I can just see the website now: drinkjug.com

While that alone would be useful (to me), how about taking it a step further. Why not expose Pandora-like functionality where I enter a book I read/liked/was told to read and it would show me similar books. This list might be used for additional readings or perhaps readings which would be more appropriate.

How would that work? Well, say you’ve just read a Malcom Gladwell book and you want to read more on the subject, it might recommend you read Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer whom Gladwell drew from.

Or vice versa, suppose someone recommends you read about motivation and drive – they just read Drive by Daniel H. Pink, but it seems a little too difficult for reading on the beach (or bus), wouldn’t it be nice to know that reading Linchpin by Seth Godin might give you some of the same takeaways?

Or I guess in my case, when I have a stack of unread books on my nightstand and a megabyte (what’s the equivalent new term?) of ebooks on my Kindle, how do I know which to read next? I might not want to read two books that are very similar back to back, or I might want to read something lighter after plowing through a scientific treatise.

Who’s going to build it?

One of our case studies in business school illustrated the difficulties of managing a fleet of cars due to technical constraints, organizational structure and office politics, but there is no doubt much to be gained from centralized buying as well as a centralized strategy.

The buying part is obvious, without a doubt, some savings can be found by buying in bulk and using the muscle power of such larger fleets to draw savings from either standardized models or brands. But the strategy is a little harder to see. What are the benefits that would offset the organizational inertia and fifedoms present in the rental car companies? Well, when what car one rents only matters to the extent that the car runs and is off a certain category, not much. But what if people want more granularity than “compact” or “luxury”?

I think there’s a market for a company to rent specific models to their customers. Say I really want to drive a Corvette, or just feel comfortable driving the same car I have at home, it would mean a lot to be able to rent a specific car and be assured I’d get it. Perhaps I am considering buying a new car? Wouldn’t it make sense to rent one for a few days to see if I really like driving it? I think a system like this would open the door to more aspirational rentals. In fact, that market would be in addition to the current rental market as no one provides for it.

There’s understandable concerns. I think it’s safe to say that currently rental car companies don’t know until the moment you arrive (if then) what car they will have for you. That’s an inventory management issue writ large, with both technical limitations as well as customer constraints. Apparently, by the fees they charge these days, rental car companies are at the mercy of customers returning cars both early and late. Both of which wreak havoc on their inventory. And some drivers drive from on location to another, further mixing things up.

One immediate solution would be to flatten the inventory. One would use the bulk buying power to have fewer models of cars available, so you’d have less variety in your inventory to juggle. Might mean rental car companies would specialize even more by car manufacturer than they do now.

So, it may never happen, but if I could choose a company and rent a specific make and model car, I’d do it and I’d do it direct, meaning I would pass up the current cutthroat lowest price by category model, giving rental car companies a chance to make a little more premium.

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 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.

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?

faq too?

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.