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?

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.

How about an office supply store which just carries leftovers from the past? Actual leftovers… old trapper keepers, Pee-Chees, etc. Would hit the nostalgia of all the Gen-Xers looking for some of their youth.

Perhaps a little bit morbid, but why not a line of T-Shirts that point out that life isn’t always perfect and happy? Won’t some people want “heavy” t-shirts just to point out the irony of it all?

Here’s a list of slogan ideas:

• My doctor just told me I have 3 days to live
• What does ‘inoperable’ mean?
• My son placed me in this home and all I got was this tshirt
• My wife had me committed and all I got was this tshirt
• Is hair supposed to fall out?
• Bald is sexy, right?
• Ssh! No one knows I am contagious!
• Ebola is a state of mind
• I am terrorized
• Someone bombed my car
• My other car is a bomb
• It’s not ’suicide’ if you set off my explosives
• Autopilot Terrorism
• I only get one chance, so let me get this right
• It’s only Ebola
• Did you get your flu shot? Too bad.
• I forget, how do you spell Alzheimers?
• I can’t feel my legs
• Have you seen my Mommy?
• Have you seen my baby?

outsource glossary. provide the text for pop-up glossary terms for
websites. they can brand. include text ads? upsell for branding? no ads?
users can provide feedback and hone blurbs…

faq too?

turn the stock performance graph into a soundwave that someone can listen
to… for accessibility for the blind… also to allow people to tell a
good stock by it’s sound… “that sounds like a winner!”

One day I came up with this idea to define how I’ve approached the business world these so many years: Low-Impact Entrepreneur.

It could mean a lot of different things, but the concept behind it for me is that with the web, one can dip one’s foot into the waters of some new venture or technology without having to go to deep. You can try a website, try a service, try a little bit of code and see how well it works, see if anyone finds it, see if anyone happens to find it worthwhile enough to spend money on it and go from there.

Should it draw some response you do a little more, recrafting the concept, expanding the service, increasing your involvement. If it takes off, you get more and more entangled. If it doesn’t, no skin off your back.

So, for example, if you set up a site and think “oh, i’ll charge for monthly memberships to get access to a wealth of new information they’ll pay to get” you’ve just now tied yourself down to a lot of responsibilities - regardless of how many people ever pay. You have to build/manage a system which rebills monthly (including handling rebills, charge backs, confused customers, etc.), you need to provide new content every month, and probably much more. If only one person joins, you still offered to provide them all of that - not much fun, right?

In my case, I chose to provide a “membership” type service but instead of possibly gaining more revenue from billing people again every month or year, I chose to bill once - good for as long as the site is around. What did I save? Well, I never build a complex rebilling system. I spend absolutely no time trying to find out if the guy has changed his email, didn’t know it was going to rebill and now wants a refund, etc. Low-impact. They get their immediate rewards and a good chance of long term gains. I get the freedom to forget it and walk away if that’s what makes sense.

This one should be a business… one that offers a web service/software app which is all about the opposite of “remind me.”

So the nagme system would allow you to enter websites, search terms, time amounts, times of day, etc. which trigger the system to hit you with a pop-up or warning asking “are you SURE you want to be doing this?”, giving you a chance to stop short of a behavior you’re trying to change.

Whether it’s surfing to those meaningless websites, searching for random wastes of time, or spending 5 hours sorting through your junk mail folder - however you waste time, you can have the system remind you periodically that you asked yourself not to do that anymore.

Sort of anti-del.icio.us

As I’m in a new contracting role, I’ve found myself evaluating work and what are it’s worths to my life. One of the most obvious is money. And I actually commented to someone that “I’m doing it for the cash infusion.” That’s pretty frighteningly like what might come out of an entrepreneurs mouth as he talks about taking some VC funding.That made me then think: What other types of unorthodox financing are available?We’ve heard of people maxing out their credit cards to fund their ideas. Those  who inherited money from their family. But has there been any entrepreunerial women (or men) who’ve turned to the lap dance to fund their ideas?This came to mind as I’ve read where some strippers who work in Vegas don’t live there and just fly in for select weeks/weekends when certain conferences are in town. They earn enough from that short period of time to live well for the rest of the year.Why not earn enough to fund that start-up?  Maybe the business has nothing to do with matters of an adult nature, but rather is a baby’s nappies estore and the spunky, go-getter mom who founded the company leaves the baby with her husband and heads to Vegas for a few weeks to bring home the bacon AND the venture financing.Would that mean that strip clubs would have to get detailed financial backgrounds on their customers? Would the SEC be following the money as it moved from the edge of the stage to the middle of the bosom (or other places too risque to go into here)?

1900 You Sing

Ad… Guy in a shower with various accoutrements of a recording studio in
it with him…
“Don’t just sing in the shower, record an album”

Ad… Woman in a car in traffic, in car is recording gear, backup singers
in the back seat, maybe a producer up front?
“Don’t just sing in traffic, record an album”

Set up a 1900 number where people can call, choose from a list of songs
and then have the actual songs, with lyrics play as they sing along. They
then get a chance to 1) listen to their recording, 2) order a cd, 3)
record another. Their vocal tracks are added to the karaoke tracks to
make a finished recording. It would then be available for download (for a
fee?) or on a cd.

Great pitch is to people hosting parties… they put their drunk friends
onto the service so they have actual evidence of the karaoke to use
against them.

Ad… “Your friends dragged you to Karaoke and proceeded to butcher ‘Love
is a Battlefield’ and you had nothing to show for your pain. Now you can
get the evidence in all its horror on CD or as an .mp3. Simply offer
1-900-Your-Song to your friends the next time they have the itch to sing
along.”