Archive for November 11th, 2007

No Disclaimers

I work for a certain Financial Services firm and I see various legal and disclaimer text every day. It’s often (sadly) hilarious what requires disclaimers and how unlikely it is to release anything without it.

And it makes me wonder whether disclaimer text has any unconscious effects on consumers. I am not sure that the mere presence of tiny text at the bottom of a page makes me instantly wary or turns me off of the advertisement, but I do know that many times I’ll read some claim in an advertisement and instantly look for an asterix.

So - whether it’s actually legally possible - could a financial institution capture some of those unconsciously disillusioned prospects by discarding the small print?

I could almost imagine faux disclaimers then popping up that say “No disclaimers needed, honest.”

Well, I can dream, can’t I?

Taste Inorganic

So, first there were brands sold as brands and store labels hidden where no one could see them. Then store labels became brands themselves. Now is there anything considered “Generic?”

So in a world that’s branding everything, where your brand can reinforce or even reimagine what your product is, why not brand the products no one thought anyone would ever brand?

What do I mean? Well, consumers are starting to buy anything labeled organic. Brands that promote an earth-friendly, organic element adds & legitmates a premium pricing on anything.

But what about the products that aren’t so environmentally sound? What about the same old, preservative heavy foods our parents grew up on? Why not take a stand and brand them? Make them cool through the power of the brand.

We could have anti-biotic, feed-lot fed milk branded as MELK with the tag line of Discover the Sweetness of Inorganic and reinforced by adding extra sweetness to the mix. Could “organic” get away with that, I think not.