1. a serious or respectable drama or film classic,
2. a romance or chick-friendly movie for the wife,
3. and some guilty pleasure action movie or low-brow comedy.

Guess which movie gets watched last or returned unwatched?

You betcha, it’s usually the drama/classic.  Oh the shame!

The thing is, unless I had added the high-brow movie to my “menu,” I’d likely have forgone the guilty pleasure of the action flick and just picked up the semi-respectable romantic comedy to watch with the wife.

Seems like recent scientific research shows it’s not just me and not limited to movies, either.  Apparently, diners given the option of salad are 3 times more likely to order french fries than if salad wasn’t on the menu.  Kind of counter-intuitive, when the healthy option spurs more unhealthy behavior.

But when you think about it, it kind of makes sense.  The fact that you thought about ordering the salad – and intend to order the salad at the next meal – helps you justify the french fries now, just like renting Touch of Evil helps me justify actually watching X2.  ‘Cause aren’t we all interested in eating desert now and working out later?  Would drinking be nearly as popular if the hangover came before the high?

So how can this apply to your business? Lots of ways, I’d guess, but the 2 that come to mind are as follows:

1) Charging the self-aware more money for the privilege of being restricted to the straight and narrow.  Chip and Dan Heath have an excellent article on this very strategy in the last issue of Fast Company.  People want to offload responsibility and even choice in order to circumvent their own “desert first” tendencies, and they’ll often pay you to help them overcome their own worst tendencies.

2) Front loading the exciting stuff while reassuring prospective customers that the good-for-you stuff is available/on its way. Amazon Prime is so incredibly seductive because 2-day shipping is within most people’s impulse-buy time horizon.  And it’s justifiable because, hey, shipping is free, and I’m sure I’ll get around to actually reading these books at some point, right?  And thus my antilibrary grows.

If you sell services, give some thought on how you can implement these techniqes, both from a business strategy and a web copy standpoint.

How many people craft different blog posts tackling the same subject from different angles and designed to appeal to different Temperaments?

How many people publish their nonfiction/business book in mind with a firm understanding of what they want the book to accomplish for them, what a book reasonably can accomplish, and what it takes to make that happen?

The simple truth is that it’s incredibly unlikely for authors to make money on their non-fiction book, but fairly common for authors to make money because of their book – IF they intelligently market their book.

Seth Godin recently wrote about Blogs, books, and the irony of short, saying essentially that business book should contain more than could be conveyed in a few blog posts, while the market essentially demands that authors be able to summarize their book within the space of a blog post.  Seth then ends the post, saying:

“This is irony (we say we want long and deep and rich but we also insist that it be condensed to a sentence) so it’s not clear what you should do about it as a marketer, other than to accept that it’s going on.”

Well, if you’d like a detailed answer to what you should do to market your book and develop a content strategy to leverage your unique views, I can think of no better authority on the subject than my friend and book marketing genius, Michael Drew.  Michael’s currently running 50 for 50 in putting his client’s books onto the New York Times Best Seller list.  And his answers on how to plan the content, writing, and marketing of a book in this brave new-media world are available through his Book Publishing 2.0 class.  The next one will be held in New York City, May 8th-10th.

Mike has given me 5 free tickets to giveaway. If you can be or are going to be in New York City those days, just comment below and we’ll pick 5 people to attend this amazing course for free.

My colleagues at FutureNow have an eclectic love for music and are always on the hunt for next best thing to listen to.

What would you be listening to? What would help you plow through your work?

Please share an unusual favorite song, artist, album or even a playlist. Also please indicate what you do to pay the bills.

Oh, and by the way, since several of us received an iPod Touch this holiday season. That is the item that topped our list of gifts for web geeks. I even got these cool Etre Touchy gloves that will keep my hands warm this winter, but let my fingers interact with my touchscreen. While we are at it, what is your favorite app for your iPod Touch (it seems ours is Wurdle)?

*This post was inspired by my friend Daniel Waisberg on the Web Analytics Discussion group and Apple’s new DRM free music.