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.
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.
You may or may not have noticed that the dates on these posts seem a little off. At least in the sense that a blog started in 2007 has posts from years before that. Well, I sometimes like to think I’ve been blogging in my head for decades now, but short of that grand delusion of mine – I’m just trying to make posts relevant to when I scribbled down the idea. A sort of ideagraphical journey through time & space.