of the box might say “Heavy – use caution when lifting”, or display a picture of two stick figures lifting the box together. Do these warnings work? I’m sure they’re better than nothing. But there’s an easy way to make them even more effective.

In short, if the box is heavy enough to justify a warning on the side, then tell people how much it weighs, too. This doesn’t have to be exact. For example, you could say “This box weighs 50-75 pounds” or “Weight: At least 50 pounds”. By including real, tangible numbers in the messaging, I bet a lot more people would actually pay attention to the warnings.

It’s been years since I owned a car, and I couldn’t be happier about it. The endless saga of buying, cleaning and repairing the car really eats away at you — not to mention accidents, vandalism, and other stuff that’s beyond your control. I certainly have less stress living a car-free lifestyle in the city, and less stress is generally considered to be good for your health. Driving is also quite dangerous statistically, meaning that those who drive to work are probably more likely to die in an accident versus those who walk or take public transit.

This makes me wonder: do certain possessions actually change your life expectancy? If I had to guess, the answer is a resounding “Yes”. In particular, people who eliminate high-stress, high-maintenance products from their lives are probably happier and healthier than average, while avoiding high-risk behaviors like driving on highways during rush hour. It’s not limited to cars, either. For instance, I bet people who buy a high-rise condo are less stressed out and probably live longer than those who are enslaved to caring for their house, yard, deck, garage… well, you get the idea.

Do I have any hard evidence for this? Nope. But I’d love to see someone run a study showing what the relationships actually look like. If people could see how certain possessions are actually taking away years from their life, I bet they’d think twice about some of their purchase decisions.

In a large residential or office building, it’s not uncommon for the building management to sign exclusive deals with vendors. For instance, there may only be one cable or satellite TV company that has the right to provide service to the apartments or offices inside a given building.

Whether this is good or bad for consumers is a topic for another post. I’m actually more interested in the impact these exclusive deals have on advertising and marketing. In particular, how much advertising money is wasted on customers who can’t possibly buy the service, due to exclusive deals that are beyond their control?

This problem isn’t limited to telecommunications services, either. A doctor may be advertising to people who use an insurance plan that they don’t accept. A restaurant might send menus to people who live outside their delivery area. The list goes on and on.

In short, even with a compelling message and great creative, virtually every ad campaign is going to waste some number of impressions on people who can’t buy the product — no matter how much they might want to. You can reduce the magnitude of the problem with tighter targeting, but it will never go away entirely. That’s OK, though. Just keep these unreachable customers in mind when you look at your conversion rates and similar metrics. Otherwise, you may be blaming a low conversion rate on your message and offer, when the real culprit is an audience that simply can’t buy anything from you due to other factors.

Whenever I try a new brand of wine, I pay attention to the type of cork they use. I’m certainly no wine expert, so my interest in the cork is purely a functional one. In particular, synthetic corks are a pain to get a corkscrew into, and can be nearly impossible to remove from the bottle. Sure, natural corks may crumble a bit, but they’re certainly better than the manufactured alternative.

If I had to guess, most wine buyers do prefer natural corks. However, I’ve never seen a wine bottle that tells you which type of cork is included. And since most of the bottles I see in the store have foil or another wrapping over the top, there’s no way to tell what you’re getting.

This seems like an obvious oversight on the marketing side of things. If many consumers prefer natural corks, and your wine brand uses them, then you should advertise that right on the label. For those people trying to avoid synthetic corks — and I bet there are a lot of us — the extra information will increase the chance they pick your wine over the others. And for consumers who don’t care either way, they’ll just ignore the details about the cork, without any impact on your sales to that group.

If I ran a vineyard that used natural corks, I’d order up a bunch of stickers that show a picture of the cork along with some text like “We use natural corks”. Slap those stickers onto a few cases in select markets, and watch what happens. Once the sales results are in, I suspect that you’d quickly find it worthwhile to include cork info on the label of every wine you sell.