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.

So today, was out, and it rained.

Happens every day in some place in the world, right?

But we’ve got the internet!

So, just as my Google Calendar will send me a text message before my dentist appointment, why can’t I get the weather messaged to me?

Well, that’s not too revolutionary. But what about I only get bothered by the weather when it’s going to bother me? Give me a chance to decide when I want to be notified - let me choose to get an email when there’s a 50% chance of rain, or if it’s going to be a high below 40 F? That way, I can forget about looking, worrying, etc. Just let me know and I’ll plan accordingly.

Okay, I just received an SMS that my toast is done.

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?

How about a line of breath mints called Governmints?

“mmm bureaucralicious!”
“even bigger flavor”
“in incumbent or new challenger flavors!”
“made & approved by the FDA”
“take a bite out of big Governmint”
“only $1,000 for the trial size”

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!”

This one brings the “real” world in line with the “virtual” one. We’ve all seen those “scenic vista” and “photo opportunity” type signs at national parks, theme parks, zoos, etc. They try to highlight just the right place for a little excitement to capture on film (or pixels).

Listening to a discussion today about moblogging and GPS-enabled camera phones, one would think the idea of placing little markers at (random?) places around the world, connected to GPS-enabled camera phones, or keyword-tagged photos on a site like flickr, could allow one to see unique perspectives captured by an array of people all from those same spots.

A shared view of that one small place in the world.

With almost any idea, I am positive this is already being done or persued somewhere on the web.

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.

Re-enactments/Re-countings of things you remember happening (whether or not they actually happened). In effect, it would be the solidification of a possible life experience through the intentional recreation of supposed memories of said events.

Possible tag lines: “An Alternative to History” or “How (I Think) Things Were”.