It’s been hard to find time to just let thoughts percolate on the old front porch lately. Between work, Aikido and family I’ve run myself down apparently. About the only benefit of this lingering cough I’ve had is that it’s forcing me to take it easy today. Doing so has given me time to revisit some tidbits I’ve come across lately.

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Why don’t we take the EZ road? By my observation, the average New York City area tollbooth still has far more people sitting in the ‘cash’ lines than whizzing through the EZ Pass lanes. In fact, during my time in Brooklyn and even for a couple years after moving out, I too sat in those long, slow lanes.

No sooner had I finally gotten an EZ Pass (a process which was surprisingly simple) than I began to wonder why it had taken me so long to get one and why so many people still didn’t. I think about that every time I pass a clogged tollbooth.

One might draw parallels to more macro issue like healthcare (the lower cost and ease of preventative measures vs. the astronomical costs and burden of treatment), the environment (slow drip investments in cap and trade now, or the big bill and cost of disruption to do a clean up later) and even personal finance (buy now, figure out how to pay for it later i.e. credit vs. buy when you have the money to actually pay for it, i.e. debit). Even with something as mundane as Web Browsers I see people reluctant to upgrade even with the promise of a better experience on the other side.

With numerous products flooding the market to make our lives easier, has anyone been taking into account the seemingly common core human tendency to choose ‘the way I’ve always done it’ over something that promises to be easier?

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The Healthcare Debate Simplified.
Apparently Dan Roam shares my belief in the power of the napkin as an idea quality litmus test. His presentation on healthcare, it addition to winning accolades as the World’s Best Presentation according to Slideshare,  does a great job of simplifying all the hullabaloo down to something we mortals can wrap our heads around.

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Weezer Rocks. I’ve long been a fan of dork rock outfit Weezer. Recently it’s come across my radar that these guys are doing some interesting things to promote themselves. As the music industry struggles alongside other segments to understand the implications of today’s media, it’s worth noting Weezer’s efforts. To begin with, they have a Facebook app which allows fans to signup and vote for their own school to win a free Weezer concert. This is underwritten by T-Mobile and is a more bread-and-butter social media campaign. Still several schools had thousands of votes.

More amusing is the Snuggie effort. Weezer has an affinity for Snuggies and apparently has gone so far as to introduce a Weezer Snuggy which is offered at an infomericial price:

But wait, there’s more, order now and you get Weezer’s new album free. Here’s a band that makes the gimmick (snuggie) the premium and the premium (their music) the free prize gimmick. That shows a keen understanding of the status of music tracks to the average bitstreamer. The light-irony of the effort alongside the campiness of embracing the Snuggy and doing so after it’s mainstream 15 minutes of fame has come and gone all seems aligned with Weezer’s geek-chic approach. It’s on brand but its also, I’m guessing, aligned with the left-of-center taste of Weezer’s fans.

Anyhow, in terms of pass along value, it’s obviously worked on me.

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The Wisdom(?) of Crowds. Reviews, ratings and recommendations are a standard benefit marketed in the name of social media. We consumers benefit from the wisdom of others by reading their reviews. No longer do we have to accept the happy hyperbole of advertisers, we can get the straight skinny from other people just like us.

Or not.

Apparently happiness and hyperbole are alive and well online and the source is not advertising but we peer peeps. YouTube is well known to have millions of lame videos. Conventional wisdom says finding the good ones is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Why then are most YouTube videos getting high scores?

Then there’s this graphic which gave me pause. Look at the relative proportion of positive conversations to the whole…

Conventional wisdom says that most marketer’s are concerned about ‘giving their brand over to the social web’ for fear angry customers will flame them out. Yet from the table above, it seems like a marketer’s Camelot out there.

Curious that.

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