Here Come The Lists

December 25th, 2009 | by LaSean Smith

Data comes at us from all directions. It can be hard to make sense of it all. So we filter. We ignore. We categorize. We love to group things. It helps us make sense of the world. It happens at work and in our personal lives. While grouping isn’t always a good thing (e.g. stereotypes) it’s a key skill for us to acquire. It’s not just a human skill. Servers running highly tuned algorithms also help us out here (e.g. Google, Bing). All in all, it’s not surprising that we spend a fair amount of time managing information overload. There’s a lot of data to process.

As the year comes to a close the lists emerge. The ‘Top 10′ list is one of the most popular. And hate them or love them, most people can’t get enough of them. Why? All the reasons above. You might not be much of a sports fan, but you’ll watch ESPN’s top ten sports moments of the year. You might violently disagree with a film critic’s top movies of the year, but that’s sort of the point. These lists give us a starting point to identify with what we like and what turns us off. As marketers we can create lists to get our customers attention. But you have to make them interesting. I was going to add a list to this post, but nothing came to mind (that wouldn’t take some time to compile). So no (interesting) list from me. But that’s okay. You don’t really need mine. The lists are coming.

Happy Holidays