Lists, Marketing, and Web 2.0 Reverberation

A couple of weeks ago someone I follow on Twitter posted a link to Rotten Tomatoes list of 50 movies for 50 states. My wife and I both agreed that this was pretty cool. We rushed to the site to see which picks we agreed and disagreed with, and which movies are in our DVD collection. We correctly predicted a few of the picks then we turned our attention to a difficult state. Point Break for California, I never saw this movie nor did I know what it was about. But to get this honor for California is huge. California is “the” movie making state. Well guess what, today we own Point Break.

A simple list can be a powerful marketing tool. They are a simple way to say that this is more important than that or for a collector to check off what they own. In the web 2.0 world these lists can be anywhere in a second. I am pretty sure that this list was put together with the intention of both entertaining viewers and promoting the sale of DVDs. Well it worked.

Intentional and unintentional consequences happen every time a story or idea is told and retold, even if it is a simple list. So what are the unintentional results of that list? I now want to put together my own ultimate list of lists. Note that I say my own because a simple web search indicates that it already exist. I will probably never get to this on my own but perhaps someone who reads this will.

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