Clutter is a quick way to tell your customers that you don’t care about them.  Grocery Stores and mass merchandisers based in Bentonville, AR are notorious for cluttered aisles and haphazard displays.  As a retail conversation, clutter is a way to talk past your customers without regard for their perspective.  And as a disturbing trend it’s spreading to more and more of our daily interactions.  As I stand in Starbucks I notice it’s becoming more of a retail store, not by having shelves of related products for sale, but by adopting the retail tactic of clutter.  There are baskets of merchandise on the floor, displays I have to walk around, and boxes of CDs and mints taking up most of the counter space.  Is it a sign that things may be going badly for Starbucks?  Or is it, even worse, a sign of the inevitable decline in all establishments retail toward a common clutter look designed to steal your attention?  I wrote my early posts in a Starbucks and I’d hate to see the loss of that second office quality.

In another medium, CNN may be acknowledging that cable news channels have cluttered interfaces by stripping down the look of CNNi, their international channel.  Hey, MSNBC, you want to differentiate yourself from CNN and Fox News?  Here’s an opportunity to offer a clean look and say to your customers that you won’t insult them with constant onscreen motion and clutter.