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The first thing companies did with computer technology back in the 1980s was to multiply the number of choices for their customers. More colors, more styles, more features, more models, more messages, more channels, more services, more brand extensions, more SKUs. The siren call of “consumer choice” proved impossible for companies to resist. If a little choice was good, they reasoned, more choice was better. Customers loved it. For about 15 minutes. Today their lives are so cluttered by choice that they can barely breathe. Americans now see that a little choice increases their freedom, but too much takes it away. Do you really want to spend three hours learning how to use the features on your new Samsung TV? Or sort through 17 varieties each time you buy Crest toothpaste at the supermarket? Or deal with the 3,000 pages of items shown in Restoration Hardware’s 15-pound set of catalogs? Not if you have a life. Of course, none of us wants to give up this lavish banquet of choice. We just want it off the floor and out of the way. “It’s not information over-load,” media consultant Clay Shirky famously said. “It’s filter failure.” Our brains can’t handle the deluge. We’re desperate for a way to organize, access, and make use of so many options. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos called it “cognitive overhead.
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Marty Neumeier (Brand Flip, The: Why customers now run companies and how to profit from it (Voices That Matter))